Martens to retire after 38 years at UB
Associate vice president made "computers for all" UB's IT philosophy

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor

Ask Hinni Martens, UB's associate vice president for computing and information technology, about the downside of technology-on this, the occasion of his retirement after 38 years at UB-and the normally expansive statesman of UB's wired world, grows suddenly quiet.

"That's a hard one," he says.

"I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I don't see a downside."

People who know him probably would agree that Martens doesn't see a downside to a lot of things.

A faculty member in the departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Electrical Engineering since 1962, and in his present post for 19 years, Martens has presided over the equivalent of several lifetimes of technological change in education. And he's all for it.

From room-sized mainframes and analog computers to desktop PCs and the ubiquity of the World Wide Web, Martens has watched information technologies undergo quantum change.

Most importantly, he has seen people change their perceptions that computers are the proprietary responsibility of mathematicians and engineers to a belief that computers can play some role in nearly everyone's life. Martens often was the main driver behind that change in perception at UB.

"I'm an advocate for, and apostle of, information technologies," he says. "I only see how they support the needs, desires and expectations of people."

His characteristic enthusiasm for the potential of technology and its life-enhancing power was evident even when he was a boy, growing up in Luebeck, Germany, a city east of Hamburg, during World War II.

After the war, Martens began to develop his passion for all things mechanical. The aftermath of combat had turned Luebeck into a strange landscape of abandoned military equipment, all of which became great treasures for Martens.

"I liked to scavenge things, mostly radios, batteries and other electronic parts," he says.

He found a good use for them.

"We were having a lot of brown-outs, and there were times each day when there was no power," he says.

Martens, then 12, took the batteries he had found on abandoned aircraft and converted them into a supplementary lighting system that he wired directly into the house where his family lived so, even during blackouts, they could use the electricity.

"My wiring didn't pass any codes," he adds, smiling, "but I had a lot of customers in the neighborhood. They were very appreciative."

In 1952, Martens, his mother and three sisters emigrated to the United States. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Rochester, and a doctorate in systems science from Michigan State University. He joined the UB faculty as an assistant professor in 1962.

Not long after coming to UB, Martens became an active member of the university's fledgling Computer Advisory Committee. In the early '70s, he was named chair, in part, he thinks, "because I might have said one too many things about how we had to do better in technology."

In 1973, he received a Distinguished Faculty Award from the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a year later received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Throughout his tenure, Martens has believed strongly in the power technology holds for all the academic disciplines, even when computers were so new in some areas that he often was the target of skepticism.

For example, one of the very first computer labs he set up for students was in Clemens Hall with the Department of English back in 1982.

"Although it was still very primitive, I was starting to see the wonderful capabilities that computers had for word processing," he recalls.

"People wanted to know why I was doing this for English and not engineering," he says.

But the lab was a big hit with students, and it wasn't long before the skeptics turned into believers.

Martens continued to work with academic units, both within and beyond the sciences and engineering, to institute more student labs.

In 1981, he became director of University Computing Services and in 1985 was named to his current post, where he has overseen the planning and delivery of all computing, telecommunications and instructional-technology services at UB, supervising a staff of 190 and administering a budget of $15 million.

In the mid-'80s, he chaired a consortium charged with purchasing mainframes for all of the SUNY university centers and SUNY central. Martens also is a founding member of NYSERNET, the consortium of institutions in New York State that are constructing the very-high-speed-backbone network designed for supercomputers.

"Hinni Martens is a pioneer and a leader," says Senior Vice President Robert J. Wagner. "He also is a balancer: he has had one of the most difficult jobs in the university, balancing exploding demands for service with modest resources.

"He has always had a 'we' not a 'me' attitude," Wagner adds. "In the best sense, I have always seen him as a citizen of the university."

Martens is leaving UB just as the university has completed one of its most ambitious initiatives designed for students-the Access99 program-where computer access is required for all freshmen.

According to Joseph J. Tufariello, who headed up the program as senior vice provost for educational technology, Martens played a large role in that program's success.

"Hinni threw the entire weight of CIT behind Access99," Tufariello recalls, "supporting everything from training CDs and software to training sessions for students. All of these things were supported right down the line. Access99 always was a top priority for Hinni."

Asked about his most important achievements at UB, Martens points to two things: that he provided steady, incremental growth for IT at UB, and that he developed an outstanding technical staff.

The challenges that remain make it harder for him to leave, he admits, for they are challenges that he still would like to take a crack at solving.

But he looks toward to retirement. He will spend more time with his wife and their six children and 11 (soon to be 13) grandchildren.

Martens also will have a chance to spend more time on his music-a string bass player, he once was a member of the Amherst Symphony and played in a jazz group while a student at the University of Rochester.

His favorite tunes?

Two classics sung by Louis Armstrong: "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "What a Wonderful World."

We are not surprised.