July 15, 2008
Are College CIO's Thinking What Their Bosses Are Thinking?
The chief information officer at a college or university is a key position, says Wayne A. Brown, who may be forgiven a slight bias: He is the CIO of Johnson County Community College. But he has data to support the claim. Four times since 2003, Mr. Brown has surveyed CIO’s and their managers, either college presidents or vice presidents, about the job. The 2008 survey has just come out. (Mr Brown says it will be available online here shortly.) Everyone agrees the job is important, but not why, or what a CIO should really be good at.
Q. How is your survey done?
A. There are two parts. One is sent to the CIO, and we got 435 responses from technology officers at places including community colleges, liberal-arts colleges, major research institutions, and service academies, all in the United States. I asked about their roles, their career paths, and some demographic information. The second part went to the management team of these CIO’s, which I define as college presidents and any vice presidents that the CIO’s report to. I ask their ideas about the CIO’s role and effectiveness. I got 130 responses from this group of people.
Q. Do the groups have different ideas about the CIO’s role?
A. Well, the CIO’s thought they were most effective as classic IT-support providers. That’s basically putting PC’s on desktops. But their managers thought that CIO’s were most effective in explaining and determining the college’s technology course into the future. Managers really want their CIO’s to be “informaticists.”
Q. Is that a problem?
A. Yes, because obviously there’s a big disconnect there. Presidents have different expectations for the CIO’s than the CIO’s have for themselves.
Q. How can CIO’s change this?
A. I think there is an opportunity here for CIO’s. The role of “IT educator” is at the bottom of their list of what they think they are effective at. But educating the management of a college about technology, or educating the faculty, is exactly what those managers want. Because we as CIO’s say it’s least important to us, we’re going to be least effective at it.
We should embrace that role as educators. We always complain that management doesn’t understand us and doesn’t appreciate what we know. Well, we have to teach them about technology. That’s our job. Who is going to do it if we don’t?
Q. Is that part of the evolution and maturation of the CIO position?
A. Yes. Degrees in technology management have not been around that long. For example, the guy I replaced here at Johnson County had a music degree, I think. That’s changing, and it will continue to change as current CIO’s reach retirement age—which, the survey shows, is coming soon for many of us.
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CIOs ought to be working with the real educators – Provosts and Deans. This survey reveals the continuing arrogant assumptions of CIOs and the conflation of roles that their managers – i.e. their immediate reports – encourage. It’s not a one person show but actually Information and Communication Technologies – communicatiing is what educators do and they must be included in this dialog.
yatcy
— yatcy Jul 15, 05:06 PM #
Interesting article, but when speaking of CIOs in the plural sense, don’t use an apostrophe. It only shows contractions (it is) and possession (it’s the CIO’s role…).
— dj Jul 15, 05:14 PM #
I think the best degree a CIO could have would be a PhD in a discipline, as well as technology qualifications. Too many CIOs working in edu institutions could be anyplace else – they don’t understand much about teaching and learning because their own education is limited. The best of them have Phd’s, teach as well as administer large technology departments. I also agree with #1 commenter – the academic administrators need to be involved.
— billgray Jul 15, 05:15 PM #
DJ, I agree. The use of an apostrophe to indicate plural CIOs and PCs is a punctuation error that detracts from the article. Where was the editor?
— L Wood Jul 16, 09:46 AM #
What dj said. The proliferation of grammatical errors from respected publishers and editors is getting out of control.
— artemis Jul 16, 09:48 AM #
16% of the respondents held a terminal degree and 60% held a master’s. The full report will be posted at http://www.league.org/publication/whitepapers/index.html in the next few days
— Wayne Jul 16, 09:56 AM #
I think the CIOs themselves have the correct definition. Actual leadership and creativity in academic and instructional computing is from the ground up, not the other way around.
— Marcus Ivanovich Jul 16, 12:07 PM #
I agree with #1that it’s not a one-person show, but if forced to choose (and who in higher ed is not, these days), I’d go with basic IT support since it affects the largest number of people in the widest range of ways. I agree with #3 that a CIO at an edu needs to understand higher education and how it differs from other types of organizations. But I’m not sure a PhD is the best guarantee of that. Just a couple of years ago, I took a fairly difficult problem to a CIO who had a PhD in a theory-based field. We just couldn’t get beyond “what an interesting problem.” Yes, it’s an interesting problem, and a tough one and can we now please solve it? The “vision thing” IS important but it won’t amount to much if the network is down too often or admin rights are too closely held or people can’t get upgrades or whatever. Seems to me the CIO role is as multi-faceted as any in central admin. A PhD—even in computer science—doesn’t help if you can’t set priorities, lead, communicate, AND get things done.
— userid Jul 16, 03:19 PM #
I agree with #8 about the need for a CIO to be able to have a vision, get things done, etc. However, having a Phd doesn’t preclude that ability. The example given describes an employee who oughtn’t to be in that high position period. I think the post reflects, to some degree, the disdain CIOs can feel towards academics. This, in turn, affects their attitude that They know best what educator’s technology needs are. I think it’s a much more integrative process.
— hilaryg Jul 16, 04:37 PM #