[8] In January 1990, Wilson resigned from AAPT[11] and went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, as director of the Lois J. and Harlan E. Anderson Center for Innovation in Undergraduate Education and Professor of Physics.

In 1997 he was appointed as the J. Erik Jonsson '22 Distinguished Professor of Physics, Engineering Science, Information Technology, and Management at RPI, a capacity he held until 2001.

[8] Wilson founded UMassOnline in 2001, which enables students to earn accredited degrees online from the UMass system.

[2] At the University of Massachusetts, Wilson called for a rededication to the land grant mission as it might be viewed in the context of a modern innovative society.

[17] This put UMass at eighth in the nation at the time of his departure in 2011, according to the ranking of the Association of University Technology Managers.

He identified Africa, Japan, China, Germany, India, and the Portuguese language countries as particular first targets of opportunity, building on existing relationships of the university and his own work.

The Center is a joint venture among UMass, MIT, Harvard, Boston University, and Northeastern with support from EMC, Cisco, Accenture, and other companies.

[19] He continues at UMass Lowell as University Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, Innovation, and Emerging Technologies.

[2] In the private sector, Wilson was the founder, CEO, and Chairman of the LearnLinc Corporation, founded in 1993 as a spin-off of his university research.

[8][4] Wilson's expertise in building links between higher education, government, and business led to co-founding RPI's Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship as well as other programs.

From 1982 to 1990, Wilson served as the head of the American Association of Physics Teachers, a scientific society in Washington, DC.