AUSTIN, Texas—Daniel A. Updegrove, vice president for information technology at The University of Texas at Austin since 2001, will leave his position to focus on advanced network services for research and education.
Updegrove, who also is an adjunct professor in the university’s School of Information, has agreed to remain in his position until the university completes a national search to find his successor.
“Dan Updegrove has put the university and the state at the center of national, next-generation networking,” said William Powers Jr., president of The University of Texas at Austin.
Updegrove was a driving force behind creation of LEARN, the Lonestar Education And Research Network, serving as board chair for two years, during which the organization received a $7.3 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund. He is vice chair of National LambdaRail, an $80 million non-profit enterprise that operates a state-of-the-art coast-to-coast research network that connects to LEARN in Houston. He is also a member of the Network Planning and Policy Advisory Council of Internet2.
Powers credited Updegrove with leading the university’s response to major data security breaches, one in 2003 and the other earlier this year in the McCombs School of Business. He noted those responding to the security incidents benefited from Updegrove’s knowledge, experience and counsel.
When he was appointed by then-President Larry R. Faulkner, Updegrove became the university’s first chief information officer, with responsibility for creating a unified information technology services organization from historically separate academic computing, administrative computing and telecommunications departments. He was a key leader in development of UTOPIA, the university’s digital knowledge gateway project.
He came to the university from Yale University, where he had been chief information officer for five years. Prior to joining Yale he had been associate vice provost of information systems and computing at the University of Pennsylvania and vice president of Educom (now Educause), a national consortium of information technology professionals in higher education.
“I have asked Kevin Hegarty, vice president and chief financial officer, to become actively involved in the Information Technology Services organization to ensure a smooth transition of leadership,” Powers said. “The university plans to initiate a nationwide search for a chief information officer, and he will lead that search.”
