Earving L. Blythe

Erv Blythe is the Vice President for Information Technology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has a B.A. degree from VPI&SU in English (1968). His Masters degree (1983) and doctoral studies (not completed) are in the Environmental Design and Planning Program of the College of Architecture. Since coming to Virginia Tech in 1977 from the U.S. Department of Defense/Department of the Navy and prior to becoming Vice President in 1991, Mr. Blythe has served in a number of roles, including Associate Director of Computing, Director of Communications Resources, and Principal Investigator for several sponsored projects including the development of the Virginia Education and Research Network and of the Network Virginia project. He was also the primary architect of the University's uniquely successful migration of its administrative systems to an enterprise-wide, client-server based resource that fully leverages the Internet and open systems standards. He provided executive leadership and was the primary advocate for the University's nationally recognized Electronic Villages program, eCorridor's program and Scholarly Communications/Network-based Publishing project. The focus of his research interest is on the technological and market structure obstacles to the emergence of regional and national advanced communications network infrastructure. He teaches a graduate seminar related to that topic in the spring semester. Blythe serves on a number of committees, task forces and boards of directors - including the Blacksburg Electronic Village, Inc., Virginia Tech's Corporate Research Center, Inc., and the National LambdaRail, Inc. boards.