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Digital Tweed: Shameless Self-Promotion
9/19/2005
Has campus IT leadership changed over the past 15 to 20 years? IT leadership has changed significantly over the past two decades. We’ve seen a dramatic shift in the focus of campus IT organizations from product and technology issues (Which products? Which is the “best” computer?) to service issues (How do we provide these resources to students, faculty, and staff?). Concurrently, the IT leadership has changed. With due respect to IT officers (then and now), in the early years of the so-called, much-hyped “computer revolution in education,” campuses would hire “heavy metal” guys—generally men with engineering or computer science degrees—to “manage” and contain the computer/ technology issues on campus. Technology was seen largely as a product problem. Today, a new generation of campus IT leaders recognize that technology really is a service issue. Moreover, many CIOs or senior campus IT officers now come to IT from the faculty ranks, and without computer science or engineering degrees. This new generation focuses on planning, policy, programs, and people. They don’t ignore the bits, bytes, and network stuff, but they recognize IT as a service issue. Also, and interestingly, many of the new IT leaders are women, not “heavy metal” guys. Some examples of this new generation who come to the CIO position from the academic side of the campus house: Diane Balestri (Ph.D., Literature) was CIO at Vassar College (NY) and later, Brown University (RI), before her untimely passing a few years ago; Diana Oblinger (Ph.D., Plant Sciences), was CIO for the University of North Carolina system before her current VP appointment to Educause; Lev Gonick (Ph.D., Political Science) is CIO at Case Western Reserve University (OH); Polly McClure (Ph.D., Botany), is the CIO at Cornell University (NY). Educause President Brian Hawkins (Ph.D., Organizational Development) was the CIO at Brown more than a decade ago. These individuals and many others have followed different paths to their current IT leadership positions. But those paths also document the significant shift in campus IT issues and organizations from a (narrow) focus on IT products to a (broad) concern with IT resources and services.
Any final comments? My sincere thanks to the many individuals who have supported The Campus Computing Project by completing our annual survey. Unsolicited e-mails and conference hallway conversations suggest that the project has proven useful to the campus community. And for those of you who have passed on the invitation to participate in the annual survey: We keep lists and know who you are.
Kenneth C. Green, visiting scholar at The Claremont Graduate University, is the founding director of The Campus Computing Project, a comprehensive, continuing study of the role of information technology at higher education institutions in the United States (www.campuscomputing.net).
View more articles by Kenneth Green.
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