Gerry: First can I just make sure that I have your name, title, and everything correct? Could you just introduce yourself to me real quick?
Aaron: OK, so I'm Aaron Brooks, and of course I'm here at East Mississippi Community College. My title currently is Director of Administrative Computing and System Reporting.
Gerry: Great, perfect. So I'll just get into the questions here, and we'll just get through 'em. I've got four questions.
Aaron: Sounds good.
Gerry: You've said that IT departments need to leave the data center. What do you mean by that?
Aaron: OK, so it's something I've learned, I guess you would say it's by trial and error, right? With a lot of strategies that we have goin' on campus. So I've been at the institution for about 18 years. I've touched on most every part of the IT department, except for, what, network administration, right? But I've run my share of cabling, and that kind of thing too, so... We were on a mainframe back in the day, and we sort of just stayed in the data center. And you know, we took requests, we ran reports, we did data. At that time we ran the grades, we even did some payroll. I mean you know, they looked at the data processing center at that time as, you know, those guys in the closets that just output stuff. And a lot of decisions were made around us, but not with us. Not having us as a part of the decision-making process. And so we were brought in on the tail end, and told to make it work, figure it out. And if we couldn't figure it out in-house, then you know, figure out what sort of software we could layer on top of the process to make it work. And what we started presenting to them was that these are expensive decisions, right? When you make these decisions that are not in tandem with the strategic moves that we're making in the back office, in the data center, you know, we're moving stuff to cloud, we're changing our email services, our communication services. We're finding applications that maybe bring some departments together and removing silos. And we're trying to implement these things and you all are functioning without us, and so we're tripping over each other, right? So I began to ask, "Hey, can I be a part "of this particular meeting that's about orientation? "Can I be a part of this meeting that's about registration?" "This meeting that is about," you know, "student success initiatives," and what have you. And as I started asking, they started allowing me to participate, you know, I started raising questions, I started offering comments and suggestions, that they started realizing actually fits within our business processes. And these are things that we need to think about. But we didn't realize technology could fit here. You know, student success initiatives for instance, they were tryin' to start early alert processes, right, and they were using email. And they had this paper copy that sort of followed the email. Except the paper copy went in the opposite direction that the email went. You know and things were just all out of sync, all out of sorts. It was causin' frustrations. It was like, "Well shucks, if somebody had told me, "you know, we could maybe create "a communication flow for ya." You know, kind of a deal. "Oh, we didn't know you could do that!" You know... That just one little piece then began to represent how we could, you know, sort of cheapen, make less expensive, some of these business processes, if they just allowed us to marry technology with the decision-making. And so that sort of gave us an assigned seat at the table, right? So now, you know, when these meetings are formed, and before these decisions are made, we have an assigned seat at the table, that says, "OK, let's make sure that we have a representative "from IT, Admin Computing, what have you, "here to help us sort of think this through." But even then, I would say that that was still sort of a lag process. Now we get a seat at the table to brainstorm, right? To actually help create ideas, you know. "What can technology do?" is now the question, not necessarily, "Here's our process, how can you help us?" Right? Now we get to actually brainstorm and say, "Hey, did you know that there's some "technology out there that'll text the student "whenever they make an F on their test grade? "And that text will actually put a link in there "that'll show them where tutoring help is, you know, "on the web site, and give them office hours, "and blah," you know, that kind of thing. "Oh, we didn't know that existed, that's a good idea! "Hey let's brainstorm, how do we put "a business process around that?" You know, that kind of thing, and, "How does that help our persistence and our retention, "and you know, at the end game, our graduation rates?" You know, that kind of thing. So now we're actually at the table, like I said with the assigned seat, actually helpin' brainstorm with these ideas that soon develop into our business processes.
Gerry: I can't imagine the amount of money and efficiency that has been incorporated with you guys having a seat at the table.
