The Northern Tier started out building a research and education network where a void existed in the national infrastructure. The effort was about people believing in the greater good, and a can-do attitude that people with a vision, and a cause, tend to have.

The early days were about dialog, supportive conversation, and sharing how others were successful, as well as, leveraging any and every piece of good luck that anyone could muster. It was about telling our collective and individual stories to congressional delegations, local politicians, and other interested parties. Learn more about the history of the NCTC (opens in a new window) from this 2023 Internet2 Community Exchange presentation.

The dialog was spent on telling the naysayers and the special interests groups this idea was not about them, but the collective good of the nation, region, and individual states.  It was creating a tool that facilitated new ideas and collaboration between our universities, researchers, and educators anywhere in the world no matter the time and/or place.

We have been true to our mission and the individuals who started down this path, and our network is up and running.  While we need to continue these efforts the major focus will now shift to why all the hard work to date was done.

Now we are on to empowering our collective research and education faculty to ask the bigger questions and engage in holistic research with colleagues. We are able to do this where ever we are in the world and not worry about time, place, or constraints placed on us because we were in the cyber-isolated part of the United States.

Now that the network is well established we can focus on the research and educational need of the Northern Tier region.