Task Force on Community Anchor Network
Economic Models — Archive

Robert (Bob) Bocher
representing the American Library Association
Office for Information Technology Policy (ALA/OITP)

Bob is the Technology Consultant for the Wisconsin State Library and is a Fellow of the ALA/OITP. He has been working in the area of libraries and information technology for over 30 years. In Wisconsin, Bob works closely with the state's networking office on BadgerNet, Wisconsin's statewide broadband network. Over 95% of Wisconsin's public libraries are connected to BadgerNet, which is subsidized by the state, thus making it affordable for even small, rural libraries. Bob is also on the board of WiscNet, the state R&E network. From a national perspective, Bob has assisted the ALA/OITP in a number of areas over the past several years, including:

• Serving on the E-rate Task Force, including a term as Chair
• Serving on the OITP's Advisory Committee
• Serving as the first Chair of OITP's Telecommunications Subcommittee
• Developing OITP's Internet Access Principles

In addition, he has assisted the OITP on several projects and studies including the Public Library Broadband Connectivity Study and filings with the FCC on Net Neutrality, E-rate and the National Broadband Plan.

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John Branson
Director of Educational Research Development and Technology Services, Chester County, Pennsylvania Intermediate Unit, Chester County, Pennsylvania

John Branson has extensive experience in educational theory and practice. John is a respected educator and a recognized leader in the field of educational technology throughout the state of Pennsylvania.

John received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Immaculata College. He received his Master's in Special Education from Temple University and his Bachelor's in Secondary Education - English from West Chester State. During his 33 years as an educator, John has served as a teacher, special education supervisor, coach and senior administrator for the Chester County Intermediate Unit.

John led the building of one of the first high-speed regional networks, Chesconet, which connects 12 school districts, several college campuses, 17 public libraries, county government offices and numerous other non-profit institutions. In addition to overseeing all aspects of the planning and implementation of the project, John also garnered support from the school districts, county government and institutions of higher education.

Recently, John has served as project manager for the development and implementation of PAIUnet, the high-speed fiber optic network connecting over 473 school districts in Pennsylvania, as well as 29 Intermediate Units. In 2009, John won the Gary L. Miller Memorial Distinguished Service Award for his work with PAIUnet.

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Marianne Chitwood
Senior Manager, I-light Indiana

Marianne Chitwood has been working at Indiana University for over 30 years working with all aspects of voice and data networks including, design, installation and project management. Her strong network and project management background provides a stable foundation for leading technical staff and managing complex engineering design, installation and support projects. Her current portfolio includes managing the Global Research Network Operations Center at Indiana University (GlobalNOC) which serves the Research and Education (R&E) community providing a 24x7x365 network operations center serving a variety of regional, national and international networks including Internet2, National Lambda Rail (NLR), I-Light, Indiana GigaPoP, GENI Meta-Operations Center (GMOC), NOAA N-Wave, IPGrid, Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), TransPac3, Open Science Grid (OSG), CIC, Ampath and Connecticut Education Network (CEN).

In addition to her responsibilities for management of the GlobalNOC Operations Center, Marianne also manages Indiana's higher education optical network (I-Light). Marianne served as project manager for the I-Light Expansion project. I-Light was initiated in 1999 with a 5.3M state appropriation by the Indiana General Assembly. In 2005 the State released an additional 12M dollars for the I-Light Expansion project which extended the network to all corners of the state. Today, the I-Light backbone DWDM network is comprised of over 1176 total miles of fiber with 19 connection points throughout the Indiana and currently has 41 members directly connected to the fiber backbone. In 2009 Marianne submitted a Round 1 Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) proposal in partnership with Zayo Bandwidth a regional provider of fiber-based bandwidth infrastructure solutions, to connect 21 Ivy Tech Community campuses to the I-Light backbone. The project was awarded $25.1 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and is currently being constructed.

Marianne currently serves on the StateNet CIO Steering Committee, Internet 2 Program Committee and previously served four years as a member of the ACUTA Board of Directors.

