While serving as IU chief information officer, Wheeler continued to teach graduate and international executive education students at Kelley.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Brad Wheeler, a Kelley School of Business professor since 1996, who also played key administrative roles at Indiana University for nearly two decades, recently was honored with two awards for the practical impacts of his work.
In December, Wheeler, IU Rudy Professor and Sungkyunkwan Professor of Information Systems, received the AIS Impact Award at the International Conference on Information Systems, the premier conference in field. In October, Wheeler also received the Practical Impacts Award in 2024 from INFORMS, the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics and data science.
The Association for Information Systems recognizes information systems research with widespread impact on practice in business and society. Key criteria are “breadth of use in practice as well as relevance to information systems research. The assessment of the quality of the work is considered secondary to the degree to which it has been widely adopted.” He was the only person recognized in the Economic Impact category.
“Brad’s sterling career in information systems at Indiana University is characterized by a remarkable mastery of both technical detail and its broader implications. Few researchers are as innovative and as good at seeing the big picture,” said Ash Soni, dean of the Kelley School and The Sungkyunkwan Professor. “We at Kelley could not be prouder to call him a colleague, and we feel enormous gratitude for his past and ongoing contributions to both our school and to society at large.”
Brad Wheeler
For 19 years, Wheeler served on IU’s IT leadership team, including 13 years as vice president for IT and chief information officer, with responsibilities for nearly $200 million in IT services and grants. He was concurrently IU vice president for communications and marketing from 2018-2020 and served as interim dean for the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering in 2015-2016.
Prior to being named IU vice president for information technology in 2007, Wheeler was a member of IU’s information technology leadership team for five years, including as associate dean of teaching and learning IT, associate vice president for research and academic computing, associate vice president for community source initiatives, dean of information technology for IU Bloomington, and acting CIO.
Wheeler co-founded and led open-source software and service collaborations such as the Sakai Project, Kuali, and the HathiTrust digital library. He developed IU’s eTexts initiative and implemented a cutting-edge delivery model to tackle the high costs of textbooks for students. He co-founded the Unizin Ltd., a consortium of universities seeking to exert greater control and influence over digital learning landscape. He was the founding chairman for the Kuali Foundation and served on the board of EDUCAUSE from 2009 to 2012.
“I was very fortunate as an assistant professor to be in the right place at the right time in the mid- to late-1990s as the commercial internet-initiated waves of change in commerce and organizations,” Wheeler said. “I worked with executive groups including boards of directors for Global Fortune 200 companies regarding how to innovate within their organizations, in their supply chains, and via customer engagement.
“I saw firsthand how organizations needed a framework for the recurring, unfamiliar and accelerating IU change that could shape strategy and not just align with it,” he added.
At the same time, Wheeler continued to teach graduate and international executive education students at Kelley and served on both corporate and non-profit boards.
Wheeler’s nomination for the AIS award was strongly supported by several current and former vice presidents and CIOs at other leading universities in the U.S.
“Brad is the most effective leader I’ve met in my 35 years of higher education leadership experience,” wrote Mark Askren, University of Nebraska vice president and CIO from 2009 to 2019. “His expertise combined with extensive knowledge of the academy helped me and others around the country provide better services for our faculty, students and research activities.”
Steve Fleagle, associate vice president and CIO, Information Technology Services at the University of Iowa, added, “Dr. Wheeler’s work has fundamentally shifted approaches and paradigms in higher education. His leadership in envisioning what could be done and his skill in fostering collaboration among universities has paved the way for how institutions can work together to achieve common goals.”
“His abilities to see the future and bring together diverse business interests to work collaboratively has not only advanced the state of the art of technology management, but has also had a tangible impact on the world around us,” said Bernard Gulachek, vice president and chief information officer at the University of Minnesota.
Wheeler received his Ph.D. in information systems from the Kelley School in 1993. A native of Hinton, Okla., he received both his bachelor’s and MBA degrees from Oklahoma State University.
After learning that he won the AIS award, Wheeler gave credit to one of his former professors at OSU, Ramesh Sharda, who encouraged him to apply to a Big Ten university for his doctorate. “We never know where one comment by a professor will steer a student’s life,” he said.