3 Ways to Link IT Innovation to Campus Impact in 2025

A new year is just around the corner. For leaders across higher education, the holiday season is a great time to reflect on the successes and challenges of the current academic year, set intentions for the semesters ahead, and solidify goals for the upcoming academic year. With a freshly minted 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 emphasizing the importance of restoring trust in higher education as a key driver for the sector, institutional leaders and technologists should focus on leveraging established and emerging technologies to create greater impact for the communities their institutions serve. As institutional leaders reflect on the achievements of 2024 and look forward to goals and aspirations for 2025, consider the following focus areas to strengthen the connection between digital innovation, educational impact, and trust in higher education.

1. Prioritizing Security and Compliance for Every Corner of Campus

As cyberthreats become more sophisticated and educational institutions continue to weather high volumes of attacks, state and federal agencies in the United States are doubling down on increasingly stringent standards related to how colleges and universities handle sensitive student and research data.^Footnote1 As higher education institutions prepare for the fall 2025 Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC 2.0) compliance deadline for U.S. Department of Defense-funded research computing, the Department of Federal Student Aid is increasing compliance requirements for administrative systems that store and process federal tax information acquired through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).^Footnote2

Thankfully, cloud-based technology solutions continue advancing alongside increasingly sophisticated threats, equipping campuses to address both A Matter of Trust (issue #4 in the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10) and Institutional Resilience (issue #6). By turning to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), institutions inherit third-party validation of covered services against thousands of global standards and begin automating compliance and auditing processes with cloud operating models. By migrating critical applications to the cloud, institutions such as Xavier University of Louisiana are seeing improved security postures and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure costs.^Footnote3 Institutions are using cloud infrastructure to develop trusted research enclaves for complex and sensitive research projects. These bespoke environments allow individual researchers to manage workloads and store data while meeting specific required compliance standards.

As security and compliance mandates grow in number and complexity, partnering with cloud providers allows institutions to minimize their heavy lifting while turning as much attention as possible to addressing internal stakeholders' support needs.

2. Countering the Frontline Staffing Crisis with Automation

Across industries, the generative AI (GenAI) exploration boom has left leaders looking for opportunities to leverage the latest technologies to reimagine and rebuild their administrative processes, with a focus on modernizing experiences and automating complex manual processes. Administrative Simplification (issue #2 in the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10) will rely on wrangling old and new technologies alike to create seamless experiences with new processes and solutions.^Footnote4 With value likely to remain in the spotlight, use cases focusing on relieving student navigation challenges and burdensome manual processes that overwhelm staff will likely make the most significant impact, especially as student support staffing continues to see high rates of burnout and increased attrition.

According to the results of a 2023 CUPA-HR survey, more than half of all student affairs and enrollment staff were considering leaving their roles, and 71 percent of admissions officers have been in their roles for less than three years.^Footnote5 These results mean that leaders must find new ways of managing staff workloads in these key student-facing offices. Intelligent document processing for admissions and financial aid offers a path to streamline application processing and mitigate staff turnover. Institutions can further support staff and students with solutions designed to augment advising services, given that nearly half of all students receive no academic guidance due to staffing constraints.^Footnote6 Advisors need simplified access to academic planning information—such as guided pathways course recommendations and credit articulation solutions—so they can spend time fostering connections with students instead of searching for curricular information in multiple places.^Footnote7

And if GenAI is still high on the institutional agenda, technology leaders should take a look at the EDUCAUSE Generative AI Readiness Assessment—built in partnership with AWS—to determine the current state of their institution's strategy and governance, capacity and expertise, and infrastructure for innovation. When it's time to build, don't start from scratch. Consider how open-source projects, such as Amplify from Vanderbilt University, might accelerate progress.

