More and more amateur photographers use digital cameras and print their own pictures, and competition for their business is fierce. No one knows that better than Sandra K. Morris, CHEP ’76, ’81M, who heads Eastman Kodak’s online and mobile services business.

Morris’ job was announced by Kodak in May, just days after she was inducted as one of five 2005 honorees on UD’s Alumni Wall of Fame. The wall, located in the Alumni Lounge of the Perkins Student Center, recognizes University graduates for outstanding professional and public service achievements.

Morris, who joined Kodak from her previous position as corporate vice president and general manager for Intel Communications Group, graduated from the University in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in child development and early childhood education and earned her master’s degree in life-span development and education in 1981.

She began her career as a master teacher in the University’s Laboratory Preschool, where she worked from 1982-85. She says the transition from teaching very young children to holding a senior executive position in a business involving software and Internet services is not as peculiar as it may seem.

“It all started with Alice Eyman [former director of the Laboratory Preschool], who challenged all of us teachers at the time to think about computers and how they could be used to help shape children’s learning,” Morris says. “This was the early 1980s, but Alice thought that home computers were going to start being a part of children’s lives. It was very insightful of her.”

At Eyman’s urging, Morris and other Laboratory Preschool teachers and UD faculty members began conducting research on the use of computers as educational tools. As a result, Morris’ work in the field came to the attention of RCA, which hired her to work in the area of multimedia and digital video applications for families, schools and businesses.

At RCA’s David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, N.J., she helped develop several prototypes for the use of PCs in multimedia educational applications. In 1988, her group of researchers and its multimedia technology were acquired by Intel Corp., where Morris continued to work until she accepted her new position with Kodak.

During her 17 years with Intel, Morris became known for a strong strategic vision and operating skills, working with the company’s multimedia and communications products and Internet-related marketing. She held such positions as marketing manager of the Digital Video Interactive Group, manager of the Internet and Communications Group and vice president of sales and marketing for Intel’s Internet Marketing and E-Commerce Group. She was appointed corporate vice president and chief information officer of the
E-Business Group in 2000.

“Sandra has a true passion for how technology works and, more importantly, how it can be used to improve the way people live, communicate, work and play worldwide,” Bernard Masson, a senior vice president of Kodak, said in announcing Morris’ new position with that company.

At Kodak, Morris is responsible for the company’s EasyShare Gallery, an online photo-sharing and printing service. EasyShare, formerly an independent startup company known as Ofoto, is the top online service in the industry, with more than 20 million users and more than 1 billion stored images.

“As Kodak has started transitioning from film to digital photography, this business becomes one of its central operations, so I was very excited when I was approached about this position,” Morris says. “Practically my entire career has been involved in technology, so this gets me in a position where I’m driving a business that is very close to my heart.”

The service allows users to upload digital photos, including the ability to store images directly from a camera phone, and to share photos online, as well as to create prints as large as poster-size, she says.

Morris serves on several professional boards and has been featured in such publications as Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, Fortune and Business Week Online. She and her husband, William Sullivan, BE ’75, are relocating from Portland, Ore., to San Francisco.

Of her time at UD, Morris says, “When choosing the University of Delaware as an undergraduate, it was reputation and size that attracted me. The bonus was the unique commitment of the faculty to teach and support students’ interests, regardless of major, department or method of learning.

“I learned to appreciate great thinking, complete critical research, to critique and seek data. All this has served me well. Student-constructed practicums and pursuits outside the academic halls were also encouraged and well-supported. It was this permission to explore that drew me back to the University for my graduate work and has been a steady background guide to my pursuits in the technology field.”