Management of Organizational Change:
Start-up Company Planning for Bell Atlantic-MSI:
Implementation of a Major Information Technology Initiative:
Demonstrated Financial Ability:
Develop and Implement an Information Technology Education and Communications Plan:
Establish Standards:
Managing Network Growth and Design:
Operation of a CATV System:
Implementation of Wireless Communication:
Staff Training:
Professional and Personal Attributes:
(Indiana University Northwest)
At Indiana University, I was the first Vice Chancellor for Information Services and Chief Information Officer on the Northwest campus. I jointly reported to the IU System Vice President for Information Services and CIO and the Northwest campus Chancellor. In my role, I led the consolidation of an academic support unit (Instructional Media Center) and Computer Services which included the traditional roles of administrative support, microcomputer support, networking, and telecommunications. A major accomplishment during the first six-months was managing the replacement of nearly all Windows-based microcomputers and file servers to meet Year 2000 remediation requirements.
When I took over as interim Vice Chancellor for Physical Facilities, I converted the old half-court basketball gymnasium into a dedicated 100 station student computing lab. Prior to this lab, students were forced to find open computer classrooms to use as short-term labs between scheduled classes.
I led a campus-wide support services prioritization process that ranked all non-academic services in order to reallocate funding toward priority services. This effort took six months and I was able to prepare my division for a proposed change to Activities Based Costing or Balanced Scorecard.
(State University of New York at Fredonia)
I was the first Chief Information Officer at SUNY Fredonia. I reported to the Vice President for Academic Affairs. My immediate charge was to integrate centralized administrative computing resources, data administration, personal computer support, the telecommunications network, and academic information technology (instructional media, television studio, CATV system, student computer labs, distance learning, and smart classrooms) into one department. I found duplicated e-mail services, personal computer support, a defective network, and a serious case of finger pointing between IT departments and administrators on campus. The faculty wanted to experiment with a course management system.
I met with my staff individually and in groups, talked to administrators and faculty members and was able to develop a plan with my managers to solve e-mail, networking problems and faculty desires by working simultaneously on all programs in cross unit teams. This plan created the unity the division needed to earn back respect from the campus by focusing on identifying the root cause of problems and repairing or replacing equipment without looking for someone to blame. Existing e-mail systems were scrapped and replaced with a single campus-wide e-mail system (3- Digital Alpha file servers) with enough capacity and redundancy to provide stability. New Compaq file servers were purchased to provide administrative, network, modem pooling, and TopClass course management support. Data integrity and reliable backup were an essential component of the rehabilitation effort.
After stabilizing the information technology environment during my first year, a decision was made to improve the student computing environment by converting all residence halls from modem access to an ethernet port for each resident. IT began network rewiring of existing building on campus and the wiring of 2500 network connections in the residence halls. At the same time, the network was upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet with redundant paths.
The administration decided it would be more efficient to move from the Unisys mainframe and COBOL base hand-code software applications to an enterprise resource management system (BANNER) from SCT. I purchased all the equipment and negotiated with SUNY Buffalo to purchase an unused Banner license from them for half price.
(George Washington University)
At The George Washington University, I integrated and managed the functions of voice, video, and data communications installation and maintenance into one technical organization. An AT&T contract put in place a 10,000 line PBX system for the University, a 200 line PBX for a tennant, a packet switched data system (ISN) and CATVsystem with associated underground conduits and cabling. My initial role was technical supervision over the installation. This role soon grew to managing a group of technicians that were hired to perform moves, additions, and changes to the PBX and ISN systems.
When the University Computer Center was outsourced to SCT, I took over management of the University data communications technicians. Shortly after the data communications technicians were transferred, the University embarked upon an ambitious plan to create a high-speed backbone to connect the growing number of isolated local area networks (LAN's). I hired an Information Systems Engineer to act as network manager. My technical staff began installing and managing LAN's because of the poor quality of vendor installations some schools and departments experienced. This initiative lead resulted in the promotion of two technicians to systems administrators. The University then began a series of rehabilitation projects taking a significant amount of time and energy planning the communications infrastructure. I created a Project Manager position staffed by an Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD). This person worked directly with architects to estimate wiring costs, purchase materials, and oversee installation of the communications infrastructure. When the network was up and functioning well, I created a consolidated information systems help desk combining the PBX Systems Administration staff and Senior Data Communications administrators. I hired an Assistant Director to oversee the help desk.
