MnSCU appoints associate vice chancellor for instructional technology

Posted: April 5, 2006

Contact: Doug Anderson, doug.anderson@MinnState.edu, 651-201-1426

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities has appointed Alfred H. Essa as associate vice chancellor for instructional technology and deputy chief information officer.

Previously, Essa served as executive director of the .LRN Consortium, an open source project that he founded while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The consortium developed one of the world's most widely adopted enterprise-class open source software programs for supporting e-learning and digital communities.

Prior to running the consortium, Essa was the chief information officer at MIT's Sloan School of Management, where he was responsible for overall leadership, management and organization of information technology operations and initiatives. Essa is a frequent speaker and writer on educational technology innovation and has been an invited speaker at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, IBM and MITRE, a not-for-profit research agency. He began his new duties last month.