James E. (Jim) Tomayko, aka "Coach"

When I came to Carnegie Mellon in 1993, to run a special program for Bellcore and Bell Operating companies, that's when I met Jim. The special program was part of the "Information Networking Institute" of Carnegie Mellon, and it included a Master's program, an executive/professional program (called ATI... where I was engaged), and a small program of R&D, all funded by Bellcore and one other client, Digital Equipment Corp.

Jim was one of 72 instructors from inside and outside CMU, in the executive/professional programs. The ATI program brought mid-career professionals to CMU for up to 14 weeks in residence. Topics included the evolution of the U.S. telecom industry, the rise of the Internet, and the convergence of computing, communications, etc.

Later, I helped Jim to produce the first PSP course on CDs using "Just-in-Time Lectures" from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. Jim used the resulting course within the MSE program, but it was also licensed to Mexico and India, among others. The key was that we had established a consortium to support the development of "JITL" (with Motorola University and US Army TRADOC) and used that funding to underwrite the first MSE "distance education" courses, including PSP and MSD.

When Jim delivered lectures for filming, he was known as "one-take Tomayko." He almost never asked to stop the camera and re-start, and his delivery was always flawless. His humor was also magnificent, as in "It's a lot easier to find and fix a bug early in the process, rather than later, when you're flying at 50,000 feet over the Atlantic."