(Bell System)
Shortly after transferring to C&P Telephone in Northern Virginia, a new position (Facilities Analysis Planner) was created and I was nominated. Duties involved creating an entirely new infrastructure to manage a massive outside plant cable rehabilitation effort for 23 Wire Centers. Major tasks accomplished were: the initial setting up of filing systems, setting specific objective goals for the quantity and quality of worked produced, training for both management (first through fourth level) and non-management personnel in policies required form the engineering and maintenance groups to support activities of the new group. I developed many policies concerning outside plant rehabilitation effort in the four C&P Companies.
I was involved in the largest reorganization of a technology company in the United States - the AT&T divestiture. After the AT&T consent decree was announced, I transferred to C&P Headquarters staff in the Installation Methods and Technical Support group to work on divestiture implementation. I was assigned the personnel responsibilities for all of the Distribution Service employees (11,300 management and craft persons). These responsibilities were: determining employee allocation ratios; information packet preparation and distribution; management and craft preference survey form composition, distribution, and results compilation; and Human Resources Data Base administration which included the initial assignment of employees transferred to AT&T, Bell Atlantic or the parent company. I assigned Distribution Services personnel to final positions with AT&T, Bell Atlantic or Bell Atlantic-Management Services Incorporated.
October 1983, I was reassigned to the newly formed Bell Atlantic-Management Services Incorporated. My major responsibility in the New Ventures Analysis section was product-line planning for the newly created Premises Services (inside wire and cable) line of business. Product-line duties involved forecasting trends in consumer migration to other vendors, consumer acceptance of wiring maintenance insurance plans, and appropriate force level requirements. These forecasts were then used to project long-term revenues, expenses, and manpower requirements in each of the seven regulatory jurisdictions in Bell Atlantic. Additionally, I created and maintained a tracking system to monitor the erosion of market share as expressed in revenue actual dollars compared to projected revenues. First year projected revenue was within $5 million of the $105 million actual revenue.
Ongoing policy responsibilities in support of this product line included: analysis of actions taken by the FCC, Congress, and state public utility commissions on the product line offerings; cooperation with the regulatory and legal departments in responding to pending legislation at federal and state levels; formulating new policy drafts for upper management review; and participation in Bell Atlantic Operating Company Business Planning Council meetings.
In April of 1985, I resigned from Bell Atlantic to supervise the selection, installation and operation of a consolidated voice, data and video communications system for George Washington University. My duties during the telecommunications system implementation included: responsibility for all technical matters pertaining to negotiating the telecommunications contract; contract review; negotiating the exact configuration of the outside cable and conduit locations; providing equipment room design assistance to the university architect; supervising the installation and testing of the telephone switch, academic data network, and the cable television systems; design and implement a high speed fiber optic based point to point data network for computer to computer data transfer; insure the technical suitability for use of all equipment connected to the telecommunications system; and provide a independent project management timetable with CPM and PERT charts generated by a software program for comparison with the switch contractor's schedule.
At Indiana University Northwest, I was responsible for Information Technology budgets for Instructional Media Center, Microcomputer Support and Technical services of $1.2 million. As fiduciary for the Student Technology Fee collected from students, I managed revenues and expenses of about $700,000 annually with a reserve over $600,000. In addition to my regular fiscal responsibilities, twice on an interim basis I managed the budgets of Physical Facilities for building maintenance, operations, grounds, custodial services, energy management and utilities that total $4.3 million. And Police and Environmental Safety and Health budgets of $696,000. I have consistently improved and expanded services for all the departments I managed while staying within frozen budgets.
