Leadership
Gordon Wishon
Chief Information Officer
In August 2001, Gordon Wishon was appointed to the position of Chief Information Officer at the University of Notre Dame. As head of Notre Dame’s Office of Information Technologies, he leads all campus technology efforts, including a comprehensive effort to replace all campus administrative and academic support systems. Prior to his appointment at Notre Dame, Gordon was the Associate Vice President and Associate Vice Provost for Information Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a position he held since 1994. Prior to arriving at Georgia Tech, Gordon served 20 years with the US Air Force in a variety of roles, from flying fighter aircraft to engineering avionics systems for a new generation of tactical aircraft. The last nine years of his Air Force career were served predominantly at the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he led the engineering of the first large scale production TCP/IP network in the Air Force, and where he completed his military career as the Institute’s Chief Information Officer.
At Georgia Tech, Gordon played a key role in preparing the campus to serve as the home of the Olympic Village during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. As head of Georgia Tech’s Office of Information Technology he led all campus technology efforts, which included the implementation of a mandatory student computer ownership program in 1997 and the rebuilding of the campus administrative systems infrastructure. Gordon is past chair of the Southeastern Universities Research Association’s CIO Council, and served on its Board of Trustee’s Executive Committee. He also served as a founding member of the Southern Crossroads GigaPop Steering Committee, helping to establish the Southeast’s largest aggregation point for participants in Internet 2 and other advanced networking activities. From 2001-2004, he co-founded and chaired the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force, an effort established to help higher education institutions address critical issues of infrastructure protection associated with the use of computer and network resources. A frequent speaker, planner, and participant in national and regional EDUCAUSE activities, Gordon also serves on a number of corporate and university advisory boards. Gordon is co-PI of a joint Notre Dame/Purdue/Purdue Calumet grant to establish the Northwest Indiana Computational Grid, and chairs the board of directors of the St. Joseph Valley Metronet, a Northern Indiana regional economic development initiative. In 2004 he was selected as one of Computerworld Magazine’s Premier 100 IT Leaders. During his tenure, Notre Dame has been awarded CIO Magazine’s CIO100 award for innovation in information technology in 2005 and again in 2008.
Gordon holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from West Virginia University and Wright State University in Ohio, respectively.
