Note: The accomplishments listed on this page are current as of Spring 2023.
Kathy Fletcher
Kathy Fletcher is an IT Application Administrator for Information Technology Services at West Virginia University (WVU). Her roles during her 40 years at WVU include a year as a Statistics instructor (a year that convinced her to avoid a faculty career), 13 years as the Manager of IT Training, and many of those 40 years as an IT support specialist/trainer for a plethora of software applications that changed over time. She started her career by mastering Fortran, Job Control Language, and the IBM 29 keypunch machine; these days she serves as an application administrator providing advanced support for various hosted enterprise applications.
Service to SIGUCCS: Kathy attended her first SIGUCCS User Services conference in Long Beach California, October 1988 and went on to attend 20 additional conferences since then. She presented her first paper at the 2005 conference when she not only fell in love with Monterey California and its sea lions but truly started to feel involved in the annual conferences and the SIGUCCS organization. After that 2005 conference, Kathy went on to author 12 more papers (including posters and panels) plus presented two Lightning Talks. She served as a conference track chair four times and as a paper reviewer for at least 10 conferences. She frequently serves as a session chair at the annual conferences even though that role makes her more nervous than actually presenting. Her most recent significant contribution to SIGUCCS was serving for 6 years as the board-appointed Communication Awards Chair. Kathy was awarded ACM Senior Member status in 2011.
Service to higher education and the computing profession: In addition to her years of work for West Virginia University and her participation in ACM SIGUCCS, Kathy presented multiple papers, posters, and tutorials at various regional, national, and international conferences on a variety of topics.
Kathy’s comments: I am pleased to achieve the honor of becoming a member of the SIGUCCS Hall of Fame. Over the years, I have grown as a professional from attending and writing papers for the annual SIGUCCS conference and have benefitted from all of the great advice I received from SIGUCCS mentors. I deeply appreciate the connections and friendships I have made with SIGUCCS members over the years.
Tom Gerace
Tom Gerace is Assistant Dean for Information Technology and Media Services for the Tulane Business School and the Tulane Law School. He leads the efforts of the teams that provide instructional and research technologies, video conferencing, and technology support. Tom’s focus is on the value that IT provides to the teaching,
research, and administrative missions of the University. Prior to joining the Business and Law Schools, Tom was Assistant Vice President for Enterprise Services with Tulane Information Technology, leading the help desk, on-site support, and classroom technology teams.
Tom earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and a Master of Business Administration from Tulane University. Tom was awarded Senior Member status in the Association for Computing Machinery, recognizing his accomplishments in higher education information technology as well as his service to the community.
Tom’s first SIGUCCS Conference was in 1983 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was encouraged to attend by the manager of user services who was a frequent attendee. Reflecting on his first conference, Tom noted that he was “surrounded by people who understood what he did” and he “knew he MUST attend the following year”. Tom was told that he must write a paper and make a presentation at the conference for the trip to be funded, and so began a history of SIGUCCS publications and presentations beginning in Reno, Nevada in 1984 and continuing to this current year’s conference.
Tom appreciates the professional and personal connections that he has made
through SIGUCCS. He remembers that “it was my SIGUCCS friends who first
reached out to me and maintained contact after Hurricane Katrina, and I am forever
grateful for their care and support.”
Kendra Strode
Kendra Strode was the Director of IT Support & Outreach at Rollins College.
Kendra’s 16-year career in higher education began serendipitously, when she was selected by a SIGUCCS peer, R. Kevin Chapman, to work at the student IT help desk at Carleton College as an incoming freshman. What started as a job to pay bills for college morphed into a passion, and full-time summer work turned into a full-time career four years later. Kendra has a passion for teaching others about technology, which surfaced in myriad ways: from developing training for the student technicians at the helpdesk to creating campus-wide information campaigns for migrations to Gmail and MFA. She also played instrumental roles in implementing a brand new ITSM solution jointly between Carleton and St. Olaf College IT, including curating ITIL training for both schools’ IT departments.
Kendra started attending SIGUCCS in 2010 in Norfolk, VA and was hooked – it was a vibrant community of peers who “get it” and understood the punchline of jokes about particularly unusual support cases that cross the higher ed helpdesk door. Not only that, but SIGUCCS provided a space to grow and learn that didn’t assume you wanted to be a manager or leader. As Kendra grew through her career spanning almost 14 years at Carleton, she regularly relied upon the connections with SIGUCCS peers and friends for support and guidance – finally transitioning into leadership in 2021 at Rollins College.
As a SIGUCCS participant, Kendra stepped into simple roles like session chairing in 2015 as an opportunity to “get to know cool people” a bit better. Since then she’s presented and published with SIGUCCS several times and served a variety of roles including Volunteer Coordinator, Poster Track Chair, Paper Reader, and even stepped in part-way through planning SIGUCCS 2022 as Conference Chair when the existing conference chair was obligated to leave the role because of a job change.
Scott Trimmer
Scott Trimmer currently serves as the Director of the Learning Commons at Cuyahoga Community College’s Eastern Campus, where he has been since 2014.
Scott’s IT career and introduction to SIGUCCS began as a student employee in 1998 at Oberlin College’s Center for Information Technology where he worked with many SIGUCCS regulars including John Bucher, Cindy Sanders, and Chester Andrews.
Throughout Scott’s 25-year career at multiple institutions including Oberlin College, The University of Findlay, and Cuyahoga Community College he has worked multiple roles. Those roles include Residential Computer Consultant, Senior Computer Store Sales Assistant, Maintenance Technician, Network/Systems Support Specialist, Academic Technology Services Manager & Blackboard Administrator, and Learning Commons Director.
Scott started attending SIGUCCS conferences in 2004 while working at The University of Findlay. He began his service to SIGUCCS by volunteering to staff the registration table. In 2012 he served as Vendor Chair in Memphis, Tennessee. He served as Vendor Co-Chair at the 2013 conference in Chicago, Illinois. At the 2014 Salt Lake City, Utah conference, Scott co-authored and presented his first SIGUCCS paper entitled “Strategic Partnerships: Collaborating with Institutional Leadership to Improve Student Learning Outcomes”.
Scott served as the Conference Chair for what was supposed to be the Fall 2020 SIGUCCS Conference in San Diego, CA. As a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic this conference was initially changed to being a Spring 2021 in-person conference, and then became a free, online Spring 2021 conference. He is grateful to the 2020->2021 conference committee for all of their hard work that made the conference a success.
Scott’s comments: I have given and received much from SIGUCCS, but I am both humbled and at a loss for words at being selected to join the SIGUCCS Hall of Fame. I would not be who I am as a person, leader, parent, or spouse without the guidance, friendship, and mentoring I’ve received from SIGUCCS over the years.