TeamDynamix customer Param Bedi, Vice President for Library and Information Technology at Bucknell University, was featured in EdScoop where he explained the four elements involved in the university’s approach to making technology more valuable to the institution’s mission.
By Param Bedi, Vice President for Library and Information Technology at Bucknell University
April 28, 2017
At Bucknell University, like at many universities, our IT division has had to become very strategic in how we invest our limited time and money to advance our institutional goals.
Over the past few years, we have been able to make broad changes that better serve our university’s mission, without adding more staff. We also were able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual IT spending, in part by outsourcing traditional IT functions that others can provide for less money, such as our email and library systems.
But the most important outcome was how reorienting our approach to IT allowed us to focus on transforming teaching and research at Bucknell University. Perhaps just as impressive is that we have accomplished these changes during a period of economic austerity, without increasing our division’s headcount.
We have been able to do this by being very deliberate in where we have focused our library and IT resources, which were driven by a vision to make Bucknell a leader in digital scholarship and commit to using data to drive our decisions making.
A key mistake that many institutions make is continuing to operate the way they traditionally have, simply because that’s how they have always done things in the past. In contrast, we have not been afraid to change direction or reallocate existing resources to serve our institutional goals more effectively.
It’s an easy concept to articulate, but much harder to put into practice. In adopting this mindset, we have created a culture within our division in which everything we do aligns with our organizational priorities. If it doesn’t, we won’t do it.
Our approach has involved four essential elements: a vision or framework to guide our efforts, the personnel to execute this framework, technology to support it, and a strong focus on the change management processes needed to pull it off.