Gregory A Jackson to deliver keynote address

Jasig is very pleased to announce that Gregory A. Jackson, Vice President for Policy Analysis at Educause, will be the Monday keynote speaker at Jasig's upcoming San Diego conference, Ten Years of Open Source Innovation, Sunday through Wednesday, March 7-10, 2010, at the Town and Country Resort.

This session is being sponsored by:

Abstract:

We Have Open Source. Now what?

A long, hard, important, and gratifyingly successful struggle has moved many of our important systems and applications from proprietary to communal. Much as a phoenix rises from ashes, however, so do challenges emerge from success. Open source facilitates modification, for example, and that can entail long-term internal support commitments. Most of us have learned to avoid those. As circumstances change, communal applications can require updating and renewal -- but the commune rarely finds that quite as exciting as new stuff. So open source can easily beget demand for support and maintenance. Is the open-source model -- many hands in different places working together -- the right way to meet this demand? What about commercial support providers? Or should we think different?

BIO:

Gregory A. Jackson is Vice President for Policy and Analysis at EDUCAUSE, the principal association for information technology in higher education. He provides leadership and expertise for the association's planning and analysis activities, focusing on trends, issues, and opinions that might affect members, on the external environment that might impact the association (competition, demographic changes, etc.), and on EDUCAUSE's internal environment, including measures of effectiveness, efficiency, and member satisfaction.

Before joining EDUCAUSE in 2009, Jackson served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the University of Chicago, reporting to the President and managing the University's central computing facilities, telephones, communications, network services, administrative computing, academic computing, computer store, and related entities.

From 1991 to 1996 Jackson was Director of Academic Computing for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He oversaw MIT's $6-million budget for instructional and scholarly technology, including the Athena® Computing Environment and other Information Systems facilities serving the teaching and learning needs of MIT faculty and students. From 1989 through 1991 Jackson was Director of Educational Studies and Special Projects in the Provost's Office at MIT. Concurrently with his administrative work at MIT, Jackson was Adjunct Lecturer in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and Lecturer in the Harvard University Extension.

From 1981 through 1990 Jackson was Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University (and from 1979 through 1981 Assistant Professor), teaching in the University's doctoral and management programs in higher education. Jackson served as one of the founding Directors of Harvard University's Educational Technology Center, which studied the use of technology to advance educational practice. He also served as Assistant Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard University, a multidisciplinary research organization then operated by the two universities. Before that he was Assistant Professor of Education at Stanford University from 1977 through 1979.

Jackson has served on the Boards for EDUCAUSE, National LambdaRail, and Internet2. He has served as a member of the EDUCAUSE Recognitions Committee, chaired the Internet2/UCAID National Planning and Policy Council, and is an active participant in theCommon Solutions Group and the Ivy+ and CIC CIO groups. Jackson was Conference Chair for the 1993 EDUCOM conference in Cincinnati. He also has served on the higher-education advisory boards for Dell,Sun, Apple,Microsoft, and Gateway.

Trained as a statistician, Jackson has taught analytic methods for clarifying decision making, including statistical and qualitative research methods; policy analysis and evaluation, especially in higher education; and computer programming. At MIT Jackson also taught an MIT freshman seminar on the scientific integrity of murder mysteries.

Jackson has worked extensively on evaluation and planning methods in higher education; on research, instructional, and library computing in universities; on admissions and college-choice issues including the differential impact of financial aid on minority and majority college applicants; and on the selection and use of comparison groups for colleges. He is co-author of two books --Who Gets Ahead? andFuture Boston -- and of numerous articles, reports, and teaching cases related to his research and administrative work.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Mexico City, Jackson earned his bachelor's degree from MIT and his doctorate from Harvard.