Bonnie Neas, Vice President for Information Technology at North Dakota State University, has announced her plan to retire at the end of 2011.
In August 2007, Neas assumed leadership of the newly-created Information Technology Division at NDSU. She previously served as associate vice president for cyber infrastructure and interim deputy CIO and executive director for Connect ND. She also has served as associate vice president for federal government relations at NDSU. Neas began her career at NDSU in 1984 as manager of userservices at the university's computer center.
“I’ve seen tremendous change in the information technology environment from when I first started,” Neas said. “Starting at Mayville State University in 1977 and then moving on to North Dakota State University in 1984, with one of those years at the North Dakota University System, have been truly rewarding. The foundation for those rewards has been the people that I have had the great privilege of working for and with. I can’t think of a more stimulating environment to work in than that where constant learning takes place – our higher education system.”
Other highlights:
- Governor Hoeven presented Neas with the Information Technology Council of North Dakota’s “Outstanding Achievement in Education” in 2006.
- Awarded $15,128,349 in grants during her 30-year career.
- Served on numerous committees at the National Science Foundation, EDUCAUSE, Internet2 and currently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Northwest GigaPop, University of Washington-Seattle.
- Co-founder of the Northern Tier Network in 2003, a 12-state regional network supporting global research activities to enable scholarly activities and the economic vitality of the state and region.
Neas was named assistant vice president for federal government relations and director of internet research in November 2000. She had served as the director of Information Technology Services at NDSU since 1993. In thatcapacity, she was primarily responsible for campus data networking, North Dakota's K-12 network, learning technologies including the multimedia center and instructional design services, and host systems for instructional and research applications for the ND University System. In addition, she sharedresponsibility with the University of ND and ND's state government for the state's WAN and Internet services.
Neas was North Dakota's project leader for the National Science Foundation award to create the six-state Great Plains Network and served as chair of its board. She also led effortsrelated to DakotaLink, an NSF-funded advanced networking project for the five research institutions in North Dakota and South Dakota. She was instrumental in obtaining NSF funds that created NDSU's Access Grid node and another NSF-funded project to host Access Grid-based conferences on genomics and bioinformatics in the fall of 2001 and 2002.
Neas has testified before the U.S. Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee for Communications on IT networking issues that were relevant to rural states such as North Dakota. Her work to advance broadband networking also was highlighted in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Bringing aUniversity, a State and a Region Into the Networking Era.”
NDSU President Dean L. Bresciani said Neas has been a great asset to NDSU. “When I arrived at NDSU Bonnie indicated her interest in retirement, but out of her commitment to NDSU she was willing to stay through my first year and help me get started, and staying through the end of 2011 will allow her to also work with the new provost. I will miss her both as a colleague and a friend,” Bresciani said.
