Member of senior management responsible for developing an innovative, effective learning and teaching environment through the use of information and classroom technologies.

Tom Gerace is Director of Information Technology at Tulane University’s A. B. Freeman School of Business, where his primary responsibilities include academic and administrative computing, networking, web communications, classroom technologies, and faculty, staff, and researcher support. Tom leads a high-performing team of staff members dedicated to delivering a wide range of technical support services for the Business School’s administrative operations and an array of degree programs at both the New Orleans and Houston campuses. This group also provides support for the students and faculty of the Freeman School’s global programs in South America, Mexico, and Asia. A significant part of Tom’s leadership position involves staff mentoring, professional development, and performance evaluation.

In his role as a Tulane University Adjunct Professor, Tom has taught several information systems courses, including a required Business Computing course, a course in Visual Basic programming, and a course in Systems Analysis and Design. Tom finds that being in the classroom has given him invaluable experience and insight that has helped in the design of the Freeman School’s new building and its classroom and distance learning technologies.

Since arriving at the Freeman School of Business more than 15 years ago, Tom’s major accomplishments cross the spectrum from the highly technical to the heartbreaking. Tom managed the implementation of the first wireless network on Tulane’s campus in the summer of 2000 as part of the Information Technology strategic plan. In the fall of 2005, Tom effectively managed Hurricane Katrina recovery, acting as project manager and contractor liaison for classroom, network, and audio visual reconstruction. His group provided temporary systems for business continuity and maintained school-wide communication through the web and e-mail lists while the main campus was inaccessible. More recently, Tom has managed the implementation of multiple client-server systems supporting a multi-million dollar Trading Room for the Finance curriculum and the Tulane Energy Institute. The Virtual Computer Classroom, implemented during the Summer 2010, allows students to access required software for their courses from their notebook computers, eliminating the need to schedule these courses in physical computer classrooms.

Tom is a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a designation acknowledging his technical leadership, technical contributions to publications and proceedings, and professional contributions to the ACM and the community.  He is a member of the Louisiana Technology Council, EDUCAUSE, and Beta Gamma Sigma. Tom has had several papers published and presented at conferences in the United States and Canada, most notably “The Critical Elements of the Patch Management Process” which appeared in the Communications of the ACM.

Tom arrived at Tulane in 1987. He was promoted to Assistant Director for Academic Computing less than 3 years later and managed the activities of User Services, the user support group of Tulane Computing Services, organizing the support structure across the areas of shared systems, desktop computing, facilities management, and computer account maintenance.