News for and about the Internet2 community

[Glenn Lipscomb <>]

Internet2, ESnet Promote Diversity in Technology through Scholarship Awards

 

Award winners will attend the 2014 Technology Exchange in Indianapolis and bring new ideas back home

 

WASHINGTON, DC—October 24, 2014—Through its Gender Diversity Initiative (GDI), Internet2 will announce two 2014 Gender Diversity Award winners at the upcoming Technology Exchange in Indianapolis, October 26–30 (http://meetings.internet2.edu/2014-technology-exchange/). These awards were created to support the attendance of emerging information technology (IT) women and early career professionals at Internet2 conferences—thereby supporting their entry into the IT field and the Internet2 community.

 

One of the awards will be given to Jamie McCue of Colorado State University (CSU) in recognition of Carrie Regenstein, retired Associate Vice Provost for Computing Services at Carnegie Mellon University, to honor Regenstein’s service as the first chair of the InCommon Steering Committee (2004–2006). Serving 8 million people today, InCommon is a service provided by Internet2 that provides a secure and privacy-preserving trust fabric for research and higher education, and their partners, in the United States.

 

Regenstein’s path from academic technologist to InCommon program leader was motivated by the promise of the many services InCommon could enable for student and faculty users—both on her campus and across all of higher education. In recognition of this, special consideration was given to women “generalists,” that is, integrators whose focus is on the use of technology to serve the faculty, staff and students of their institutions.

 

Carrie Regenstein noted, “I was delighted to be able to participate on the Selection Committee and could not be more enthusiastic about Jamie McCue’s selection as the first scholarship winner in my name. Although I am tremendously honored by Internet2’s establishment of this scholarship, I am even more excited to see a professional woman of Jamie’s stature taking her place as a leader in higher education information technology. It is clear from Jamie’s personal statement and the accompanying letter of recommendation that she will use this opportunity to learn a lot and that she will share her learning in ways that will serve her institution and her colleagues.”

 

Jamie McCue is Academic Computing and Networking Services Coordinator at CSU. In her position, Jamie often serves as the bridge between campus leadership and those benefitting from the technology that her department implements.

 

The other diversity award will be given to Jill Casey of the University of Alabama- Huntsville (UAH), who has been instrumental in integrating university legacy systems with a new Shibboleth/Central Authentication Service platform to create a campus-wide identity management architecture and single sign-on environment. Additionally, Jill has been instrumental in leading NET+ services integration for UAH.  Jill has been a strong advocate of the NET+ program strategy to align services, processes, and people with improved business and academic solutions for higher education.

 

Both awardees will get a close-up view into the Internet2 community and an opportunity to participate in 2014 Technology Exchange program sessions focusing on Security; Advanced Networking; Trust, Identity and Middleware Applications; and Cloud Services. A special goal of their attendance is that they will bring new technology ideas and strategies back to their institutions.

 

“Internet2 is extremely pleased to be working on this important community-driven initiative,” said Ana Hunsinger, Internet2 Vice President, Community Engagement. “I am grateful to co-chairs Laurie Burns McRobbie, Indiana University First Lady, and Marla Meelh, Section Head of the Network Engineering and Telecommunications Section (NETS), Computational Information Systems Lab (CISL), and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the entire selection committee for their outstanding leadership in bringing more women and early career professionals into the Internet2 community. The unique talents and fresh outlook each new participant offers will certainly enrich our entire community.”

 

ESnet, the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network—and co-convener of the 2014 Technology Exchange—is also demonstrating its commitment to expanding the capacity and diversity of the research and education networking professionals pipeline by sponsoring the attendance of two talented engineers from the national laboratory community: Julie Petersen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Arzu Gosney, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

 

As Greg Bell, ESnet Director, said, “The lack of diversity in computer science is impoverishing our community, and I am concerned about our failure to achieve meaningful progress. It is an issue of equity, but it is also a matter of operational concern: we urgently need more talented engineers to design and manage critical cyberinfrastructure in the U.S.”

 

Petersen and Gosney, along with awardees McCue and Casey, will use their 2014 Technology Exchange experiences to establish relationships and build the knowledge capital of their institutions within their local, regional and national technology environments. All four awardees will help diversify high technology and bring greater opportunity to IT professionals in their home institutions and beyond.

 

About Internet2

Internet2^® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research and community service missions.

 

Internet2 also operates the nation’s largest and fastest, coast-to-coast research and education network, with Internet2 Network Operations Center powered by Indiana University. Internet2 serves more than 90,000 community anchor institutions, 250 U.S. universities, 70 government agencies, 38 regional and state education networks, 80 leading corporations working with our community and more than 65 national research and education networking partners representing more than 100 countries.

 

Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, MI; Denver, CO; Emeryville, CA; Washington, DC; and West Hartford, CT. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.

 

About ESnet

Funded by the DOE’s Office of Science and managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ESnet provides advanced networking capabilities and tools to support U.S. national laboratories, experimental facilities, and supercomputing centers.