Biography
As you are aware all management positions require well-honed leadership (inspiration) and resource management skills. Planning, budgeting, communication and implementing the vision and strategic plan of the College are critical as well. I have thirty years experience in the information technology field
Much of my career has been in the college and university environment, including recently a contract position at a California Community College District and earlier with Edmonds Community College as their CIO and Vice President for Information Technology and Telecommunications for about 6.5 years. I was Director of IT at a California State University for eight years, and Executive Director for Sterling Software at NASA Ames for eight years with a complete spectrum of responsibilities and over 150 staffing reporting to me. My first love is the higher education environment; and providing state-of-the-art, innovative leadership, strategically planned budget and services and capabilities to students, faculty, and administrators; and providing access to education irrespective of financial, temporal and geographic characteristics of our students. I have a PhD in computational physics, coursework toward an MBA and focused training in leadership and technical areas over the years.
My philosophy in higher education is fundamental. It begins with the concept of using technology to provide access and sound learning environments to all students irrespective of their circumstances, location and time constraints. To do this I work closely with faculty, faculty organizations, shared governance, and administrative staff to meet their needs in order to optimize technologies, training, and services. I have been successful in a Washington State Community College, a California Community College District, and several universities earlier in my career. At Edmonds Community College I was awarded Administrator of the Year by the Student Body Organization. My administrative data base systems experience extends from working with SCT, Datatel and other vendors in the most recent years to the late 70’s where we installed one of the first integrated enterprise-wide (ERP) systems in the California State University System. The concepts have changed little even though the hardware environment has changed dramatically. My experience also includes budgetary, planning, business development, development, systems integration, data-base, operations and research management at NASA Ames in charge of their large-scale networked supercomputer facility that served hundreds of universities across the USA. I have designed, raised funding, worked with CISCO as a partner and installed sophisticated highly reliable telecommunication infrastructures. Choice of hardware and backup services is critical to having near 100% uptime for voice, WAN, LAN and MAN network services. I also have six years teaching experience in physics, mathematics and computer science.
Working within the shared governance environment, the cabinet level and the board of trustees, I have provided leadership and support to the creation and implementation of procedures, policies and regulations. This included working with external governing bodies to ensure complete compliance.
All implementations in my career have begun by enlisting the support and coordination of all district-wide community college members including the board of trustees, foundation, community partners and all students, staff and faculty. Careful analysis and documentation of needs, group-wide consensus on prioritization has been the keystone to the many successful implementations in both administrative and academic technologies. My long career in higher education and at NASA has enabled me to tune my negotiation skills especially in light of tight budgets. These of course include purchases, leases, maintenance agreements and gifts/partnerships to the institution.
I worked closely with the California Community College Chancellors Office, locally with the faculty academic organization, human resources, and pu
