2013 Community Leadership Award Recipient

Bill Hogue

For advancing best practices in IT professional development; mentoring future leaders; developments in academic computing and networking, strategic planning, information security, and technology operations; and extraordinary leadership to the IT higher education community.

Vice President for Information Technology and CIO
University of South Carolina

Bill Hogue is CIO for the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and for the University of South Carolina System, consisting of eight institutions. He provides leadership for students, faculty, staff, and executives in enterprise IT and distributed learning services for the entire system, as well as a full range of media services, residence hall, classroom, desktop, and cyberinfrastructure support on the flagship campus.

Bill has had an enormous impact in defining academic computing environments from his early career in higher education IT working on Project ATHENA while he was at MIT. This project had an impact on desktop and distributed computing that is still felt today in many of the services that support computing in higher education.

Bill has been a champion and leader for IT infrastructure improvements in South Carolina that have impacted education and research at all levels of the state and at a number of different institutions. A key initiative was South Carolina LightRail, a public/private partnership to provide a broadband, high-speed optical network that will extend throughout the state and link to regional and national networks such as Southern Light Rail (SLR), National LambdaRail (NLR), Internet2, and SURAgrid and TeraGrid. He has been instrumental in establishing enhanced classrooms to facilitate joint teaching and research in STEM disciplines among historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and research universities in South Carolina.

Bill led the establishment of the University of South Carolina’s Center for Teaching Excellence. He initiated USC’s first research computing infrastructure support function to support nearly $240 million in annual grant and contract faculty research.

At Vanderbilt, Bill was charged with modernizing the Computer Center, primarily focused on providing instructional and research computing support, running the campus network, and operating a thriving computer store. During his time in the University of Wisconsin System, he was the first CIO (assistant chancellor for information and technology management) for UW Eau Claire, a liberal arts institution of some 10,000 students. While he was at MIT, his teams streamlined customer support across the university. Bill co-founded MIT’s IT Partners, a group that continues to thrive 15 years later as a vehicle for building communities of practice across organizational lines.

Bill has participated in a number of online and podcasting activities with notables such as Jim Collins. Bill presents and writes articles and book chapters about both new and emerging topics as well as topics that have enduring importance to higher education and information technology leaders and practitioners.

He is viewed as a reliable and respected expert resource by the South Carolina state government. He is called upon to provide private and public briefings to policymakers and community opinion leaders throughout the state. Most recently he has been in demand to engage the topic of IT security, privacy, compliance, and data breaches. He has been an active speaker, writer, and facilitator at multiple conferences and events.

Bill’s impact is evident by the lives he has touched and the leaders he has developed in his many mentorship and teaching roles over the years. Much of his service through EDUCAUSE has centered on mentoring and professional development activities. Bill has interacted with many future leaders during his tenure, and through them, those they lead or manage. Bill’s mentorship and leadership have had an exponential impact by creating more prepared, passionate, and engaged IT leaders who are putting into practice what he has modeled. He is in his fourth year as a faculty member for the EDUCAUSE Management Program, the last two as faculty director. He has been a member of the Hawkins Leadership Roundtable since 2010 and will serve as its co-director through 2015.

This EDUCAUSE Award is sponsored by Moran Technology Consulting, Silver Partner.