William Graves, Ph.D

William H. Graves, Ph.D., joined the board in 2008.  He served the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for over 30 years as professor of mathematics, dean, interim provost, senior IT officer, and founder of the Institute for Academic Technology.  During those years he served on boards for CAUSE, EDUCAUSE, and the Coalition for Networked Information, and helped launch both Internet2 and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.

Bill then retired from UNC in 2000 to start a company that is now part of SunGard Higher Education, where he is Senior VP for Academic Strategy.  He is an active member of governing and advisory boards for organizations such as Antioch University, the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the National Center for Academic Transformation, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the International Association of University Presidents, and the School of Information and Library Science at UNC Chapel Hill.

Based on his experiences reflected in over 80 publications and hundreds of presentations and consultations, Bill foresees a future education marketplace that is more open, scalable, and affordable than today’s.  He believes that postsecondary educational attainment is a “common good” essential to humanity’s future, yet unsustainable without using IT as a game-changer to scale up credential “completions” while making them mutually affordable, both internally to education and externally to students, families, and governments.