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William (Bill) Clebsch
Associate Vice President for IT Services, Stanford University

As Associate Vice President IT Services for Stanford University, Bill is responsible for Stanford's information technology organization and represents the University in matters related to IT both nationally and internationally.

He is currently leading initiatives such as computational research, networking bay area private universities, and unified communications and collaboration. Bill holds university-wide responsibility for Stanford's data center planning and operations, network and communication services, infrastructure applications, desktop computing, call center services, and help desk support. He is on the Board of Directors for CENIC, and helped develop their original financial models.

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Ray Ford
Chief Information Officer, University of Montana

Ray Ford holds BS and MS degrees in Math and Computer Science from the University of Missouri - Rolla, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He has been a computer science faculty member for over 35 years at Augustana College, University of Iowa, University of Kansas, and The University of Montana. He has authored and co-authored numerous professional papers on topics related to programming environments and distributed computing, and has directed more than 30 MS and PhD theses in related areas. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science at The University of Montana, and since March 2000 has also served as UM's Chief Information and Technology Officer.

As CITO he has been involved in a number of state, regional, and national networking initiatives. He was a founding member of the Northern Tier Networking Consortium and served for 3 years as its Vice-President and President. He is a member of the Board of the Health Information Exchange of Montana, a recipient of a major FCC Rural Health Care Pilot Project award. He is co-leader of a pilot project with the US Forest Service to link selected USFS Research Labs into national R&E networks. And he has also been active within Internet2: member of the Network Policy and Planning Advisory Council, member and chair of the Applications, Middleware, and Services Advisory Council, member of the Internet2 Board of Trustees; member of the 2005/06 Campus Expectations Task Force and a co-author of its final report; and co-leader of the 2007/08 strategic planning effort and co-author of the 2008 Strategic Plan.

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Joanne Hovis
President, Columbia Telecommunications Corp. (CTC)

Joanne Hovis is President of CTC Technology & Energy, a public interest consultancy that provides engineering, strategic, and business planning services to public and non-profit clients engaged in broadband and technology planning. Joanne's area of expertise is local and state government--for nearly 15 years, she has assisted local communities to negotiate or deploy high bandwidth communications for key public anchor institutions, including education, health, libraries, and public safety. In the past year, Joanne has been part of the broadband planning teams for a range of communities, health care entities, and Universities, including the District of Columbia, cities of Seattle and San Francisco, states of Maryland and Colorado, Methodist Hospitals of Indiana, University of Illinois, and Case-Western Reserve University.

Joanne specializes in fiber optic strategic and business planning, and works to represent the interests of public and non-profit networks in Washington. She is the incoming President of NATOA, the national association that promotes local government and community interests in communications. She also serves on the Board of the Benton Foundation. Joanne holds a JD from the University of Chicago Law School and a BA from the University of Wisconsin.

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Dave Kirby
Health Care Informatics Consultant

Mr. Kirby has spent over thirty years in various roles involving innovation in the use of information technology in healthcare. He has held positions of responsibility in corporate information systems. At Duke University Health System, his roles included: Information Security Officer, TeleHealth Director, and Director of the Center for Information Technology Innovation. He works with many state, national, and international organizations to envision, prototype, and develop various forms of innovative information technology. He has been involved in providing advanced networks for health applications for over 15 years including leading the technical aspects of the first North Carolina Telemedicine Network and leading the development of the NC Telehealth Network (one of the FCC's Rural Health Care Pilot Program projects).

Mr. Kirby provides consulting in information security and privacy and emerging information technology as part of Kirby Information Management Consulting, LLC, and is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Informatics, Department of Community and Family Medicine, Duke University Medical Center.

He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from West Virginia University and a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds the HIMSS/AHIMA CHPS certificate and the CISSP certificate from ISC2.

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George Laskaris
Chief Executive Officer, NJEDge

George Laskaris is the founding Chief Executive Officer of New Jersey's State Research and Education Network (NJEDge.Net, Inc.), a non-profit consortium developed as part of the state's plan for higher education. George organized New Jersey's Internet2 SEGP program and has been a strong advocate and promoter of New Jersey's K-20 initiative, building systemic relationships between the higher education and K-12 communities. He is currently a collaborator on an Institute for Museum and Library Studies national leadership grant to build a statewide academic video-on-demand content repository built upon a statewide federated identity management infrastructure. George recently served as Chair of the national organization for state and regional networks called StateNets for a two year term.

