Tod A. Laursen is the Senior Vice Chancellor and Provost of the State University of New York (SUNY), a post he assumed in September of 2018. Dr. Laursen joined SUNY from Khalifa University (KU) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he was the founding president and served as its leader since 2010. In February of 2017, KU as it exists today was formed by the merger of three Abu Dhabi higher education institutions: Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR), the Masdar Institute, and the Petroleum Institute. Dr. Laursen had served as the president of KUSTAR for the first seven years of his tenure in Abu Dhabi, and was named leader of the merged institution subsequently. Prior to becoming President of Khalifa University, Dr. Laursen was a member of the faculty of Duke University (USA), between the years of 1992 and 2010, during which time he had appointments in civil engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering. He served as Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from 2008-2010, and served as Senior Associate Dean for Education in the Pratt School of Engineering from 2003-2008. In the latter capacity, he had oversight responsibility for all undergraduate and graduate engineering programs at Duke. John Kanehas served as the Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at SUNY-Oswego since 2008. Dr. Kane joined the Economics Department at SUNY-Oswego in 1983 and has continued to maintain a full-time teaching role in this department. He served as a co-chair (with Chilton Reynolds) of the FACT2 task group on adaptive learning during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. He will be returning to the role as chair of the FACT2 Council for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. Since November 2017, Dr. Kane has also served as the co-host (with Rebecca Mushtare) of the Tea for Teaching podcast, a weekly podcast on teaching and learning. His research is primarily in the fields of labor economics, the economics of education, economic education, and other areas of applied econometrics.
David Wiley is co-founder and Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, an organization dedicated to increasing student success, reinvigorating pedagogy, and improving the affordability of education through the adoption of OER. Previously, David was Associate Professor, Department of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University. He has received numerous recognitions including an NSF CAREER grant, appointments as Education Fellow at Creative Commons, Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and Ashoka Fellow. David was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Utah State University after earning a PhD in Instructional Psychology & Technology from Brigham Young University.
Norman Bier has spent his career at the intersection of learning and technology, working to expand access to and improve the quality of education. He is the Executive Director of the Simon Initiative and the Director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University. The Simon Initiative leverages CMU’s unique research and educational technology ecosystem, applying learning science to improve outcomes for all. OLI, a recognizedleader in open education, combines leading research in the learning sciences with state-of-the-art technology to create scientifically-based courses that facilitate understanding for independent learners and support instructors to improve effectiveness in traditional classrooms. Prior to joining OLI, he was Director of Training and Development at iCarnegie Inc., a university subsidiary chartered delivering CMU-designed software development education through international partner iinstitutions. Norman has taught computer science as an adjunct faculty member at the Community College of Allegheny County, philosophy and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and he served as a founding member of the Robert E. Cook Honors College at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. As a leader in Open Education and Educational Technology, in 2015 he was selected by the Center for Digital Education as one of their Top 30 Technologists, Transformers, and Trailblazers
