Larry Richards
Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Indiana University East
Email: laudrich@iue.edu
Biographical Info: I currently serve as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Interim Chancellor, June 2012 – July 2013) and Professor of Management and Informatics at Indiana University East, one of the 8 campuses of Indiana University. My advanced education is in engineering, systems, management and operations research. My scholarly interests focus on alternative ways of thinking about human decision-making, particularly at the policy/strategic level, sociotechnical systems design and processes of societal transformation. Specifically, I seek to overturn the assumption, widely held, that the only way the world can “work” is through the control of resources by the few with the rest toiling (and dying) to support them or going hungry (or worse). As such, I look for alternatives to (1) hierarchy as the only way of addressing the complexity we experience, (2) purpose as the only way of designing our world, and (3) belief as the only way of anchoring our lives. Despite a long history of unspeakable cruelty by humans to other humans, I retain faith that the creative human spirit can and will prevail. While such a transformation cannot and must not happen through violence, it also will not happen without us and our desires. I have been addressing these concepts and issues through ASC conferences for over 40 years, serving as ASC President in 1986-88. I was quite humbled when the ASC awarded me its Norbert Wiener Medal in 2007.
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