Michael Bourque (VP for IT Services at Boston College; President of AJCU-CITM), Jim Burke (CIO at John Carroll University) & Susan Malisch (VP for Information Services at Loyola University Chicago) (Photo courtesy of Michael Bourque)
During the recent annual meeting of the AJCU Conference on Information Technology Management (CITM), held at Saint Louis University from June 10-13, two long-time members of CITM were named recipients of the William O’Hearn Service Award. This award was established by the CITM community in 1996, to honor the memory of William O’Hearn, a long-serving director of information services at John Carroll University. In addition to his leadership role in information technology, Bill (as O’Hearn was known) was an associate professor of physics, an academic dean, and a charter member of AJCU-CITM. He was the first recipient of the award, which has only been given seven times in the last twenty years.
This year, CITM recognized two long-serving leaders from two Jesuit universities: Susan Malisch, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Loyola University Chicago, and David Lees, former Executive Director of Instructional Technology and Distributed Learning at Saint Joseph’s University. The recipients, chosen by a committee led by Jim Burke, Chief Information Officer at John Carroll University, were selected based on their long track records of professional and personal contributions to CITM and to Jesuit higher education overall.
Susan Malisch was nominated by many of her colleagues across the AJCU network, as well as her colleagues at Loyola. She has served as president and vice-president of CITM, led mentoring and benchmarking efforts, and made contributions to the network in multiple areas. On campus and beyond, she has been an active leader on strategic planning and online education, and served the Loyola community in many ways, including a term as interim Director of Athletics! Susan has been an exemplar of the Ignatian traditions in everything that she does, and CITM was honored to recognize her with the O’Hearn Award.
David Lees was recognized for his more than twenty years of leadership at Saint Joseph’s University, and for his work within CITM in the area of educational technology. At Saint Joseph’s, David provided leadership in a number of roles including Executive Director of Instructional Technology and Distributed Learning, and Executive Director of Academic Technology and Distributed Learning (ATDL). David and his team were responsible for instructional technology, course design and production, faculty development, technology innovation, and copyright and compliance at Saint Joe’s. Through CITM, David was instrumental in establishing the Teaching, Technology & Learning Group that provides a forum for staff across the AJCU network to focus on innovation and Ignatian pedagogy. David was a key contributor to the spirit of camaraderie across the AJCU-CITM community, and has been a valued member for many years.
Please join us in congratulating Susan and David on these well-deserved awards!
Information contributed by Michael Bourque of Boston College, David Hakanson of Saint Louis University and Kathy Lang of Marquette University.