Prior to joining NJEDge, George had over 16 years of IT experience at Rutgers University culminating in the position of Associate Provost for Information Technology where he was responsible for providing leadership in the strategic and tactical planning for programs that engage the faculty in the process of integrating information technology resources in instructional and research initiatives. He was previously the Executive Director of Computing and Information Technology at Rutgers, where he was responsible for providing University-wide academic and administrative computing and networking services.

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Michael Roberts
Task Force Chair

Michael Roberts is President of the Darwin Group, Inc., an Internet policy consulting firm. He has previously served in many executive positions in network technology, including President and CEO of ICANN, first director of Internet2, and Vice-President, Networking at Educom. He was a founding Trustee of the Internet Society. Earlier in his career, he was at Stanford University, where he held executive responsibilities in Stanford's computing and networking organization and was director of the university's telecommunications modernization project which provided a comprehensive campuswide fiber optic based network and digital voice facilities. He currently serves as a member of ICANN's Nominating Committee, and as a member of the Governance and Nominating Committee of Internet2.

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Tom Rolfes
Education Information Technology Manager, Nebraska Information
Technology Commission/Network Nebraska

Tom Rolfes is the Education I.T. Manager for the State Office of the CIO and Nebraska Information Technology Commission where he has worked on statewide policy, funding and infrastructure issues for K-20 education since 1998. Mr. Rolfes, a former secondary science and technology teacher, has been the project coordinator for the Network Nebraska statewide network project since 2006. Mr. Rolfes helped devise the original membership model, billing structure, and E-rate strategies for the Network Nebraska cost recovery system.

Network Nebraska currently has 213 K-12 entities and 15 higher education entities as voluntary members of this self-funded network serving over 300,000 students. Network Nebraska transported over 350 high school and dual credit videoconferencing courses during 2009-10, and also serves over 3 Gbps of Internet statewide.

In his "spare time", he serves as the Executive Liaison for the Nebraska Education Technology Association and a contributing member of the CoSN Emerging Technology Committee. Tom has Masters degrees in Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Administration and is currently working on a doctorate in Leadership Studies.

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Denise Atkinson-Shorey
Chief Information Officer, Eagle-Net (Colorado)

Ms. Atkinson-Shorey recently accepted the position of President/Chief Information Officer for Eagle-Net, the statewide broadband cost-sharing consortium for K-12 and other non-profits in Colorado. In September of 2010 CBOCES/EAGLE-Net was awarded an NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) Grant for more $100 Million. The grant is designed to deliver strategic Middle Mile Broadband to Community Anchor Institutions throughout Colorado. In 2009, Eagle-Net became the K-12 gateway for Internet2 and led the successful effort to make Colorado the 39th State to join Internet2 as a Sponsored Educational Group Participant (SEGP) along with the Front Range GigaPop (FRGP). Ms. Atkinson-Shorey serves on the Internet2 K20 Initiative Advisory Committee representing Colorado.

In 2008 Ms. Atkinson-Shorey was elected to the Board of Directors for Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) the national School District CIO/CTO organization and works with them on national and international school and technology issues. She joined Centennial BOCES in 2006 as the Chief Technology Officer and led the restructuring of the Technology Services Department of 20 plus staff members serving 15 school districts to support existing and new services. In 2008, she received the "CALET's Technology Leader of the Year Award" from her peers for her work leading the statewide Internet2 K-12 Gateway. Denise was formerly the Acting Director of Technology at Adams Twelve Five Star Schools for six years specializing in integration of technologies to learning methodologies, management of mil and bond technology projects, and development of educational technology/information literacy standards. Prior to Adams 12, Denise was the Information Systems Specialist for Jefferson County Public Schools for seven years, Information Technology Consultant for IBM for eight years, and Library Media Specialist for Jefferson County Public Schools for twelve years.

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