The late Howard Strauss, former manager of academic outreach in Princeton's Office of Information Technology, has been named the recipient of an EDUCAUSE Leadership Award for Distinguished Performance and Outstanding Service.
Strauss, who worked at the University from 1971 to 2005, died in
September 2005 at age 62. The award is the highest individual
recognition offered by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association whose mission
is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of
information technology. It recognizes prominent professionals whose
work has had significant positive impact on the contributions of
information technology to higher education.
During his career at Princeton, Strauss held a variety of positions in
administrative, systems and academic computing. He served as manager of
the University's advanced applications group, which created the
Princeton News Network, one of the first campuswide information systems
and a precursor to Gopher and the World Wide Web. The group also helped
deploy the first fledgling "dormnets" on campus, put up some of the
first Webcams and turned a legacy student information system into a
student-driven interactive advising tool.
Beyond Princeton, Strauss was the technical anchor for the Corporation
for Research and Educational Networking Tech Talk series of Webcasts
for five years. He was a member of Pearson's Online Learning advisory
board and the Syllabus conference board, a faculty member for the
National Association of College and University Business Officers and a
founding member of Election Watch, a public advocacy group focused on
integrity in electronic elections. He wrote and presented numerous
information technology courses and served as a consultant for companies
and universities. In 1987, his futuristic "Apple PIE" was the
second-place winner in Apple's national competition to design the
computer of the future.
Strauss was well known among his professional colleagues for his quirky
and insightful writings and presentations. He published dozens of
articles and was a regular contributing author to several computer
journals. He was an institution at Educom, CAUSE, EDUCAUSE and other
higher education conferences, where he regularly spoke to
standing-room-only audiences.
As part of the award, EDUCAUSE is making a $3,000 contribution in
Strauss' name to a scholarship fund of his family's choice.
