Gillis Moves to Strengthen Information Technology, Library and Research Efforts

CONTACT: Michael Cinelli
PHONE: (713) 831-4794

GILLIS MOVES TO STRENGTHEN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, LIBRARY AND
RESEARCH EFFORTS

Rice president Malcolm Gillis announced
today realignment of several administrative operations to strengthen
the university’s efforts in information technology, the library and
research.

“Several years ago Rice began to take significant steps to
integrate new information technologies into our academic programs,
both in teaching and in research,” Gillis said. “Nevertheless, much
more remains to be done, as we know from our own internal reviews as
well as those done by outside panels evaluating the academic
enterprise at Rice.

“Clearly, the future of top echelon universities such as ours is
tightly bound up in our understanding and effective use of
technology across the entire university.”

Gillis emphasized that the realignment will help assure that
investments in new information technology will be opportune and
fully supportive of the academic enterprise.

“These changes should enable us to extract maximum benefits from
the accelerating pace of innovations in information technology while
vastly reducing the scope for costly mistakes,” he said.

In order to more strongly focus the university’s efforts in
information technology, the library and research, Gillis announced
the following changes:

* Tony Gorry will become vice president of the new Information
Technology Division. The new division consists of two elements. The
first element, Information Technology Services, is comprised of
four existing information systems groups-Computing Services,
Networking Systems, LAN Management and Telecommunications. This area
of the division will provide computing, networking and audio visual
services to the university’s academic and administrative programs.

The second element of the new division is a center that will
concentrate on strategic development of teaching and learning
technologies, including those related to future digitization of
library materials. The center will include two groups-the Electronic
Studio and Information Technology Development. For the near term the
center will focus on the development of research programs in
educational technologies, community outreach, as well as digital
libraries.

* The provost will assume responsibility for the library, for
graduate studies and for the office of sponsored research.

* The university librarian now carries the new title of vice
provost and university librarian. On July 6, this new title was
conferred upon university librarian Beth Shapiro.

* Reporting responsibilities for two small but critical offices
have been modified. Environmental Health and Safety now reports to
Dean Currie, vice president for finance and administration, while
the Office of Technology Transfer now reports to Scott Wise, vice
president for investments and treasurer of the university.

“This reorganization has been under discussion for several
months, and has benefited from contributions from a wide variety of
faculty and staff,” Gillis said. “As a result, we have a truly
remarkable match between talents and responsibilities, as befitting
a university that assigns no upper limit to our educational
endeavor.”

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