I was able to expand the 3-year life-cycle funding of faculty and staff computer to include the Student Technology Centers ( open student computer labs), all computer classrooms and the cyber cafe. I developed a reserve fund that has modernized 26 traditional classrooms converting them into multi-media classrooms. I created a Student Technology Fee grant competition to provide technology equipment and software to departments and student groups where no other source of funding existed. Two of these grants provided start-up funding for the School of Education and School of Nursing to improve student pass rates on professional licensure examinations.
At George Washington University, I was responsible for a $1.28 million reduction of capital investment associated with a $10 million communications project for 80 buildings covering 19 city blocks. I eliminated recurring expenses averaging $56,600 annually with savings projected to total $3.54 million over the 40 year lifetime. Negotiated and signed maintenance contracts representing a reduction of 58% in AT&T contract expense. Saving $1.96 million over ten years. Established and managed an auxiliary enterprise to compete with local wiring vendors for University/Medical Center wiring projects. Reducing campus-wiring expense for major renovations by 45% saving $784,200 over ten years.
At Bell Atlantic-MSI, I developed five-year Premises Services forecast for revenue, expense, and personnel management for each of the seven regulatory jurisdictions in Bell Atlantic. Created a tracking system to monitor market share erosion. First year revenue of $105 million was within 5% of estimate. Developed incremental costs, labor hours, and personnel staffing figures for the G.S.A. telecommunications maintenance bid at divestiture. Proposed and evaluated new ventures for profit potential. One of my New Venture proposals had a revenue potential of $12 million represented 60% of the division's annual revenue objective.
At C&P Telephone of Virginia, I implemented a complex structured cabling rehabilitation program stressing econometric techniques to select and rank order areas in 23 wire centers. Set specific objective goals for quality and quantity of rehabilitation work. Supervised creation of detailed rehabilitation construction plans. The rehabilitation budget was over $20 million.
To further engagement with and understanding of issues in information technology, I proposed and implemented a plan where the Office of Information Technology use formal events, academic department meetings, and a series of publications to engage faculty and administrative leadership, and to some extent the wider internal IUN community (including students) in understanding significant issues facing information technology and higher education, and translating the implications of those issues into the context of IUN. Of particular note is TechBuzz the on-line and print newsletter. This newsletter incorporates breaking news, feeds from national television stations, weather, and streaming video and audio events. TechBuzz received up to 45,000 hits each month. Details of the engagement plan are listed below.
Formal events hosted by the Office of Information Technology include:
Academic department meetings held on a regular basis – The Vice Chancellor for Information Technology along with selected IT staff members will begin a program of rotating monthly visits (one per month) to major academic units on campus, beginning with a select group of academic units where there is already some interest in technology use that can be built on. With prior discussions with Deans/Department Chairs, topics can be determined that would have the greatest chance of success. These sessions would be short (15 –30 minutes) highlighting useful features of Oncourse or other support software (IUIE, SIS, Online Library Reserves, Online Library Databases, wireless computing, massive data storage, scanning, faxing on the network, etc.) The purpose of these meetings is to engage the faculty in thinking about software features.
Developed communication publications from the Office of Information Technology including:
The GW University and Medical Center experienced a rash of poor quality cabling installations performed by outside communications wiring contractors at the behest of individual departments without Telecommunications knowledge. Telecommunications managers and technicians spent substantial time reworking cabling systems to meet certification requirements at sizable expense to the University.
During 1996, I wrote a comprehensive set of construction planning guides for use by University personnel and outside wiring contractors. The requirements in the guide were based upon current TIA/EIA communications wiring standards and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for CATV signal quality.
Specifications I wrote addressed the design, placement, and use of conduit between buildings; intrabuilding communications infrastructure requirements; specific data communications requirements; and technical specifications for UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cabling systems, optic fiber cabling systems, and cable television wiring and alignment. These documents are the first detailed specifications written for communications infrastructure to include a section on cable television. The Construction Planning Guide documents were converted into HTML code and placed on my GWU home page. Publication of these documents assisted Facilities and Telecommunications in saving the University and Medical center a considerable amount of time and money previously spent reworking shoddy communications wiring installations.
