Kimberly Ashley – UTHSC Tyler

Kimberly Ashley currently work at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (UTHSCT) where she is employed as the Director of University and Community Affairs. Her primary responsibilities include governmental relations for UTHSCT and special projects for President Calhoun. She received her undergraduate degree from Baylor University. Upon graduation from Baylor, she worked for over four years for her Congressman in Washington, DC. When he retired and returned to Texas, she spent another ten years in Washington, DC. Upon her return to Texas, she worked on a Texas Medicaid managed care pilot in the Galveston area. She later joined the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) and worked in their Medicaid managed care program. Within her first year at UTMB, she was transferred to the 501(a) corporation that was owned by UTMB. This company acquired an HMO license for UTMB. At its height, this HMO covered over 80,000 members in Southeast Texas. When Dr. Calhoun was named President at UTHSCT in the fall of 2002, she contacted him about possible employment at UTHSCT. She subsequently joined UTHSCT in January 2003.

Oneita Burgess – UT Permian Basin (Odessa)

Currently, Ms. Burgess is the director of the REACH Distance Learning Program Center at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, a center responsible for coordination and deployment of quality distance education, integration of the most advanced instructional technologies available to support instruction. Ms. Burgess has worked at UTPB as an instructional designer, training specialist, learning mangement system administrator, and instructional technologist supporting face-to-face, interactive video, hybrid and online instruction. Ms. Burgess holds a M.Ed. in instructional technology from Texas Tech, a B.S. in chemistry from Angelo State and teacher certifications in chemistry, secondary mathmatics, computer information systems and information processing technology. Her teaching background ranges from junior high mathematics to post-secondary computer science. Her research interests are in learning object repositories and the use of social networking for academic use.

Jennifer Cuthbert – UT Southwestern Medical Center – Dallas

Dr. Jennifer Cuthbert graduated from the University of Sydney with her medical degree and completed initial internal medicine and gastroenterology training in Sydney. She came to the USA for experience in liver disease clinical research as part of the requirements for practicing as a specialist gastroenterologist in Australia but has never left UT Southwestern in Dallas.

Her experience has included ~ 20 years as a physician scientist with a laboratory conducting basic research. The research was submitted as a thesis based on published works to the University of Sydney for which the MD degree was awarded. Her laboratory research years were followed by ~ 10 years as a physician educator. This included ~ 8 years as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education. Dr. Cuthbert continues as founding Director of the Web Curriculum at UT Southwestern http://medschool.swmed.edu. In addition she is active in clinical practice and research in liver diseases.

Joe DeCristoforo – UT San Antonio

Joe DeCristoforo has been the Assistant Vice President and University Registrar at UTSA for more than seven years now. He has a PhD from Georgia State University in Research, Measurement, and Statistics and other graduate degrees in counseling from the University of Florida, as well as a bachelor’s degree there in English. His work history includes Assistant Registrar at Kennesaw State University, Assistant Director of Student Records at Georgia Tech, University Registrar at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and just prior to moving to Texas, he was the University Registrar at the University of Toledo. In his near thirty years of working in higher education, he has never witnessed technology as fascinating as the 3-D virtual worlds that are in development. He is honored to be a part of the Virtual Learning Community Initiative and excited about what we all can do working together in harnessing this technology for our respective campuses.
David Ford – UT M.D. Anderson (Houston)

Dr. David M Ford has a doctorate in education and is director of the teaching improvement program within Faculty Development and has taught the use of game theory in teaching within this program which is heavily subscribed by our School of Health Professions and other faculty. He is also the incoming director of the SACS-required Quality Enhancement Project for the SHP and an adjunct Assistant Professor in the School.

Susan Franzen – UT System (Austin)

Susan Franzen is the Director of the University of Texas System Leadership Institute and has over 16 years experience in organizational and leadership development, change management, executive coaching, and strategic facilitation. As an organizational and leadership development consultant, her previous client list included healthcare organizations, higher education, technology firms, financial institutions, home care products, and a variety of non-profits. Susan holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and a Training and Development Certificate from Boston University, is a DiSCTM certified facilitator, and a graduate of Coach University. She has served as an executive coach for the Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and is active in the Austin community, currently serving on the boards of Hospice Austin and the Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival. Past Board service includes the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Metropolitan Breakfast Club and the International Coach Federation – Austin Chapter.

David Hotchkiss – UTHSC San Antonio

David Hotchkiss is the Director of Academic Technology Services for the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, one of the nation’s leading academic health centers, serving San Antonio and the 50,000 square mile area in the high-growth corridor of Central and South Texas. Responsible for the deployment of technology in a higher education environment and strategic development, his primary charge is improving current solutions while developing and executing an aggressive strategy consistent with enterprise goals.

As an accomplished Information Technology leader in the healthcare industry, David has been responsible for the strategy, implementation and operation of several large initiatives including clinical, financial and procurement ERP, eBusiness and managed care applications within the nation’s top healthcare providers. His unique blend of business process optimization, communication skills & information technology experience has been essential to the progression of his accomplished career.

David’s career began in the healthcare industry sixteen years ago as an accountant within the payor community. He quickly progressed to leadership roles in the information technology field where he worked for the Cleveland Clinic and Tenet Healthcare, both world class healthcare providers. He received his BBA from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Sarah Jones – UT Arlington

Sarah Jones is a librarian in Digital Library Services at UT Arlington (UNT MLS 1996). Since 1998, she has worked to build and maintain the library’s Web site. She chairs the Library’s Web Advisory and Web Usability committees and sits on the campus’ Web Standards Committee. In addition, she participates in digitization and other online projects, designing databases and the user experience of web applications. Prior to her life as a librarian, Sarah studied in the doctoral program in Linguistics and taught undergraduate linguistics and English as a Second Language at Indiana University, subsequent to her undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa.