Aaron: What's the return on investment of the collaboration, right? That we didn't previously have. And so we actually hired a person to sort of be a project manager, and what her thing was, was to look at every business process that we have on campus. And she created this continuous improvement structure. But she helped broker this relationship between IT and the rest of the business, saying that they have to be at the table in order for us to continuously improve this process, kind of a deal. So we're now going to put a dollar amount on, what does this collaboration save us, right? And what's the monetary value of having this, and minimizing the rework that we have to do on the back end when we realize, "Ugh, if we had of used our technology "that we're already payin' $30,000 "a year for in maintenance fees," right? Those tools inside of that. Except some office went and bought this standalone piece for $5,000 a year,you know. Breakin' down the silos, openin' up communication, yeah, there's definitely a savings.
Gerry: Wow, that's great. You've been talking about, it but can you talk a little bit more about IT as a collaborator? I've been in the industry for 11 years, and I've heard it discussed and discussed. What's held us back, what are the major challenges for our industry, having never fully achieved this goal?
Aaron: Just my own personal hypothesis is that IT as a function, you know, we like bein' in the closet, right? Just gimme some gadgets to work on, and tell me what you want, you know, what your output needs to be. And I'll go in the closet, and I'll take my tools and my expertise and I'll make it happen. And then I'll send it to you and say, "Hey, is that what you want?" Right? And that's how we seem, especially here in Mississippi in our community college brotherhood, or sisterhood. So there's 15 community colleges, and you know, we meet three times a year as IT, as technologists, just to talk about our business of higher ed, community college, and whatever. And you know, when you look around the room and in our discussions, that's kinda what we like. We like to be left alone and just given our box. You know, we go in the data center and we ooh and ah about our servers, and you know, gigabit switches, and you know, how fast our data recovery systems are, and blah blah blah, right? And so, there's some certain personalities that we actually have to have in IT now that are communicators. Right, that are able to speak for and of the technology in a way that the business people get it. Right? Without necessarily transgressing the boundaries within the business. Because the CFO's gonna say, "Don't touch my money," HR's gonna say, "Hey, don't touch my EEOC stuff," and payroll's gonna say, "Hey, the way the feds make us "keep up with the is just the way the feds "make us keep up with this," right? So you know, as a collaborator, we have to know our boundaries, but we also have to sort of be intentional, in saying, "Hey, we're here, we have these tools," you know. "We know what these tools can do, "let us help you do what the business does "with these tools that are available." So what I had to do is I had to go and learn the business processes. I had to figure out, what does the registrar do? What does admissions, you know, do? You know, what happens over in the financial aid department? Right, and so in learning all of these pieces intentionally, then I could speak, you know, from what I've experienced in their departments, wedded with the technology that I know that we have available to us, and expertise that I know we have in our IT departments. I could wed them together and create, you know, a good business argument. Saying, "Hey, here's why we need to talk," right? "Here are the gaps that I'm seeing, "and here are the things that I think "can become advantageous to us." So we even did sort of a SWOT analysis, right, of the business, and also of IT, and said, "Hey, here's where our threats and our opportunities "and, you know, all those things, "actually criss-cross with each other. "If we fix it, if we fix this, "we're actually fixin' both sides." Right?
Gerry: Yeah, yeah.
Aaron: Technology and the business, you know. Which then bodes well for our customer, which is the student, right? 'Cause that's really who it's going to work for, is the student. So it took some serious intentionality, saying, "Alright guys, you know, we really have to find "a way to communicate, you know, "with our dean of students, our dean of academics, "our dean of career tech," you know. "And show them that we've got this side, "but we really need to know their side. "They need to know our side, "so that we're not fighting each other." We're not competing anymore, right, because when the budget comes out, you know, IT is sayin', "Hey, we need $500,000 "because we wanna do this, this, this, and this." Except none of that aligns with the strategies that they've set over there on the business side, over in academics, that they want so many labs for, you know, journalism, and our radio production studios, and blah, you know, kind of a deal.
Gerry: It's amazing.
Aaron: Right, we're takin' that dollar and we're stretchin' it two different ways, and we can actually work to where that dollar actually works for all of us.
Gerry: That's a good starting point for this next question. What would your advice be to CIOs and people like yourself, directors, in terms of getting and having a seat at that strategic table? Because it sounds like you guys are pretty enlightened in terms of that relationship, but I would imagine there are some universities and institutions where that hasn't quite happened yet. And maybe it's the executives who don't see the value, maybe it's the other way around, I don't know. But what would your advice be to those guys, like yourself, that are looking to try to create that gap, to create those efficiencies?
