WHO WE ARE

Matthew Wicks has extensive experience in the K-12 online learning field. In 1999-2000, he was one of the three people that founded the Illinois Virtual High School (IVHS) – a national leader in K-12 online learning and one of the earlier state-led online programs. IVHS was a supplemental program that served middle school and high school students in public, private, and home schooled students. Prior to becoming the Illinois Virtual School in July, 2009, IVHS provided just a little under 20,000 semesters of instruction to almost 600 schools in Illinois. Wicks served as director of IVHS from 2003-2006 and again during the last 8 months of the program. Prior to his leadership with IVHS, Wicks served as the Chief Information Officer for the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), Associate Department Head in the Computing Division at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Member of Technical Staff at AT&T.

During his time at IVHS, Wicks established himself as a national leader in the field. He was part of the group that founded the NACOL -the North American Council for Online Learning (now iNACOL - the International Association for K-12 Online Learning), serving on its inaugural board from 2003-2005. As chair of the Program Committee for NACOL, he instituted their regular webinars webinar series and served as chair of VSS2005, their annual national conference.

Wicks served as a speaker and a member of the advisory committee for the 2000 – 2004 National Virtual High School Symposium (VHS) conferences, the precursor to NACOL’s VSS event. He has conducted work shops on How to Start a Virtual School and spoke at the 2002 Canadian Virtual High School Symposium. In addition, Wicks has been a member of the teams that guided the nationally recognized research publication Keeping Pace from 2004-2008. In 2009, Wicks joined the research and writing team for Keeping Pace.

As principal of Wicks & Associates, Matthew Wicks is involved in all consulting projects. In order to expand the capacity and expertise, Associates join individual consulting projects.