Since the late 1980s, Sarah has been interested in the potential of online communication platforms and the development and characteristics of online communities. Following from this, she joined Second Life™ in September 2006, learning about this new platform for building communities.

Abby Kratz – UT Dallas

Dr. Abby Kratz is Associate Provost at the University of Texas at Dallas. From 2006-2007, she served as Assistant VP for Business Affairs and developed the university’s facilities inventory and records management plans. As Assistant Provost and Director of Innovative Education at UTD from 2002-2006, her responsibilities included oversight and development of university programs for distance learning and mediated classroom instruction.

From 1999-2002, Dr. Kratz served as Director of the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. Before moving to Corpus, she was Assistant Provost and Interim Director of Libraries at UTD. Dr. Kratz also has directed academic library programs at Harvard University and the Ohio State University where she had the privilege of serving as the first Women’s Studies Librarian in an American university. In her spare time, she chairs the Richardson (Texas) Arts Commission and participates in its support programs for local arts organizations.

Jane LeMaster – UT Pan American (Edinburg)

Dr. Jane LeMaster is a Professor of Management and Executive Director of the Center for Online Learning, Teaching and Technology (COLTT). She has designed, redesigned, and taught both undergraduate and graduate classes online at The University of Texas-Pan American and through the UT Telecampus. She has developed innovative scaling techniques for teaching large graduate level classes in leadership, organizational behavior, and international management.

Dr. LeMaster served as Director of Graduate Programs for the College of Business Administration during which time she developed an MBA Program for Physicians and initiated the Weekend MBA. She developed a strategic management class using an international business simulation and virtual teams composed of students from China, India, Germany, Mexico and the U.S.

Bruce Niebuhr – UT Medical Branch – Galveston

Bruce R. Niebuhr, Ph.D., was born and raised in rural Illinois. He earned his BS degree in 1971 from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and PhD in experimental psychology in 1976 from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. A believer in lifelong learning, he has taken advanced courses at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. In 2006 he earned a professional certificate in Distance Education from the University of West Georgia. In 1978 Bruce and his wife Ginny moved to Galveston. He is a Distinguished Teach Professor, with appointments in the Departments of Physician Assistant Studies and Preventive Medicine and Community Health. Bruce’s wide range of teaching interests include research methods and statistics, computer applications, clinical problem solving, health promotion, patient interviewing and counseling, and ethics. His research interests are in computer-based instruction and distance learning and in hand function assessment. He Chairman of the Board of Directors and Healthcare/Medicine representative of the Texas Distance Learning Association. In 2008 he was named UTMB’s Director of Distance Education. The Niebuhrs live on the island where Ginny is a pediatric psychologist at UTMB. They have two Aggie sons, Chris, a wildlife biology researcher in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Michael, who is attending Texas A&M at Galveston. Bruce is an Elder of First Presbyterian Church, Galveston, and a Boy Scout leader. Bruce enjoys hiking, camping and backpacking, reading (mostly science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and techno-thrillers), listening to music (with tastes ranging from blue grass to Philip Glass), playing the djembe with the church praise band, and watching and analyzing movies (he has movie reviews published in the Internet Movie Database).

Sunay Palsole – UT El Paso

Sunay Palsole is the Director of Instructional Support at the University of Texas at El Paso. A geophysicist by academic training, he began to design multimedia applications for teaching and learning in the mid 1990′s. Since then, he has helped faculty from varied disciplines integrate technology in teaching, learning and research. He has also taught and designed various blended learning and online courses. Most of these courses use Web 2.0 technologies integrated into the curriculum. He is also co-developer of the Digital Academy, a training program that was a finalist for the Innovation Award by the Professional and Organizational Development Network. This Academy has been taught in diverse locations as El Paso, New Jersey, India and Chile. He has collaborated on and is a PI and co-PI on a number of grants related to education, educational technology, and online course development. Sunay has presented at numerous national and international conferences including Educause, E-Learn, ED-Media, CSCL and First Year Experience. Sunay is a foodie and has travelled the world in search of food and culinary experiences. Besides food he and his wife enjoy travelling and watching all kinds of movies and world music.

Bob Sterken – UT Tyler

Dr. Robert Sterken is Associate Provost for International Programs and an Associate Professor of International Relations at The Univ. of Texas at Tyler. He holds degrees from Stephen F. Austin State University (BA, MA) and a PhD from Texas Tech University. Bob has over two decades of experience in a variety of roles in higher education – as a tenured faculty member (international relations political science) and senior administrator in legislative affairs and university government relations. Dr. Sterken is currently serving to ready UT Tyler for its upcoming SACS reaffirmation – focusing on the Quality Enhancement Plan. The QEP is a campus-wide global awareness initiative. This initiative will open a world of opportunities to UT Tyler students, staff, and faculty. Bob is married to Alison Johnson Sterken. Bob and Alison have two sons and a daughter attending Millsaps College and All Saints Episcopal School in Tyler.

Michael Sullivan – UT Brownsville

Michael Sullivan is an associate professor at UT Brownsville and program coordinator for a fully online master level degree in educational technology.

He is certified to teach K—12 and has taught in public schools for approx. 20 years, usually at the middle grade level and usually mathematics.

He was in the Peace Corps in South Thailand working as, among other things, a “language consultant” for the Thai government and that is where he first encountered distance education (DE)…in 1978.

Bob Vogler – UTHSC Houston

Dr. Vogler is an Associate Professor in the School of Health Information Sciences that offers Master’s and Doctoral degree programs in Health Informatics. He co teaches an Emerging Technologies course that explores social computing, virtual worlds and recent technology developments and their application to teaching, learning and research.