U of M Vice President Penrod Named to Prestigious Research Fellowship
For release: Nov. 19, 2002
For press information, contact Curt Guenther

Dr. James Penrod, Vice President for Information Systems and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at The University of Memphis, has been named by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) as a Senior Research Fellow.

Penrod will be working on a study of the information technology workforce in higher education with a particular focus on the CIO. He will remain with The University of Memphis as a tenured graduate professor in the College of Education's Department of Leadership.

He was one of the first dozen individuals in higher education to serve in what would come to be known as the CIO position, when he was appointed as Vice President for Systems and Planning at Pepperdine University in the late 1970's. He went on to hold the first CIO positions at The University of Maryland at Baltimore, California State University-Los Angeles, and The University of Memphis.

Penrod has an extensive record of professional service, having been selected twice as a board member and officer of CAUSE, an EDUCOM board member, and a member of the Educational Testing Services Research Advisory Committee. He is currently a member of the EDUCAUSE Nomination and Election Committee and the IT Funding Working Group, and previously he served on the association's Recognition Committee and the Southeast Regional Conference Program Committee.

Penrod has spoken frequently to regional and national audiences and has many publications in the areas of IT strategic planning and management, IT governance, and organizational change related to IT initiatives.

He holds a B.A. in mathematics from Harding University in Searcy, Ark., an M.S. in biostatistics from Tulane University, and an Ed.D. in institutional management from Pepperdine University.

EDUCAUSE is an international non-profit association that assists higher education in dealing with the fast-developing changes in information resources and technology. ECAR, an offshoot of EDUCAUSE, collects and processes information and provides decision makers with reliable, data-based analyses.

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