MSU Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Information Officer Melissa Woo joined colleagues from major research universities recently as part of a panel discussion on Higher Ed’s Digital Future hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Woo joined Arcadia University CIO, Rashmi Radhakrishnan, and University of Missouri Senior Director for Academic Technologies, Danna Wren, to discuss how universities utilize technology to enhance the educational and research experience.
Hosted by The Chronicle’s Assistant Managing Editor, Ian Wilhelm, the discussion ranged on a number of topics from the “Digital Transformation” taking place within higher education to cybersecurity on campus.
Woo said Digital Transformation is really workplace transformation that allows for a better user experience.
“It’s higher ed transformation,” she said. “It’s business transformation. It’s just a set of tools that we can use in order to improve the experience of our students, faculty and staff.”
Woo added that the pandemic accelerated higher ed’s adoption of tools that have become essential to meeting student, faculty, and staff needs. She said it’s not only necessary to meet the needs of the university’s 18-to-22-year-old students, but also provide the flexibility needed for faculty and staff whose lives have shifted over the course of remote work.
“Having these new tools allow us to provide some level of asynchronous interactivity with people and our instructors,” Woo said. “So, it does provide that extra flexibility. It also gives us tools to use for that in-person time, if you do have in person time, to its best advantage, or perhaps even to use synchronous time to its best advantage.
“It’s getting back to this notion of having more flexibility for people,” Woo added. “We have a remote and hybrid, and on-premise workforce, and I think that’s fantastic.”
Woo said the transformation taking place at MSU has provided the opportunity to address concerns on campus around sustainability and energy conservation. She pointed to the Operations Center announced this fall as a step toward utilizing data to create efficiencies on campus.
Woo made sure to highlight MSU IT’s focus on user-experience throughout the discussion.
“What I try to do is make sure we address what’s in it for [stakeholders],” Woo said. “It’s all about having empathy.”
You can watch the recording of the Zoom panel discussion at chronicle.zoom.us.
