OLC Leadership Network Event
Tuesday November 19, 2019 - 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM
Pre-Conference Workshop Session 2

Thomas Cavanagh, Ph.D. is Vice Provost for Digital Learning at the University of Central Florida. In this role he oversees all classroom technology and the distance learning strategy, policies, and practices of one of the nation’s largest universities, serving 68,000 students, where online learning represents more than 47% of the university's annual credit hours. In his career, Tom has administered e-learning development for both academic (public and private) and industrial (Fortune 500, government/military) audiences. He has been recognized with a number of awards including the WCET Richard Jonsen Award, the USDLA Outstanding Leadership Award, and been named an Online Learning Consortium Fellow. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and serves on a number of national advisory boards. He is also an award-winning author of several mystery novels.

Russ Poulin leads the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, which advocates for effective practices and policies for digital learning in higher education. WCET’s members represent institutions, state agencies, corporations, and non-profit organizations from all fifty states. In paying attention to federal, state, and institution policies, he twice represented the distance education and competency-based education communities in federal negotiated rulemaking processes. The Presidents’ Forum, Excelsior College, the National University Technology Network, and the Online Learning Consortium have all recognized Russ for his contributions. He is also partial to movies, cats, and his wife, Laurie. Contact: rpoulin@wiche.edu or @RussPoulin.

For nearly a decade, Ubell headed Tandon Online, the digital learning unit of NYU's School of Engineering, ranked No. 2 by US News & World Report of the nation’s Computer Information Technology online graduate programs. Recipient of the highest honor given for individual achievement in digital education, the A. Frank Mayadas Leadership Award, Ubell is a fellow of the Online Learning Consortium. He serves on the Advisory Board of OLC's Online Learning journal and is a member of McGraw-Hill’s Learning Science Research Advisory Board. A columnist for EdSurge and a frequent contributor to Inside Higher Ed, among other periodicals, he is Vice Dean Emeritus, NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Ubell is the author of Going Online (Routledge, 2017) and the editor of Virtual Teamwork (2010), among more than 2 dozen other books. At The New School, he heads a 4-course online certificate, Designing Online Learning Programs. Over his career, Ubell’s online programs at NYU and Stevens Institute of Technology have enrolled more than 30,000 students. In China, he was head of three blended master's at Central University of Finance and Economics and Beijing Institute of Technology. In his consulting practice, he has supported online efforts at The New School, NYU’s Wagner School and LIM College, among other institutions.

Mike Goldstein came to Washington in 1978 to organize and lead the Higher Education practice at law firm Dow Lohnes, which merged with global law firm Cooley in 2014, where he was co-chair of the practice until 2016 and now continues as senior counsel. Mike advises and represents public, independent and for-profit schools, colleges and universities and a wide variety of education service providers, associations, accrediting organizations and financial interests in the broad education vertical. Before coming to DC, Mike was founding Director of the New York City Urban Corps and then successively Assistant City Administrator and Director of University Relations in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York and Associate Vice Chancellor for Urban and Governmental Affairs and Associate Professor of Urban Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Mike is a trustee and former board chair of Fielding Graduate University, a trustee of Vermont College of Fine Arts and a director of the University of the District of Columbia Foundation, a founding member of the Board of Directors of The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars and of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation. He is a recipient of Richard Jonsen Award for leadership and service to the e-learning community, the President’s Medal from Excelsior College, the Hall of Fame Award from the United States Distance Learning Association, and a Doctor of Humane Letters (H.C.) from Fielding Graduate University. He holds a BA from Cornell University and a law degree from New York University, and he was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Urban and Environmental Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Patsy Moskal is the Director of the Digital Learning Impact Evaluation in the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida (UCF) where she evaluates the impact of technology-enhanced learning and serves as the liaison for faculty scholarship of teaching and learning. In 2011 Dr. Moskal was named an OLC Fellow in recognition of her groundbreaking work in the assessment of the impact and efficacy of online and blended learning. She has written and co-authored numerous works on blended and online learning and is a frequent presenter on these topics. Patsy's co-authored book--Conducting Research in Online and Blended Learning: New Pedagogical Frontiers--with Dziuban, Picciano, and Graham, was published in August 2015. She currently serves on the OLC Board of Directors.

Tanya Spilovoy, Ed.D. leads instruction for SPARC’s Open Education Leadership Program, a first-of-its-kind professional development program to empower librarians as leaders for successful open education initiatives. Tanya designed the program’s curriculum and innovative format that blends online, peer-to-peer and project based learning. Tanya has a two-decade career in higher education leadership, during which she has led numerous education technology and open education initiatives. Currently, she serves as Director of Open Policy for WCET, where she leads the Z Initiative which focuses on the policy, practice, and implementation of Open Educational Resources in states, systems, and higher education institutions. Previously, she served as the Director of Distance Education and State Authorization at the North Dakota University System where she also led a statewide OER Initiative. Tanya received her B.A. in English from Union College, a M.A. in Education from Hamline University, and a Doctorate in Higher Education Leadership and Organizational Change from Benedictine University.