2006 EDUCAUSE Leadership Award

Daniel A. Updegrove
for consistently thoughtful guidance and collaborative leadership of IT initiatives at institutional, regional, and national levels

Vice President for Information Technology
University of Texas at Austin

For nearly 30 years, Dan Updegrove has distinguished himself as a capable leader, trusted partner, and insightful contributor to initiatives at university, state, regional, and national levels. In January 2001 he became the first vice president for information technology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also an adjunct faculty member in the UT School of Information. Previously he was CIO at Yale University, associate vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, and vice president of Educom. According to a June announcement, he will leave his UT post to focus on the university's state and national network initiatives after a successor is installed.

Updegrove has brought original, important leadership to a broad variety of efforts. The clear intellect and coherent sense of strategy with which he co-chaired the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Security Task Force from 2000 to 2004 helped the task force convince the Bush Administration that the higher education community is a trusted and respected partner in the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. Updegrove was a driving force behind the creation of LEARN, the Lonestar Education And Research Network, and served as the first board chair of this statewide networking organization. He also led the effort to connect LEARN to National LambdaRail (NLR), and represents LEARN on the NLR board. He represents UT on Net@edu, Big-12 CIOs, Common Solutions Group, the Coalition for Networked Information, Internet2, and Southeastern Universities Research Association, and participates on higher education advisory committees for Apple Computer, Dell, Microsoft, and Network Appliance.

He has been a frequent contributor to publications and programs of EDUCAUSE and its predecessor organizations, serving on the board of directors and numerous advisory and conference program committees. He has also served on program committees for ACM SIGUCCS, Internet2, and the Seminars on Academic Computing; IT visiting committees at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Lehigh; and a number of university re-accreditation committees. He has consulted on IT strategic planning, networking, computer-based planning models, and computer gaming simulation at more than 75 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad, and delivered well over 150 conference and seminar presentations.

EDUCAUSE is making a $3,000 contribution in Dan Updegrove's name to the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin.

This award is sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.

Howard J. Strauss
for visionary, entertaining, and provocative thought leadership in the world of higher education information technology

former Manager of Academic Outreach
Princeton University

At the time of his death in September 2005, Howard served as manager of Academic Outreach for Princeton University, providing education and outreach services for faculty and charged with raising the level of academic IT use and sophistication on campus. During almost 35 years at Princeton, he held a variety of positions in administrative, systems, and academic computing. As manager of Princeton's Advanced Applications group, he and his group found ways to turn the latest information technology into practical applications. They created Princeton News Network (PNN), one of the first campus-wide information systems and a precursor to Gopher and the World Wide Web. They also helped deploy the first fledgling "dormnets" on campus, put up some of the first Web cams, and turned a legacy student information system into a student-driven interactive advising tool.

Beyond Princeton, Howard was for five years the technical anchor for the CREN Tech Talk series of Webcasts. He was a member of Pearson's Online Learning advisory board and the Syllabus conference board, a NACUBO faculty member, and a founding member of Election Watch, a public advocacy group focused on integrity in electronic elections. He authored and presented numerous IT courses and served as an IT consultant for companies and universities. In 1987, his futuristic "Apple PIE" won second place in Apple's national competition to design the Computer of the Year 2000.

Howard was probably best known to his professional colleagues for his quirky and insightful writings and presentations. He published dozens of articles and was a regular contributing author to several computer journals. He was an institution at Educom, CAUSE, EDUCAUSE, and other higher education conferences where he regularly spoke to standing-room-only audiences. Attendees could count on him to highlight important new technology, offer a unique vision of the future, and articulate what he saw with humor and creativity. Iconoclastic and often contrarian, he was able to engage audiences spanning a range of technical backgrounds, making computing approachable and understandable while still challenging even the most technical members of the audience. In many ways, he served as a role model for the creative members of his profession.

EDUCAUSE is making a $3,000 contribution in Howard Strauss's name to a scholarship fund of his family's choice.

This award is sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.