BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—The IU Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO today announced that Mark Spencer has been named director of telecommunications infrastructure, beginning Feb. 1.
In this role, Spencer will manage all telecommunications—network, telephones, fiber, and wiring—on the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses. Spencer succeeds Kirt Guinn, who retired from the position in December 2021 after 19 years of service.
“Mark is a trusted leader in the IU community and has developed many significant relationships across the entire university and with external vendors,” said Dave Jent, IU associate vice president of networks. “He is a respected leader not only within his team, but across the Networks division as a whole and regularly collaborates with GlobalNOC and I-Light leadership.”
Mark is a trusted leader in the IU community and has developed many significant relationships across the entire university and with external vendors.
Dave Jent
Spencer has worked in technology at IU for more than 25 years, most recently as manager of campus network engineering. In that role, he oversaw a team of 13 network engineers who install and maintain network connectivity and services like core routing, data center networking, wireless, and VPN for all of IU’s faculty, staff, and students.
As director of telecommunications infrastructure, Spencer will oversee 80+ staff members who handle over 100,000 network connections, 14,000 wireless access points, and 25,000 telephones, as well as the IU core and research networks. His responsibilities will also include IU’s two data centers and the storage and virtualization infrastructure where many of IU’s enterprise applications reside.
Spencer will oversee 80+ staff members who handle over 100,000 network connections, 14,000 wireless access points, and 25,000 telephones, as well as the IU core and research networks.
In its letter recommending Spencer for the position, the search committee wrote, “We believe Mark will proactively evaluate telecommunications infrastructure’s operations and work to find efficiencies while continuing to provide world-class services to the IU community. As a father of a current IU student, Mark has a genuine sense of responsibility to ensure all components of IU’s networking environment meet the ever-changing and demanding needs of IU’s students and our teaching and learning community.
