Editorial: In Memoriam of Associate Professor Dr Elaine Lawrence

Abstract

Despite being a graduate of the rigorous Bachelor of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in 1996, I was unfortunate in that I missed being taught by Associate Professor Elaine Lawrence who began working at UTS in 1990 as a Lecturer in Computing Science. Dr Lawrence became a senior lecturer in 2000, and subsequently an associate professor in 2006. Our paths crossed in 2002 when I was tasked deliver a new course entitled eBusiness Principles in my first year of lecturing at the University of Wollongong, and after an initial scurry find an adequate textbook, I came across Dr Lawrence's groundbreaking text Internet Commerce: Digital Models for Business. Lawrence's book was a best-seller for Wiley, adopted by almost every course coordinator teaching e-business/e-commerce in Australia, at a time when information technology had burgeoning undergraduate numbers. When my PhD supervisors, Professor Joan Cooper and Associate Professor Carole Alcock, suggested me that Dr Lawrence would be a good choice for an examiner in 2003, I must say I was more than a little nervous. After doing some background research on the web see the fit, I was in even greater awe noting the impact Dr Lawrence was having on the teaching of industry certifications, and the creation of new courses. Elaine was the Program Leader of the popular Masters of Internetworking degree at UTS and as a qualified Cisco Certified Academic instructor (CAI) she began the CISCO certification courses delivered at UTS, in addition contributing a plethora of materials the CISCO Academy that were used by an estimated one million persons globally. Lawrence also tested international teaching materials for CISCO in Ireland and the United States and was the NSW representative for the Educational Council for CISCO. I had spent five years at Nortel Networks, a CISCO competitor, and immediately felt an affinity with her background Dr Lawrence was the first student complete the Doctor of Technology at Deakin University in 2001. In addition this, Dr Lawrence had a Masters of Business Information Technology, a Graduate Diploma in Commercial Computing and a Bachelor of Arts (awarded the university prize for Journalism). She was a very active senior member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) for more than 20 years and also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 1994 she began her own company called CyberConsult who had among its customers, Sydney Water, the Australian Institute of Management, Unilink and the Australian Computer Society. I do remember being taken by the fact that her slogan for her consulting business was The Human Side of Technology. Given my thesis was all about emerging technologies and their implications, I found peace in the fact that Dr Lawrence was a potential marker. After receiving my PhD I corresponded with Dr Lawrence, appreciative of her genuine feedback on my thesis and ways improve it. She was the perfect academic role model for me, and a wonderful mentor from the outset, although our relationship just developed naturally and we enjoyed corresponding with one another without the labels of mentor and mentee. I remember distinctly that Dr Lawrence had a way with words and she was always armoured with a graceful and tactful way of providing advice. She was reassuring at first, then encouraging, and then quite direct using sentences like why don't consider submitting research to or you know this audience would be quite accepting of this perspective. Amazingly Elaine never seemed in a rush, and yet somehow she did so much! She always made feel important in her presence and that she had all the time in the world for you. In 2003, I had the opportunity contribute Dr Lawrence's best seller, and began work on a number of fresh case studies for the latest edition of Internet Commerce which was in fact Elaine's second book. …