Cheers ...

This week a colleague called me “Kleenex.” What she meant, jocularly, was that my name is so commonly associated with policy. “I would have preferred Xerox,” was my response, thinking back to law school when I learned about the dilution of trade mark names with these two examples. She immediately shot back that Xerox is not as common. Never mind one’s association about the respective use of each …
 
It is an honor to have made some contributions over the years in this important area of our collective experience higher education and information technology. I have so many stories to share, many of the professional ones which I have already in the Scholarly Works publication of Humanity’s Canvas.  Many more informal moments come out from time to time in this blog’s posts. I remain very grateful to Inside Higher Ed and my editor Scott Jaschik for this distinctive opportunity.
 
This week I transitioned back to the IT shop at UMass IT Amherst. The cybersecurity program I helped to create is now off and running on its own as “info sec” in computer science as both an undergraduate and graduate certificate, disseminated in a distance education format. I retired the dean’s role and am glad to be back helping out Julie Buehler’s organization. On behalf of all the UMass campus CIOs, we are helping the President’s Office to revised system-wide IT policy.  Together with Shrewsbury colleagues, we hope to provide a framework that might be useful for other state university systems.
 
While technology, law and policy headlines keep popping, such as the bipartisan rumblings against FISA, Russia’s latest attempt to disrupt a democratic election through cyber insecurity, and more comments about the F.C.C. proposed rule-making proposal (see last week’s post), today’s post is simply a toast to the internet!