Bruce Taggart
Chair of the KeystoneREN Board of Managers

Dr. Taggart has over 40 years of senior level higher education leadership experience. For twenty years he served as the Vice Provost for Library & Technology Services at Lehigh University where he provided leadership and strategic direction for campus-wide information technology resources, libraries, research computing, online learning, networking, cybersecurity, academic infrastructure and innovation in teaching and learning
initiatives. During his tenure at Lehigh, he was the recipient of two National
Research Foundation (NSF) Campus Cyberinfrastructure awards and served on NSF
CC* grant review panels. Prior to Lehigh University, Dr. Taggart was the Executive
Director for Information Technology at Portland State University (Oregon), and
prior to that was the Associate Director of the University of Connecticut Computing
Center. Dr. Taggart has written and presented nationally and internationally on the
areas of leadership, organizational development, strategic planning, library
transformation, new paradigms in teaching, and preparing college campuses for
teaching in the 21st Century. Dr. Taggart has actively participated and held senior
leadership positions on state and national committees, including the State of
Connecticut Higher Education Strategic Planning Council, State of Oregon
Governor’s Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the Northwest Academic
Computing Consortia, Educause, the Mellon Foundation funded Open Library
Environment (OLE) initiative, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development
Corporation, and the federally funded Pennsylvania Keystone Initiative for Network
Based Education and Research (KINBER), and KeystoneREN.

Wayne Figurelle, The Pennsylvania State University
Vice Chair of the KeystoneREN Board of Managers

Wayne Figurelle is Assistant Director at the Institute for Computational and Data Science Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State University. Wayne has over 25 years of experience as a senior manager, with a focus in computer engineering. Figurelle joined Penn State in 2001 as senior technical specialist of the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PennTAP) and was promoted to director of PennTAP in 2006. He has also served as director of Industrial Innovation Programs and the EDA University Center in the Penn State College of Engineering. He joined ICS as assistant director in 2014. Prior to joining Penn State, he held positions at Raytheon and Link Computer Corporation.

Robert ‘Bob’ Messner, Harrisburg Area Community College
Treasurer of the KeystoneREN Board of Managers

Robert (Bob) Messner, Jr., Keystone Renn Board, serves as the Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information & Security Officer at Harrisburg Area Community College. He holds a master’s degree in information systems and technologies from Wilmington University and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) through ISC2. With extensive experience in cyber security, risk management, organizational improvement, and strategic planning,  Bob also is an appointed outside board director for Horizon Farm Credit.  Bob brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in safeguarding information systems and managing digital risks.

Carrie Rampp, Franklin & Marshall College

Carrie Rampp is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Franklin & Marshall College. Prior to joining F&M in early 2014, she spent 6 years as Director of Library Services and Instructional Technology at Bucknell University and 12 years in various IT and library roles at Middlebury College. Rampp has received and served as PI on 3 major NSF awards to advance cyber infrastructure at F&M totaling $1.2M.  These awards have allowed F&M to build out a state of the art network, compute cluster and the most recent award will dramatically expand research-related storage capacity. Rampp received a BA from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, an MA in History from Southern Methodist University, and an MS in library and information science from Syracuse University.  

Tom Dugas, Duquesne University

As the Vice President for Technology and Chief Information Officer (VP/CIO), Tom Dugas is responsible for overseeing the operations of Computing and Technology Services (CTS), Duquesne University’s central IT organization. As the VP/CIO, Tom oversees and directs the efforts of CTS, including the oversight of Information Security, Administrative Applications, IT Engineering & Operations, and IT Service and Support Management. Tom won the 2023 EDUCAUSE Community Leadership Award for his extensive participation and leadership in the higher education technology community. Tom also won the 2019 Pittsburgh Technology Council CISO of the Year Award. Tom has been featured in Network World, Inside Higher Education, University Business, and Mighty Guides for his work in Higher Education Cloud Computing. He has spoken at conferences nationally and regionally on topics ranging from leadership, cloud computing, information security, customer support, project management, and service management. Tom serves as Vice President for the Pittsburgh InfraGard Chapter. Tom is also a member of the Internet2 NET+ Product Advisory Group, Internet2 AI Working Group, and Internet2 Cloud Scorecard Working Group. He is also part of the Greater Pittsburgh CIO Group. He is also an active member of the CCUE Board, AICUP Technology Consortium, and ISC2. He previously served as co-chair of the EDUCAUSE ECAR Cloud Computing Working Group. Tom has also been a member of the Internet2 Cloud Services Working Group(CSWG) and the ECAR Cloud Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) Working Group. Tom served for several years as the co-lead of the EDUCAUSE Cloud Computing Constituent Group.  Tom is an alumnus of the 2024 MOR Advanced IT Leadership Program, 2009 Leading Change/Frye Leadership Institute and the 2006 Educause Institute Leadership Program. 

Nathan Flood, KINBER

Nathan Flood is the current President and CEO at KINBER with over decade of experience in high profile leadership roles. At KINBER, he led the organization and teams through difficult transitions, improving overall operations, increasing revenue, and maximizing asset value.

Mark Poepping, Carnegie Mellon University

Mark Poepping is Head IT Architect in the central Computing Services organization at Carnegie Mellon. His research activities include EDDY Project co-PI and co-lead of CyDAT, the Cyber-center for Diagnostics, Analytics, and Telemetry within CyLab at Carnegie Mellon. Mark joined Carnegie Mellon at the Software Engineering Institute in 1985 and contributed on the original Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) efforts in 1988. As Head IT Architect for Computing Services, Mark is responsible for leadership in long-range technology and mid-range architecture to guide designs in the computing infrastructure and environment for the local and global campus. Mark is co-PI of EDDY (End-to-end-Diagnostic-DiscoverY), an effort to establish an architecture and experimental base for orchestration and analysis of diagnostic and performance data of large distributed systems (http://www.cmu.edu/eddy). This effort has expanded into CyDAT, an effort to advance the quality of tools and methods for situational awareness in distributed IT-enabled systems, and specifically to help facilitate safe access to operational data for research purposes. Mark received his BS in Mathematics in 1980 from St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, and an MS in Computer Science in 1982 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is chair of the Internet2 security advisory committee (Salsa), a charter member of the Internet2 middleware committee (MACE), and member of the EduCause IT Architecture constituency group.