William H. (Bill) Graves Leadership Award

Bill Graves

The William H. (Bill) Graves Leadership Award is granted to individuals who have made an extraordinary difference in realizing the mission of the IMS Global Consortium.

The mission of the IMS Global Consortium is to advance technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. To ensure that the “Learning Impact” of technology-enabled innovation is achieved around the world, IMS Global’s influential community of educational institutions, suppliers, and government organizations develops open interoperability standards, supports adoption with technical services, and encourages adoption through programs that highlight effective practices.

Another way to think about this award is: “It is difficult to imagine the great success that IMS Global has had without the contributions of the award winner.”

The award is named after one of the founders and eventual Board chair of IMS Global, Dr. William H. (Bill) Graves. Bill Graves and his work had a profound impact, not just on IMS Global, but also on many successful organizations that he founded and touched. Bill’s leadership “style” featured some very unique attributes, including (1) working across academia and industry for the common good, (2) encouraging institutional executive leadership in technology strategy, and (3) keeping in view the big picture goals of nations in improving educational outcomes.

This award is not a “lifetime achievement award” or recognition for the outstanding leadership IMS Global has from members every year across a wide variety of activities. IMS Global already has annual recognition of both of those types of achievements. The Bill Graves Leadership Award is recognition for going well above and beyond—and, it is not necessarily an endpoint in terms of contributions to the mission.

Please note that this is not an award that can be applied for. The intention is to make the award annually at the Learning Impact event.

Award Recipients

2020 — Gary Driscoll, Senior Strategic Advisor, ETS

2019 — Bruce Maas, Emeritus CIO and Vice Provost for Information Technology, and Honorary Fellow School of Information, University of Wisconsin-Madison

2018 — Beatriz Arnillas, Senior Educational Advisor, itslearning, and Lenny Schad, Chief Technology Information Officer, Houston Independent School District

2017 — Dr. Charles Severance, Clinical Associate Professor of Information, University of Michigan School of Information

2016 — Tim Beekman, President and Co-Founder, SAFARI Montage