Mickey Slimp

Broadband Project Manager
Deep East Texas Council of Governments (DETCOG)

Mickey Slimp initiated his communications career as a field reporter in the Virginia/Kentucky coal mines and as an ed tech researcher in Central America. With almost 30 years of experience in rural broadband, he is a project manager/consultant for the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, focusing on a HUD-funded flood mitigation broadband project and an NTIA Broadband Infrastructure Project award, both located on the heavily forested Texas-Louisiana border. He and Rob Hughes, the executive director of the Texas Forestry Association, recently released Beyond Homes: Connecting Texas Forests, a policy brief on the role of broadband for the timber industry and recreation.

Slimp has played a number of roles at the regional, state, and national level for over two decades. He managed the Northeast Texas Network for Colleges and Universities, initiated the East Texas Telepsychiatry Network, and was the founding director for the Virtual College of Texas. He served for 12 years on the boards of the Lonestar Education and Research Network, the backbone of Texas’ Internet2, and served on Internet2’s community anchor program advisory board.

He is CEO of MS Consulting and recently retired as an associate provost from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler. Slimp, who authored How the Internet of Things Is Changing Our Colleges, Our Classrooms, and Our Students, holds a doctorate in educational technology and will complete a master’s of public health this summer.