Speaker Introduction

Stephen Fath, Ph.D. is currently Director of Biomedical Information Technology for The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s Medical School and Director of Interactive Video Services for the Health Science Center’s Office of Academic Computing.  Dr. Fath has been involved in the development and use of learning technologies since receiving his doctorate in Experimental Analysis of Behavior from Western Michigan University in 1981.  After teaching for five years at The City University of New York’s College of Staten Island, he was appointed as the Director of Educational Computing at the University of Texas Houston Medical School in 1986.  In 1997, he began introducing faculty to the pedagogical possibilities of next-generation, Internet-based, videoconferencing and streaming video applications.  A series of grants supported the development of a relatively inexpensive web-based video archive of the Medical School curriculum and other important lectures and activities in addition to providing videoconferencing equipment that allowed the Medical School to engage faculty and students located in remote clinics and hospitals in the daily activities of the university.  In the last two years, Dr. Fath has expanded the program to include the Health Science Center’s Schools of Nursing, Public Health, and Health Informatics, Dental Branch, and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.  The audience for UT-produced streaming media has also expanded and now includes faculty of the Pavlov State Medical University in St. Petersburg, Russia and the Sindh Institute in Karachi, Pakistan.