IU to celebrate Clapacs’ career on Thursday

IU will celebrate the career of Terry Clapacs, retiring vice president and chief administration officer, on Thursday.

The celebration, sponsored by the IU trustees and IU President Michael McRobbie, will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday in Alumni Hall of the Indiana Memorial Union.

Clapacs will end his career spanning four decades at IU on June 30.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he grew up in Goshen, Ind. He and his wife Phyllis, a retired high school English teacher, have two children and five grandchildren. Clapacs has been named as a Sagamore of the Wabash by former state Gov. Evan Bayh and inducted into the Goshen Hall of Fame. The Sagamore of the Wabash Award is the highest honor the governor of Indiana bestows. It is a personal tribute usually given to those who have rendered a distinguished service to the state.

Clapacs completed two IU degrees, a Bachelor of Science in 1965 and Master of Business Administration in 1968, and has overseen a variety of units on IU’s eight campuses. His responsibilities have included campus master planning, all new building construction and building renovation, physical plants, real estate, human resources, purchasing, risk management, campus police, business diversity, travel management and environmental health and safety.

His longest service has been in the area of facilities, in which he assumed major responsibilities in 1970. Since that time, Clapacs has overseen the development of about two-thirds of what is now IU, including two new campuses in Richmond and New Albany.

“It is virtually impossible to look at any Indiana University campus without seeing the impact of Terry Clapacs,” McRobbie said in a statement.