SALT LAKE CITY – Western Governors University (WGU) is welcoming Ashutosh Tiwary as its first Senior Vice President and Executive Dean of the College of Information Technology. In this role, Tiwary will set the strategic direction of the College to focus on building lifelong learning relationships with its students. Tiwary will build on the success of the College of IT’s current curriculum and expand the development of employer aligned and market relevant IT degree programs, and launch new educational offerings with just-in-time programs like microcredentials.
WGU’s College of IT currently serves nearly 26,000 students and has awarded more than 4,900 degrees that included 30,275 IT certifications in the last year. In a 2019 Harris Poll, 97% of surveyed employers say WGU grads met or exceeded their expectations. To benefit lifelong learners and keep pace with the rapidly changing technology needs of employers, Tiwary will focus on strengthening and expanding employer partnerships and scaling the curriculum development and delivery for the College of IT.
“After spending 30 years in the tech industry building technologies and businesses, I came to WGU as an education industry outsider to learn about this incredibly important field and the opportunity to impact the lives of thousands of students,” says Tiwary. “I'm thrilled about leveraging my business and technology domain knowledge to build upon the foundation that has been created at WGU and to have a bigger impact both on student’s careers and employers.”
Tiwary is an entrepreneur, innovator, and curious learner. His professional experience spans CEO, General Manager, and SVP roles across the IT Industry, including at Microsoft, AWS, and Teradata. While he has had many different professional experiences throughout his career, his passion is disentangling complex customer and organizational problems and collaborating toward the development of unique technical and business solutions. After running two start-ups and two acquisitions, creating and running a product unit at Microsoft, and leading a set of cloud services at AWS, Tiwary has developed an interest in cancer research and is also helping build a startup to join the fight in the cure for cancer.
“We are excited to welcome Ashutosh to WGU’s College of Information Technology,” said WGU Provost and Chief Academic Officer Marni Baker Stein. “His vast experience in the tech industry and passion for lifelong learning will be crucial to the University’s work to advance alternative learning pathways, such as microcredentials, and to deliver them at scale to our students.”
Tiwary earned his M.S. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University and is an ABD Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington in Computer Science with a focus on Operating Systems, Database Systems, and Performance Evaluation.
