Modernizing the Student Experience with Marilyn Smith

The pace of mergers and acquisitions has rapidly accelerated in higher education in recent years as institutions adapt to a changing market. But what happens behind the scenes when two institutions decide to join forces?

Northeastern University's CIO, Cole Camplese knows firsthand from his experience building a unified technology operation for his institution’s recent partnership with Mills College in Oakland, California. Learn about all the planning and efforts involved in this month's podcast.

When is the right time for an IT leader to move on to a new role at a new institution? How much should location matter versus potential for career growth? Aisha Jackson answers these questions and shares insights from her experience navigating the first year as a new technology leader since joining the University of California, Santa Cruz as Vice Chancellor of Information Technology in August 2022.  

As the Director of Enterprise Software Systems at Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania, Mary Beaver is a paragon of success in building and retaining a high-performing IT team. In fact, the CRM system she and her team of MCCC alumni built won Tambellini Group’s 2023 Innovative Technology Team Award. 

Listen in as Mary takes us behind the scenes and shares how IT mentoring and student worker programs helped her institution overcome the challenges of finding skilled IT team members.

A CIO with academic technology expertise is a rare yet valuable asset to any institution. With a PhD in instructional design, Dr. Patricia Kahn, CIO at College of Staten Island-CUNY, is one of those IT unicorns. 

In our latest Top of Mind podcast, she shares her method for collaborating with leadership peers in vetting and choosing the right mix of academic technology tools to ensure flexibility in teaching, learning, and working environments in an unpredictable world. 

While there isn’t one single definition of digital accessibility that applies to all higher education institutions, there are guiding principles that all should follow. Our Top of Mind guest this month, Brian Fodrey, Carnegie Mellon University’s Assistant Vice President of Business Innovation, shares the guidelines and steps his institution followed in creating their Digital Accessibility Office.

It’s no secret that the adoption of AI tools in higher education is growing by the day, and ChatGPT is leading the pack. Our Top of Mind guest this month, Dr. Lin Lin Lipsmeyer, Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University, gives us a thorough overview of the broad spectrum of views and opinions about ChatGPT’s future impact and its potential uses as both a teaching and learning tool. 

Vicki Tambellini, President and CEO of Tambellini Group, kicks off the new year with her annual take on the top technology trends for 2022, along with her predictions of the drivers that will have the biggest impact on the higher education market in 2023. Listen in for Vicki’s insights on how factors including budget pressures and IT hiring staffing shortages will affect institutions going forward, and the innovative ways some colleges and universities are responding to changing market forces. 

Baylor College of Medicine’s Human Genome Sequencing Center is at the forefront of leveraging scientific research for the cloud, and self-taught Cloud Engineer Noora Siddiqui is largely responsible for leading this progress. Noora joins the Top of Mind family this month to share her insights on how cloud migration is revolutionizing precision medicine, including the ability to calculate individuals’ risk of disease through combining data from genomic information and medical records. 

To realize the benefits of hyperautomation, the University of South Florida (USF) identified three crucial factors for success: an agile mindset, investing with the right partners, and a willingness to experiment with new technologies. Alice Wei, Assistant Vice President of Digital Transformation and Innovation at USF, joins the Top of Mind family this month to share how she spearheaded USF’s innovative strategies to rapidly deploy custom applications for the benefit of students, faculty and staff. 

Oral Roberts University (ORU) has one technological focus: to be the best campus for 21st-century students. Why? Because the student is worth it. Michael Mathews, CIO and Vice President of Global Learning and Innovation at ORU, joins the October episode of Tambellini Group’s Top of Mind podcast series to share how he made his dreams for the future of higher education come to life on campus. From adaptive planning to technology “taste testing,” ORU is transformative and leading by example in the race for a modern, student-centric campus.