About the CIO — Gordon Wishon
Gordon Wishon joined the University of Notre Dame in August, 2001 as the Chief Information Officer, Associate Vice President and Associate Provost.
Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Gordon was the Associate Vice President and Associate Vice Provost for Information Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Gordon served as the senior executive for IT at Georgia Tech since 1994, and played a key role in the support of the telecommunication and network requirements of the 1996 Olympic Village. Gordon was the chief architect of the Institute's System 2000 Plan, a strategy to replace and reengineer campus administrative systems and processes. He also led major campus educational and infrastructure initiatives such as the implementation of mandatory student computer ownership and the FutureNet program, which upgraded the extensive campus data, voice, and video network, extending it to all campus facilities, including student residence halls, fraternities, and sororities. Gordon's efforts resulted in the revitalization of the institute's Instructional Technologies Development Center and the technological enhancement of campus classrooms which provide faculty and students access to and use of state of the art equipment and instruction.
Gordon is the Co-Chair of the recently formed EDUCAUSE Security Task Force. He served as the Co-chair of the Information Technology Committee of the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), and served on its Executive Committee and Board of Trustees. Gordon was a principal of the SURA Southern Crossroads (SoX) a consortium of universities established to create a regional aggregation, or gigapop, in Atlanta to serve the advanced networking needs of the research and higher education communities. He was a past chair of the University of System of Georgia's (USG) Administrative Committee for Information Technology and chaired the Technical Subcommittee of the USG Administrative Systems Selection Committee in 1996. In 1997, he served as a technical expert on the Lieutenant Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on the Georgia Legislature. Gordon is a member of EDUCAUSE, NACUBO, ACUTA, and the Coalition for Networked Information.
Gordon was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but calls Morgantown, West Virginia his hometown. He completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at West Virginia University in 1977, and later attained his master's degree at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
During his 20-year career in the United States Air Force, Gordon served in various operational, planning and programming, and executive positions in the communications-computer field. He flew onboard the two-man crew of the F-111A fighter-bomber as a weapons system officer. After leaving the cockpit, Gordon was selected as a headquarters staff advisor on the development and deployment of embedded computing systems supporting the operational and training needs of combat aircraft. In 1985, as the Chief of Operations for Communications and Computer Systems at the Air Force Institute of Technology, in Dayton, Ohio, he led the development and implementation of the Air Force's first large multi-vendor TCP/IP network. During Desert Storm in 1991, Gordon served as the Assistant Deputy for Communications Systems at the Air Force Logistics Command Headquarters in Ohio. He completed his Air Force career as Director of Communications and Computer Systems at the Air Force Institute of Technology, the Air Force's postgraduate education and research facility.
Gordon complemented his military career with membership and leadership in professional associations such as the Ohio Higher Educational Computing Council (OHECC) and the Ohio Academic and Research Network (OARNET). He also served on the Board of Directors for the Dayton Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and served as its Vice President for Education.