OUR NEIGHBORS: The vagabond professor

MAT-SU — Alex Hillis is as comfortable chatting with friends at Vagabond Blues in downtown Palmer as he is solving information technology challenges for third-world nations.

With more than 1 million miles traveled to dozens of countries over the past decade, Hillis, a Palmer resident and veteran educator, is as excited as his students about helping prepare them and other countries to face the future.

“I guess you could call me a senior professor, as in gray hair,” he said.

Hillis holds a Ph.D. in engineering and public safety, and has been a professor for Carnegie Mellon University since 1992. He’s also a visiting professor at universities in Singapore, Chile and New Zealand.

He most enjoys his work with Carnegie Mellon University. Hillis recently returned from the Cook Islands, where he situated students to help the country’s government.

“The Cook Islands is a poor nation, a developing nation,” he said. “It was part of New Zealand, but now it’s quasi-independent. It’s just a little place. We were asked by the office of the prime minister in the Cook Islands to help them with some IT, some information technology projects.”

While Hillis doesn’t take on the projects himself, he eases Carnegie Mellon students into roles as consultants. These roles not only provide help for the countries, but also give the students practical, real-world experience.

In the Cook Islands, he helped choose four students to help four government departments, called ministries.

“Each of these ministries asked for some specific help in a computer-related field,” he said. “Then we looked at our students who were interested in working abroad this summer. … I’ve been down there just to get these projects started.”

In addition to the Cook Islands, Hillis has worked or lectured in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana … and the list goes on.

While his career takes Hillis around the world, the conversation often turns to his home.

“People are pretty curious about Alaska,” he said. “With all the traveling I do, as soon as people hear Alaska, it used to be they would ask about polar bears. … Then the next words out of their mouths is something like, ‘I saw it on the Discovery Channel.’ There’s a lot of interest in Alaska, for sure.”

Universally, most people in the countries Hillis has visited have good feelings toward the United States and Americans. They also have something in common with some U.S. citizens.

“They have a lot of trouble figuring out our political system,” he said.

Now Hillis wants to use his international expertise and position at Carnegie Mellon to pursue service projects closer to home. He’s working with the University of Alaska and hopes to bring students to the Last Frontier.

The student projects are most satisfying, he said.

“Those are the projects that are the most memorable,” he said. “We’re really doing some good things for other people in other countries, and thousands and thousands of people are affected by what we do.

“Also, the students just blossom. What happens is they study a lot of stuff in school and it’s all theoretical and abstract. In a lot of cases, this is the first opportunity they’ve had to operate like a professional.”

Until he’s able to work on an in-state project, Hillis said he’s perfectly happy being the vagabond professor peppered with questions about Alaska, including the popular, “It’s part of Canada, right?”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.