From 1998 to 2005 he was director of information resources and associate professor in the Faculty of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary.
In 2015 he was inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence for community service, his work in heritage preservation and in distance learning.
In August 2011, the premier opened the 53,800-square-foot Academic Research Centre funded by a 2007 $30 million grant from Alberta’s Ministry of Advanced Education and Technology.
Both were funded by the Government of Canada’s Knowledge Infrastructure Program, the Province of Alberta and internals sources.
[4] In 2008 he also initiated the university’s first fundraising campaign Open Our World, which successfully concluded in 2015 exceeding its $30 million target.