Campus Technology - Executive Summit

  • 09/01/10

The Campus Technology Executive Summit is an annual full-day, invitation-only event, held this year during the pre-conference of CT2010. The summit is designed to bring together a limited number of higher education technology leaders—this year’s exclusive event was tailored for 50—to discuss common issues and key strategies for higher education IT. There is a mix of invited participants: Many are CIOs, some are VPs or other top-level executives at higher education institutions, and some have roles as academic or IT directors, but all lead technology programs or initiatives on their campuses.

The day was highly interactive, with the expectation that participants would engage in the summit as key contributors to the day’s discussions. This year’s theme, “Leading in a New Age of Campus Technology,” started with a morning focus on “Technologies and Trends to Watch in Higher Education,” which sought to describe the current and emerging higher ed IT environment—both emerging tech and societal and institutional trends.

The afternoon was devoted to looking at the effects of these identified trends under the umbrella topic of “Technology Leadership Implications on Campus.” Within a broad-ranging discussion of leadership, participants had an opportunity to reflect on their own roles in the new landscape and discover valuable takeaways for themselves and their campus teams.

Susan Metros, associate vice provost and deputy CIO for technology-enhanced learning and professor of visual design and clinical education at the University of Southern California, provided a thoughtful opening keynote for the summit, “New IT Strategies for a Digital Society,” and showed examples of mapping IT initiatives to support institutional goals. She effectively illustrated why and how not to start with the technology—instead, begin by looking at your institution’s needs.

The moderator for the entire day was institutional leadership consultant Mely Tynan (pictured, center left), a three-time CIO recently retired from Tufts University (MA). Tynan led summit participants through a series of interactive plenary and small workgroup breakout sessions throughout the
day, encouraging participants to exchange insights and viewpoints as they prepare themselves to lead during challenging times. (Pictured, top left: Susanna Wong Herdon, director of technology-enhanced learning at the University of Texas-Austin, heads up a workgroup discussion.)

The day was rounded out with a “technology sandbox” session offered by Executive Summit sponsor CDW-G, which featured hands-on time with the latest high-end, commercially available technologies. The sandbox included cutting-edge products like the the LifeSize video conferencing system and the Entourage Edge dual-screen e-reader and tablet combination device.

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