Stunden honored for IT leadership

Ann Stunden, director of the Division of Information Technology (DOIT) at UW–Madison, has received a 2005 award for information technology leadership from the national organization EDUCAUSE.

The organization honored Stunden for “strong and ground-breaking leadership in the information technology business since her first IT management position 37 years ago.” For the past 15 years, she has been providing that leadership to higher education IT organizations, serving at the University of Rochester, Northwestern University, and Cornell University before taking on her current role at UW–Madison in 2000.

A co-founder and executive director of the Northern Tier Network Consortium, she has also been instrumental in making UW–Madison expertise and resources available to other system campuses through supporting the creation of shared facilities such as Learn@UW, a UW System-wide utility providing course management software for 26 campuses. Another system-wide service pioneered by DOIT is called IAA, a central identification, authentication and authorization program.

Throughout her career, according to the award selection committee, “Stunden has aimed to strike the right balance between organizational goals and individual concerns, innovative technologies and ease of use, with a focus on the community and how best to serve the client.”

The EDUCAUSE annual awards recognize exemplary achievement in six areas of higher education information technology: leadership, professional writing, administrative information systems, information technology solutions, networking, and teaching and learning. Winners of the 2005 awards will be honored before more than 6,000 of their higher education colleagues at the association’s annual conference in October 2005 in Orlando.

EDUCAUSE is making a $2,000 contribution in Stunden’s name to the Information Technology Academy (ITA) sponsored by the DOIT. ITA is a four-year pre-college technology access and training program for talented students of color and economically disadvantaged students attending Madison public schools.

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 1,900 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 200 corporations, with 15,000 active members. EDUCAUSE has offices in Boulder, Colorado, and Washington, D.C.