I managed several technology projects over the years with capital costs in the millions of dollars. Some projects with C&P Telephone and Bell Atlantic were regional in scope affecting thousands of technicians and millions of subscribers. These projects were more easily classified as infrastructure or line-of-business rather than "Information Technology." At IUN, I oversaw the installation of a network capable of 10 Gbps throughput with 100 Mbps to every desktop. At SUNY Fredonia, the network grew to 1Gbps backbone with redundant links and 10Mbpsto each desktop. However, the most satisfying information technology network project I started and saw through to completion was the use of multi-mode optic fiber, I placed in the ground during the 1985 AT&T PBX contract, to construct the first FDDI backbone network in the Washington, D.C. area and then be reused for an ATM backbone.
This project was particularly satisfying because I predicted a network technology of this type would arise and included additional optic fiber for the network in contract negotiations with AT&T. Back in 1985, optic fiber was just beginning to be included in telecommunications projects. There was no mention of FDDI as an important networking technology in the general trade press until 1988. I convinced the George Washington Information Network Task Force to adopt FDDI as a backbone method, restrict protocols to TCP/IP with limited use of grand fathered IPX LAN's, and use translation rather than encapsulation. My goal was to develop an information infrastructure where multiple vendor FDDI products would coexist on a common network. This approach would not tie GW to a particular vendor and allow GW to compete for technology grants to expand the FDDI network into research buildings. I selected HP Openview as the network management package working on an Apollo workstation. An HP network analyzer was also purchased to aid in troubleshooting. I created a position of Information System Engineer and hired an applicant familiar with HP products.
The backbone network reached nine dual-attached FDDI routers, seven Cisco AGS +, one Wellfleet, and a Network Systems Hyperchannel with bus and tag SNA connections to both IBM mainframe computers. I selected US Robotics Total Control modem chassis, wired to the ISN packet switch or the Xyplex Maxserver 9000 using terminal server interfaces for ingress and a 3Com Asynchronous Communications Server for egress to the ISN packet switch network or out modem pool. All of this first-class equipment functioned without major interruption for over five years.
I convinced the Medical Center administration to connect their buildings using four Cisco AGS+ routers and then connect the Medical Center network to the University network. The Medical Center connected to the University through a 10 Megabit Ethernet link between two routers. This link provides the security and special filtering for Medical Center clinical systems and isolated the University FDDI backbone from the Medical Center FDDI backbone. The medical center managed their four routers using a consultant. The University managed their FDDI network.
In 1996, the FDDI network was collapsed into four routers located in each of the telephone switch rooms. This networking design used Cisco 7513 routers connected by an FDDI ring with Cisco catalyst 5000 Ethernet switches. The Ethernet switches connected routers using 100-megabit optic fiber links. The Ethernet switches provide 10-megabit Ethernet service to existing building LAN's. The School of Engineering and the main computer room each have their own catalyst 5000 switch with autosensing 10/100-megabit Ethernet ports connected through a 100-megabit optic fiber link to a router. As bandwidth demands increase and ATM technology matures, an ATM interface will be placed in the routers and primary traffic will be migrated to ATM, keeping the FDDI network as backup.
At George Washington University, I was assigned management of the cable television head end and distribution system to staunch a rift between the School of Communications (with a promised production facility) and GW Television who had a full production facility with two studios. The CATV system is hybrid system consisting of a convention 40 channel Blonder-Tongue head end capable of carrying all the grade A and B contour off-the-air channels and modulators that integrate signal sources delivered by Grass Valley analog optic fiber equipment. Coaxial cable and audio pair feed 12 additional signals from GW Television production studios. GW Television provides satellite and microwave feeds to the CATV system. There is a dedicated optic fiber to each building on campus for originating a CATV signal using the Grass Valley equipment.
