James Hilton to deliver keynote address

Disruption and Strategic Alignment: Information and Communication Technology and the Changing Fabric of Inquiry.

JA-SIG is very pleased to announce that James Hilton, Vice President and CIO, University of Virginia, will be the Monday keynote speaker at JA-SIG's upcoming Dallas conference, "Higher Education Open Source Communities: Working Together"', Sunday through Wednesday, 1-4 March 2009, at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel.

Abstract:

Universities today find themselves confronted by a variety of disruptive forces that challenge traditional models of education and scholarly inquiry. At the heart of that disruption are the information and communication technologies that we deploy. Enabled by those technologies, the nostalgic image of the lone scholar tolling away in isolation is gradually giving way to the reality of teams of globally connected scientists and scholars working collaboratively on massive data sets with shared technologies. Despite their importance to the changing fabric of inquiry, information and communication technologies are typically viewed as “utility” expenses with little thought to their strategic value. In this session we will review some of the disruptive forces at play in higher education and examine information and communication technologies through the lens of strategic alignment.

BIO:

James Hilton is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the University of Virginia where he is responsible for planning and coordinating academic and administrative information technology, voice communications, and network operations on a university-wide basis. He is an advocate of strong collaboration between academic and technology cultures in university environments. He is also a Professor in the Department of Psychology.

Prior to his current appointment, Mr. Hilton was the Associate Provost for Academic Information and Instructional Technology Affairs and a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan in the Institute for Social Research and in the Psychology Department where he served as the Chair of Undergraduate Studies between 1991 and 2000. He is a three-time recipient of the LS&A Excellence in Education award, has been named an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor (1997-2006), and received the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award. He has published extensively in the areas of information technology policy, person perception, stereotypes, and the psychology of suspicion. Mr. Hilton received a B. A. in Psychology from the University of Texas in 1981 and a Ph.D. from the social psychology program at Princeton University in 1985.

James Hilton's keynote address is scheduled for Monday, March 2, 2009, at 8:30am.