Biography

Donald Lee Steward, Ed. D.

Dr. Steward served seven years in the U.S. Navy as nuclear power plant instructor at Knowles Atomic Power Laboratory and on both diesel and nuclear submarines in the engineering department. Duties included supervision of some shipyard testing and preparation of training materials for Nuclear Safeguard Examinations. He held a secret clearance for the duration of his enlistments. He also spent five years in the U.S. Coast Guard reserve achieving the rank of Chief and was designated as an Engineering Officer on high endurance cutters and served as base commander on his duty weekends in Islamorada, Fl.

He worked for Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph in Miami, Florida from 1969 until 1981. Positions he held were Installer-Repairman for residential and business customers, Special Services Installer-Repairman and Outside Plant Engineer. He worked with the City of Miami and Dade County officials in Planning and Zoning Departments to coordinate relocation of telephone facilities for public works projects.

In 1976, Dr. Steward earned a B. S. with High Honors from Florida International University receiving a degree in Engineering Technology majoring in Management Techniques and Industrial Operations. He is a member of Phi Theta Kappa Junior College National Honor Society.

During 1981, Dr. Steward transferred to C&P Telephone in Northern Virginia. Shortly after arriving a new position was created and he was nominated. His duties involved creating an entirely new infrastructure to manage a massive $23 Million outside plant cable rehabilitation effort covering all 27 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. Dr. Steward developed most of these policies specifically for this assignment. Dr. Steward gave many presentations to members of upper and middle management concerning his function, an overview of the Bell System Integrated Methods System, and suggested changes in company procedures for streamlining the implementation of IMS throughout the four companies that makeup the C&P Telephone Companies. He was directly responsible for origination of many policies concerning outside plant rehabilitation effort in the four C&P Companies.

After the AT&T consent decree was announced Dr. Steward was transferred to C&P Headquarters staff in the Installation Methods and Technical Support group to work on divestiture implementation. He was assigned the personnel responsibilities for all of the Distribution Service employees (11,300 management and craft persons). These responsibilities were: determining employee allocation ratio's; 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.

On October 16, 1983, Dr. Steward was reassigned to the newly formed Bell Atlantic-Management Services Incorporated in the Planning and New Technology District of the Operations Department. His initial involvement was with the product selection group for three months where he worked on a computer network study and then moved into the New Ventures Analysis section after divestiture.

Dr. Steward's major responsibility was product-line planning for the Premises Services (inside wire and cable) line of business. His 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 he then used to project long term revenues and expenses in each of the seven regulatory jurisdictions in Bell Atlantic. Additionally, he 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 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 individual Bell Atlantic Operating Company Business Planning Council meetings.

Other projects Dr. Steward worked on at Bell Atlantic include the preparation of a bid response for the U.S. General Services Administration telephone equipment sale with warranty R.F.P (request for proposal); a feasibility study on installation of a programmable dialer as an agent of MCI; rewriting of policy concerning the leasing of wire facilities on military bases; and writing a proposal on integration of service quality measurement with marketing strategy, cost management, and capital deployment.

Dr. Steward received a Master of Science in Special Studies degree concentrating on Telecommunications Policy from George Washington University in 1984. This degree program focused on regulatory policy at a national and international level, and on the technical and regulatory differences of emerging communications technologies.

In April of 1985, he resigned from Bell Atlantic to supervise the selection, installation and operation of a consolidated voice and data communications system for George Washington University. Some of his 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 George Washington University, Dr. Steward managed the operation of an extensive communications network consisting of four Private Branch Exchange switches and two Centrex systems with a total of more than 12,500 lines, an FDDI backbone network connecting computer resources to 17,500 on and off-campus student and 9,000 faculty or staff data users, and a 45 channel cable television system connecting more than 96 buildings on 19 city blocks. Dr. Steward established an auxiliary enterprise to compete with local vendors for university-medical center wiring projects reducing campus-wiring expense by 45%. Contracts Dr. Steward negotiated and elimination of certain recurring expenses saved GWU over $8 million over the life of the communications system. He is a Registered Communications Distribution Designer.

During 1998-99, Dr. Steward was Chief Information Officer at State University of New York College at Fredonia. At SUC-Fredonia, Dr. Steward managed the migration from home-built file servers to a commercial quality rack-mounted server environment using Compaq for NT services and Digital Alpha servers for Unix-based student E-mail. The network infrastructure was redesigned from a flat network using low quality bridging hubs to a fully sub-netted Ethernet environment providing 100-MBPS switched Ethernet to each faculty and staff member. A redundant gigabit Ethernet backbone connects Cisco 5505 layer-3 switches to Cisco 1900 and 2900 series switched Ethernet hubs in every building. Under Dr. Steward’s leadership Residence Halls have 10-MBPS switched Ethernet for each student with a separate T-1 (1.54-MBPS) connection to the Internet for residence hall use. Dr. Steward oversaw a $600,000 renovation of 13 computer labs and the construction of six smart classrooms.

As Vice Chancellor for Information Technology / Regional CIO at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana, Dr. Steward replaced all academic and administrative fileservers, and over 500 faculty and staff computers placing them on life-cycle funding to meet Y2K requirements. Converted 26 traditional classrooms to multi-media classrooms, renovated 10 computer classrooms, added two large student technology centers, and placed all student computing resources on life-cycle funding. Dr. Steward oversaw the redesign of the data communications infrastructure to support 100-MBPS switched Ethernet to the desktop connected through a Gigabit Ethernet campus network capable of upgrading to 10 Gigabit speed. He participated as an investigator on an NSF/IBM high performance computing grant. Dr. Steward served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Physical Facilities January 2000 through November 2000, and again from October 2002 to July 2004, assuming management responsibilities for University Police and Environmental Health and Safety. Dr. Steward is a graduate of the Indiana University Financial Officers Development Series. Dr. Steward managed 70 full-time professional or bi-weekly staff and 17 part-time hourly staff.

Dr. Steward holds an Ed. D. in Higher Education Administration with a concentration in technology from The George Washington University. Academic interests have included 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, preparing grant proposals for academic computing equipment, working to expand the instructional CATV services to additional classrooms and student dormitories. Dr. Steward served on the Telecommunications Advisory Board for academic degree courses at Capitol College. As President of the Consortium of College and University Telecommunications Managers, he testified at a Public Service Commission hearing on alternative carriers for local access. As a member of BICSI (Building Industry Consulting Service International), he has evaluated course content and instructor ability of co-sponsored technical seminars.