My role was to keep the system working and expand service beyond the 200 initial distribution locations. I contracted the annual system alignment and emergency maintenance to a competent and experienced CATV installation firm. The system, as installed by AT&T, did not meet stringent F.C.C. radio frequency emission standards. I re-engineering the installation and replacing the RG-59 riser cabling with .500" hard coaxial cable and industrial strength CATV amplifiers, splitters, other components.
Politics complicated expansion of the system. There was legal uncertainty as to whether or not this system falls under the legal definition of a CATV common carrier clause of F.C.C. regulations or is required to be a franchised operator under District of Columbia CATV board. The cable system does cross a public road and is in the right-of-way that lends credence to regulation as a common carrier of CATV signals and requires franchise payment to the DC government. My position was the CATV system serves only GW buildings, is not-for-profit educational and entertainment use only, and GW should offer a scholarship or two in lieu of franchise payment to the District government.
At IUN, students began requesting wireless access for laptops in 2003. I had a site survey performed to determine how best to serve students in areas where students normally gather on campus including the Library. After the survey was completed Cisco was chosen as a vendor. My network manager installed a wireless VPN and several WAP's with a snoop-proof feature that is unique across the IU campuses. Current IU students, faculty and staff from all campuses that have applied for an IU e-mail account can sign in wirelessly. Visitors to the network can view the IUN home page only. The service targeted to meet students needs was funded entirely from Student Technology Fees
In 1996 GW installed a Wired Access Point (WAP) for Ricochet wireless modem service provided by Metricom, Inc. This was the same wireless modem system used at the University of California - Berkeley. My involvement included site surveys for equipment, locating equipment space, coordinating installation with the Facilities Department, provide interconnecting T-1 and Ethernet access, and providing general information about the local service area. This service connected into the local Power Company (PEPCO), eventually serving the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.
At George Washington University, when I assumed responsibility over the data communications technicians after the University Computer Center was outsourced to SCT, I discovered the data technicians lacked the technical background necessary to succeed in their positions. I decided to integrate the two data communications technicians into my existing telecommunications technician force. I began cross-training all technicians using in-house training on a variety of data communications and telecommunications topics taught by the technicians themselves, and used limited formal training. My goal was to bring the knowledge level of all technicians to a point where any technician could perform voice, data, and video MACs and repairs with confidence. This training was a success.
I am a results oriented manager who knows who my clients are and what their technology needs now and in the future might include. I pride myself on negotiating a good deal for my employer with vendors and providing timely service to my clients. I always look out for the University's interest in every decision I make by including students, faculty, and staff in major decisions. I believe in providing my staff with the proper tools and training enabling them to reach their potential in providing efficient service. I work hard to have my staff support and participate in the education, research and outreach missions of the University.
Current academic interests include using three-dimensional (3D) display technology to teach what I call "Key Concepts" in difficult to understand subject matter, looking for ways to improve retention of "at-risk" students, and helping faculty leverage technology in the classroom to improve student learning.
Past academic interests include teaching a graduate level course on managing computer applications for the School of Education and Human Development, teaching a building wiring course for Continuing Engineering Education, teaching data communications for the U.S. D.A. Graduate School, preparing grant proposals for academic computing equipment and student access to computing facilities, and working to expand the instructional CATV services and Ethernet speed data communications to additional classrooms and student dormitories.
At IUN I moved into an interim administrative and financial role twice with Physical Plant and University Police. I was trained as an Indiana University Financial Officer through participation in the Financial Officer Development Series. This is more closely aligned with my educational background in higher education administration and it is personally gratifying that my administrative abilities are being expanded outside Information Technology.
I enjoy sailing, fishing, tinkering with computers and electronics, and organic gardening. Until recently, my wife and I like to travel outside the country to Europe or Asia each year to enlarge our understanding and appreciation of other cultures.
My public service commitments have included service on the Telecommunications Advisory Board for academic degree courses at Capitol College, on the Governing Board of GW Hillel, and on the board of the Chautauqua County Chapter of the Literacy Volunteers of America.