CaseLabs

Administration Team

Lev Gonick, Chief Information Officer & Vice President, Information Services, Case Western Reserve University

Lev Gonick has been teaching, working, and living on the Net since 1987 and today is Vice President for Information Services and Chief Information Officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio (CWRU). Gonick has been with the California State University System for the last six years. In his current role, he has had responsibility for designing, building, and managing the campus technology infrastructure, enterprise management tools, academic and instructional technologies, telecommunications, new media services, and technology partnerships. In 1999 he served the chancellor of the California State system as senior director of academic technologies. From 1996-99, Gonick was university dean for instructional technology and academic computing at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. Under his leadership, Cal Poly Pomona became a national leader in charting the future of higher education in the digital age. MediaVision, that university's digital education content development and delivery system, has been recognized with awards from both the technology and education communities. Gonick has served as national chair of the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative on Institutional Readiness for Online Instruction, and he has been a consultant to more than 30 universities, colleges, and museums across the country and in Canada. He also has consulted and lectured at numerous international universities, including ones based in Australia, Japan, and South Africa. Twelve years ago, Gonick supported the development of HealthNet and Mango, one of southern Africa's first Internet nodes in facilitating connectivity between healthcare professionals and nongovernmental organizations in the field. He has been involved in designing and implementing the Digital Learning Network project in five west African countries and another multimedia learning initiative called Seeds of Peace in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine. Gonick founded the International Political Economy Network in 1993, and he has been associated with Communications for a Sustainable Future (csf.colorado.edu) since its founding also in 1993. Gonick received his B.A. in political science from Ohio State University in 1981, his M.A. in political science from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1983, and his Ph.D. in political science at York University in Toronto in 1992. He began his teaching career as an assistant professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University from 1992-94. In 1994, he held a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 1994 and 1995, Gonick held faculty appointments at Arizona State University - West, the University of Guelph, and Wilfrid Laurier University. He held distinguished visiting professorships at Northern Arizona State University in 1995 and at Arizona State in 1996.

Jeff Gumpf is currently Director of Technology Infrastructure Services for Information Technology Services at Case Western Reserve Univesity. Prior to becoming Director of Technology Infrastructure Services he was Director of Engineering for CWRUnet Services and was responsible for the design, implementation and operation of the campus communications network. Jeff has a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Computer Science from CWRU.

Prashant is Manager of Case Labs at Case Western Reserve University. As Manager of Case Labs Mr. Chopra is the lead research and rapid application development architectural expert for business process reengineering and steers Case Western Reserve University Information Technology Services next generation of development on cutting edge technologies. Mr. Chopra provides oversight to multiple software development projects and is responsible for selecting the appropriate technical architecture to be used by projects such as such areas as portal, enterprise application integration, voice-over-IP, streaming media, wireless networking, IPTV, videoconferencing and collaboration.  Mr. Chopra works with all related parties (management, end users, requirements analysts, project directors) in order to determine the objectives of each system, as well as the constraints (chronological, technical, financial). This includes oversight of design documentation and total cost of ownership financial documentation. Based on the objectives and constraints specific to each project, Mr. Chopra supports the Chief IT Architect of the university in determining the most suitable technical architecture and define the solution at a high level so that it may be used by the project director(s) in developing the detailed technical architecture.  After providing the selection and/or approval of the technical architecture, Mr. Chopra provides technical oversight of the project to ensure that the technical architecture is designed, developed, tested, and deployed properly and according to plan.  Mr. Chopra works closely with the project directors assigned to each project in order to ensure that all technical architecture requirements are adequately addressed.  Mr. Chopra engages with the selected integrator (in-house or external teams) to deliver component-based technical architectural solutions to the end-user customers.  In addition to helping to select the technical architecture for each project, Mr. Chopra provid es project technical oversight, work with project directors to update the minimum technical standards to take into account constantly changing technologies, and network with vendor representatives and public and private sector Chief IT Architects in order to share information.  Lastly, Mr. Chopra supports the Chief Information Officer of the university in advising top Information Technology management on the benefits of an integrated technical architecture, and to maximize the benefit of an organization-wide technical architecture standardization. Prior to his involvement with Case, Mr. Chopra was involved as the Chief Architect in research and development projects at California State University. These projects included enterprise portals, wireless campus networks, video-over-IP, and voice-over-IP. Prior to is work at CalState, Mr. Chopra spun out a higher education enterprise portal company from Columbia University and served as its Chairman and Chief Strategist. Under Mr. Chopra's guidance, the vent ure successfully raised 3 rounds of equity financing. As Chief Strategist, Mr. Chopra's responsibilities included design and implementation of web-based and wireless intranet portals and wireless infrastructure for colleges and universities. Mr. Chopra was also responsible for directing product development strategies and guiding the overall vision of the company. Mr. Chopra also serves on the Board of Directors of the Higher Education Knowledge and Technology Exchange (HEKATE), a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote the creative integration of emerging technologies and active-learning practices. Its members are individuals and organizations in technology, pedagogy, publishing, research, and education services, who are inspired by the possibilities of creating scalable, cross-national learning communities. Mr. Chopra majored in Economics and Theology while at Columbia University.