David Lassner Elected Chair of the Western Cooperative for Educational Communications

University of Hawaiʻi Chief Information Officer David Lassner has been elected Chair of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET).

Lassner has been an active leader in WCET since its inception and was recognized with the Richard W. Jonsen award for Service to the Educational Telecommunications Community in 2000.

Established 15 years ago by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), the WCET has grown beyond its regional roots to become one of the most effective organizations leading the changes in education that have been enabled by telecommunications technologies. With members in 43 states and seven countries, the Cooperative has used a collaborative approach to address major issues such as accreditation, faculty development and student services.

As the University of Hawaiʻi‘s chief information officer, Lassner has been responsible for designing, implementing and directing a new integrated organization to support academic computing, administrative computing, distributed learning technologies and voice, data and video telecommunications.

Lassner is a member of the university‘s Cooperating Graduate Faculty and has taught, both in-person and online, in UH Mānoa‘s Department of Information & Computer Science, College of Business Administration, School of Communication and College of Education. He has been with the University of Hawaiʻi since 1977.