TechEDge | California Community Colleges

CISOA Leaders Acknowledge Their Own

Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 July 2012 Written by Sandoval Chagoya Tuesday, 24 July 2012

The 2012 Chief Information Systems Officers Association (CISOA) Awards were presented at their annual conference in Ontario, California.

Before a crowd of their peers at the Annual Business Meeting, seven individuals were recognized for Technology Excellence and two individuals were recognized for their long and devoted service to CISOA.

Mark Guidas and Arne Nystrom (pictured) from Long Beach City College were honored as a team for their work in bringing virtualization and other “green” initiatives to LBCC. The two worked together to develop a virtualized infrastructure encompassing servers, student desktops, and even their Peoplesoft ERP. Their efforts saved energy for the college and allowed LBCC to obtain rebates from the energy companies to offset the cost of the project. Additionally, the Guidas/Nystrom team spearheaded the project to convert LBCC’s legacy PBX system to Voice over IP saving the college money and improving service to their end users.

Michael Gunther from College of the Canyons was also recognized for his work with virtualization at COC. Mike pioneered virtualization at the college launching the first virtualized servers to provide greater flexibility in the Data Center. He not only created a virtualized server environment at the college campus, through his efforts, COC has leveraged virtualization to create a co-location location facility encompassing critical servers in a virtualized environment. Recently, Mike has been working to bring a Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI) to the campus computer labs.

Brad Rippe from North Orange County Community College District received the Technology Excellence Award for his work developing mobile applications for the District. Brad served as the chief programmer in the design and development of a mobile application bringing important information to student’s mobile phones. In addition to developing the mobile application which has seen over 6,000 downloads since being launched in September, Brad worked with a group a students to develop a video to advertise the product and benefits to the students.

Jim Gaston from South Orange County Community College District was honored for his work at the District and his advocacy for California Community Colleges. Jim was in charge of the “My Academic Plan” (MAP) project that has become a blueprint for educational plans listed in the Student Success Task Force Recommendations. Jim also co-managed the development of SOCCD’s customized Student Information System which came in ahead of schedule and under budget. Outside of SOCCD, Jim has made numerous presentations at national conferences like Blackboard World, Educause, and others promoting the California Community College system.

Doug Cremer from Butte College was recognized for his excellent leadership and planning efforts. Through Doug’s efforts, the separate technology departments at Butte were merged into an organization that is actively engaged and focused on providing outstanding support. Doug has been able to leverage existing financial resources to fund a backup generator in the main data center to improve reliability, convert the college from an Oracle database platform to SQL, and replace the college’s emergency notification system with a product that provided additional features at a reduced cost. The results of Doug’s efforts has been outstanding system reliability, lower costs, “greener” operations, and a technology organization that is seen by the college as central to the continuous improvement process.

Dale Pittman from Pasadena City College was recognized with Board Award for his Outstanding Service to the CISOA organization and the California Community College System. Dale was one of the founding members of CISOA and is responsible for growing the organization to where it is today. Dale served the organization in many capacities including Historian, Vice President South, and Conference Chair. Dale always had time to mentor new members. His work at Pasadena City College and supporting CISOA has made him a resource appreciated by all. Dale has been a valuable member of the organization and will be missed.

Fred Sherman from Foothill DeAnza Community College District was recognized with Board Award for his Outstanding Service to the CISOA organization and the California Community College System. Fred has served in many roles at CISOA including President and he has been instrumental in our success to include the incorporation of CISOA and detailed conference planning processes. His accomplishments have been at several institutions in our system to include Barstow, Butte, and Foothill-DeAnza college districts. Major achievements include setting up the Technology Center at Butte college and implementation of Foothill-DeAnza’ s administrative systems. Fred’s leadership and insight have been treasured by our organization and the community college system. Always ready to help and share his experiences to improve his college and the system as a whole—he will be missed as a leader and a friend.<>

This story was provided by CISOA and published by Sandoval Chagoya.
Chagoya is the TechEDge Managing Editor and a Project Manager for the
California Community Colleges Technology Center and the California Virtual Campus.