Stunden to retire as UW-Madison’s top technology chief

Ann Stunden, chief information officer and director of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) at UW–Madison, has announced plans to retire in summer 2006 after six years at the helm of campus technology.

“This has been an exciting and challenging time for me and for technology on campus,” says Stunden. “We have made some phenomenal accomplishments during that time. Above all, I think we have strengthened our relationship with partners across campus and built a more collaborative model.”

Stunden, 69, has served as UW–Madison’s first CIO, a position that was added to DoIT director to bring greater strategic direction and coordination to the university’s largest technology needs. Stunden achieved campus-wide support for the 2003 implementation of the “21st Century Network Project,” a major upgrade that enhanced the speed, security and overall capacity of UW–Madison’s online network.

Her tenure has also included remarkable strides in technology access. Stunden says the “My UW” portal, launched in 2003, represents one of the biggest service advances for UW–Madison students and employees. “My UW” provides a tailored, password-protected site that draws together events, announcements, online academic services and Web-based email.

UW–Madison is also one of the first campuses to have embraced wireless technology and will have campus-wide wireless access by summer 2006.

One of the big remaining challenges for the university, as it is across higher education, is in the implementation of large enterprise systems, Stunden says, which are very complicated, time-consuming and difficult to coordinate across different colleges and schools, let alone across all UW institutions.

“DoIT has done a great job under Annie’s leadership of being responsive to the changing technology needs of our students, faculty and staff,” says UW–Madison Interim Provost Virginia Sapiro. “Annie has been an innovative and national leader. Technology is always a moving target, and Annie has assembled the best team we’ve ever had in terms of anticipating and responding to the next challenge.”

Stunden’s tenure at UW–Madison will cap more than three decades of work in information technology, which included the director of academic technology services at Cornell University from 1996-2000, as well as leadership posts with Northwestern University and the University of Rochester. Prior to her university work, Stunden worked in IT positions for hospital and health care organizations.

In summer of 2005, Stunden received an information technology leadership award from EDUCAUSE, a national higher education group that promotes best practices in information technology. The organization recognized her for 37 years of “strong and ground-breaking leadership in the information technology business.”

Stunden is co-founder and executive director of the Northern Tier Network Consortium, which is working to build a strong research network connection for educational institutions in the upper-northwestern states spanning from Michigan to Washington. She is helping organize a second consortium devoted to the Midwest that will be launched in 2007.

In retirement, Stunden plans to stay involved part-time in IT organizations, but will move to Pittsburgh to be closer to her immediate family and grandchildren and to pursue her hobby of quilting.