Amelia "Mely" Tynan, vice provost and chief information officer at the University of Rochester, has been invited to become a founding member of Microsoft's newly formed Higher Education Advisory Group. The group has been formed to establish a community of higher education leaders to whom Microsoft can look for candid feedback and advice.

The new consulting group has its first meeting in September.

Tynan, the University's first CIO, came to Rochester in 1999. She oversees a staff of 175 in academic technology services, administrative computing, data center services, and telecommunications services. Before joining the University, she was vice provost for information technology at the University of Arizona.

From 1998 to 2002, she served on the board of EDUCAUSE, where she was elected secretary and then vice chair. She has just finished serving as director of EDUCAUSE's Leadership Institute. She is also a board member of NYSERNET, the consortium of New York universities providing advanced data networking facilities for research and education.