3. Building a Bridge to the Future with Digital Skills Development for Staff and Students

In addition to driving innovation on campus with new capabilities and solutions, technology leaders should consider their role in developing the workforce of the future—both within their own teams and with the students at the institution. Although many leaders fear that upskilling staff makes them more likely to leave the organization, an EDUCAUSE community survey conducted earlier this year found that "mobility and growth opportunities" was one of two areas of job satisfaction most strongly correlated with staff retention.^Footnote8 Whereas Putting People First (issue #8 in the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10) in higher education IT requires prioritizing perks beyond competing on salary, developing an innovation-focused organization can be a draw for early career talent, and it can help institutions build emerging and hard-to-hire skill sets within their teams.^Footnote9

To make a stronger correlation between these opportunities and student development and workforce partnerships, IT organizations should consider new methods of collaboration that deliver much-needed career-connected learning opportunities aligned with industry guidelines and standards. For example, like many of its peers, Louisiana State University (LSU) found recruiting and retaining an effective cyber workforce to be a challenge. By turning to private partnerships, however, the institution was able to develop a 24/7/365 security operations center that not only provides protection for dozens of state universities and colleges in Louisiana but also creates an opportunity for hands-on security experience with the latest technologies for LSU students from multiple majors.^Footnote10 Cloud Innovation Centers and Digital Innovation Hubs offer similar applied learning experiences. These innovative solutions support the real-world problems of government, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions.

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As the fall semester ends, higher education leaders may have some well-earned time to reflect on how their institution can support staff and students with new approaches. Technology can—and should—be regarded as essential to that work. Digital innovation is a linchpin to building a competent and caring institution, whether in the form of a renewed commitment to security, a thoughtful implementation of data-driven AI and twenty-first-century tools for automation, or "radical collaboration" that will deepen skill sets and boost retention within teams while laying the groundwork for the workforce of the future.^Footnote11 As the hallways and public spaces on campuses become quiet this holiday season, consider how digital innovation can be channeled to support students, faculty, and staff, who create a rich environment for learning and research.

Notes

1. Scoop News Group, "Rising Cybersecurity Threats Target U.S. Higher Education Institutions," EDSCOOP, October 14, 2024. Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. U.S. Department of Defense, "Strategic Direction for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Program," press release, November 4, 2021; Jarret Cummings, "No 800-171 in the New SAIG Agreement," EDUCAUSE Review, November 21, 2023. Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. Marly Miller, "How Xavier University of Louisiana’s Migration to AWS Is Creating a 'Technology Renaissance,'" AWS Public Sector Blog, July 11, 2023. Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.↩
4. Susan Grajek and the 2024–2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Panel, "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: #2 Administrative Simplification," EDUCAUSE Review, October 23, 2024. Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩
5. Jacqueline Bichsel, Melissa Fuesting, Diana Tubbs, and Jennifer Schneider, The CUPA-HR 2023 Higher Education Employee Retention Survey, (CUPA-HR, September 2023). Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.↩
6. "Survey: Nearly Half of College Students Have Not Gotten Academic Guidance Crucial to Degree Progress," THE FEED, Georgetown University, March 3, 2023. Jump back to footnote 6 in the text.↩
7. See, for example, "Kern Community College District Partners with AWS to Build AI/ML-Enabled Guided Pathways Tool," AWS Public Sector Blog, April 3, 2024; and Diego del Blanco, "Articulation of Courses in College Transfer Credit Evaluations," Unicon (website), August 9, 2023. Jump back to footnote 7 in the text.↩
8. Mark McCormack, The IT Leadership Workforce in Higher Education, 2024, (EDUCAUSE, March 2024). Jump back to footnote 8 in the text.↩
9. Grajek, et al., "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: #8 Putting People First." Jump back to footnote 9 in the text.↩
10. "LSU Solves Cybersecurity Challenges with A Replicable Model Powered by TekStream and AWS," Amazon Web Services (website), February 2024. Jump back to footnote 10 in the text.↩
11. Grajek, et al., "2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10." Jump back to footnote 11 in the text.↩

Danielle Rowdy is Leader, U.S. Higher Education Strategy, at Amazon Web Services.

Patrick Frontiera is Higher Education Strategy Lead, Campus and IT Operations, at Amazon Web Services.

Kristi Wellington-Baker is Higher Education Strategy Lead, Student Experience, at Amazon Web Services.