EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins to Retire

Brian L. Hawkins has announced he will retire from his position as EDUCAUSE president at the end of the 2007–2008 academic year, coinciding with the association’s 10th anniversary. By announcing his retirement plans now, Hawkins provides the EDUCAUSE board of directors with ample time for a thorough search and an orderly transition of leadership.

Hawkins is the founding president and CEO of EDUCAUSE, created by the 1998 consolidation of Educom and CAUSE. In describing Hawkins’ impact on the association and information technology (IT) in higher education, Robyn R. Render, chair of the EDUCAUSE board of directors and vice president for information resources and CIO at the University of North Carolina General Administration, said, “Brian's leadership has elevated EDUCAUSE in all dimensions of size, scope, and relevance. Over the first few years of the new organization, he fortified its foundation while taking great care to preserve the values of all EDUCAUSE constituents. Throughout the following years of stability, steady growth, and reflection, he guided the organization through many changes to better serve the broad base of IT users on campus. Now, as we look to the next decade, he is focused on the need for concrete actions that the association can take to address the ’grand challenges‘ facing higher education and new opportunities for the intelligent use of IT. EDUCAUSE is very well positioned, due in large part to having Brian at its helm.”

Hawkins indicated that while he truly plans to retire, he intends to remain intellectually active in the higher education community—but with a dramatically slower schedule in order to pursue nonacademic interests. He will be ending an academic career that included tenured faculty appointments and a wide variety of administrative and leadership positions at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Drexel University, and Brown University before assuming his leadership role at EDUCAUSE. Of the association he has led for nearly a decade, he said, “It’s not about technology, and it’s certainly not about me. It’s about what we do with IT and how we align services, policies, and legislative priorities with the institutional mission. And, ultimately, it’s about how we collaborate with each other because we surely can’t do it alone, as individuals or as institutions. It’s been a great run, and my reward has been to work with an astonishingly talented, vibrant group of colleagues and visionaries in a profession that has and will continue to advance the academic enterprise.”

The EDUCAUSE board has appointed a search committee that will be led by David Smallen, board vice chair for 2007 and vice president for information technology at Hamilton College. He and five other current members of the board and two former board chairs will comprise the search committee, which will make recommendations to the full board. Members of the search committee represent schools reflecting the full range of institutional types, sizes, and governance that define the EDUCAUSE community. The committee will conduct an open search for Hawkins’ successor, starting with a formal announcement and position description posted on the EDUCAUSE Web site in the spring of 2007, with the search concluding in the late fall of 2007.

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 250 corporations, with 17,000 active members. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu.