Tom West

Presentation: CENIC and CALREN2 - California Research Initiatives

Tom West is the President/Executive Director of the California Education Network Initiatives Corporation (CENIC) developing the advanced services network for higher education in that state. He has over four decades of executive management experience in the higher education industry. He has served as a small college president, a vice chancellor for administration for regional campuses in a public university system, and most recently completed 26 years as the Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO) for two large public university systems—Indiana University (1973-1981) and the California State University (1981-1999).

In the field of information technology, Dr. West has been actively involved the development of both Internet1 (originally NSFnet in the mid-80s) and Internet2 as a member of EDUCOM’s (now EDUCAUSE) National Telecommunications Task Force and in the 1990’s on the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative Steering Committee. He currently serves on the EDUCAUSE Recognition Committee. He has been involved in the development of information technology at state government level. While with CSU, he served as a member of the Governor’s California Information Technology Commission. Over the years Mr. West has served as an advisor and consultant to a number of other higher education institutions and systems, private corporations and state governments.