Aaron: So, that's exactly what I had to do, what you mentioned. A lot of times, our senior staff does not see that value. They consider us a utility, the same that they would look at the physical plant, right? So they keep the air conditioners going, they keep the heat runnin', you know, whatever it is they do. They kinda look at IT the same way. As long as everybody can check email, get on the internet, log into the learning management system, IT's doin' their job, right?
Gerry: Well it's like, that might've worked in 1991.
Aaron: Unfortunately, we have senior staff that still think that way, because they became VPs in 1991,right? You know, and the business still runs as the business, according to them. So what I had to do was I had to find small pieces where I showed value, right? And then I had to tie that value to something that affected our funding, right? So my easy one was registration. How can IT help registration? Because registration affects hit count, which our funding model in Mississippi is directly tied to our hit count. More hit count, right, more funding, OK? So my thing was, how do we increase registration as an IT? What can we do? Well, what we need to do is we need to streamline online registration. And then we need to help our recruiters push students to that online registration. So let's give the recruiters a really good tool, right, and let's make online registration really, really good,you know. Except that we didn't necessarily have the expertise in my IT department to, you know, create those outputs, create those applications and what not. So we sort of had to piece together, what can we do in-house, what can we purchase at a really good price, which means we had to do some product research and that kind of thing. And then, let's talk to the VP of enrollment management, and let's say, "Hey, here's what we got to offer, here's a plan. "We really feel like there's value in this," right? And they were a little iffy, you know, there wasn't much trust there,right? Because they're not used to IT saying, "Hey, we got a plan for you," right? So I had to really work on that relationship. You know, which is typically what it comes down to, relationships, right? And so in developing that relationship, I gave them something small that they could look at and that they could see, "Hey, if we test this "with a small group, let's use some high school students, "let's test this with that dual-enrolled group, "and let's see how well that works," right? And it worked OK, right, and so we got feedback from the students, we got feedback from, you know, the instructors and advisors that were helping those students usin' the tools that we provided. And they said, "Well hey, if you tweak these things, "then it would be even better." So we take these things back, we tweak them, we talk to our third-party vendor that was supplying software. They did their tweaks. And we could see some increases in enrollment, right, that we could tie directly back to the tools, right. And they gave us some small wins, right. To where, hey, maybe you can trust us with student success initiatives, where we're tryin' to do early alert, as I mentioned earlier. And tutoring services, you know, and those kinds of things. So we looked for some small places where we could show our value. And of course that value bein' directly tied to funding, right, it could show some places where it could move money, that, you know, allowed them to now think of us whenever they're thinkin' of some other initiative that they have goin' on. That, "Yeah, remember IT showed us this, "hey, let's go talk to IT," right? The other thing that we did was, I actually... Sort of invited myself to some of the grant-writers on campusas they began to brainstorm about grants that were goin' on. Sort of invited myself to some of their brainstorming sessions. And we ended up gettin' a Bill and Melinda Gates grant, right? For technology, for student success. But it focused on retention. So because it was a technology grant, I had to be the lead writer. And I partnered with the student success coordinator. We won the grant, and you know, that sort of married us with them, and they got to sit beside us for two years and see how we work. We got to see how they work. And that created this bond and this relationship. To now, everything they do over at student success, they call us.
Gerry: Right.
Aaron: You know, "Come over here, we gotta talk about this. "Here's somethin' new we're thinkin' about." You know. And so that created a relationship as well, you know. And it was tied once again to money,right? Grant funds, right, with these initiatives, you know. So those small places where we were able to develop a relationship helped prove to our senior staff that, you know what, we really need them to have a regular place at the table for decision-making. So, at the end of last year, we actually got a seat at the table for our strategic planning, right? "10-year plan, we want them at the table," you know.
Gerry: That's great, that's great!
Aaron: From where we were 10 years ago asking, "Hey, notice us, notice us, notice us," you know, now we're a part of, you know, developing the strategic plan, as well as our accreditation team.
Gerry: So that sounds like the main piece of advice you're saying, is like, the provables can't be abstract, it has to have some sort of meat on the bone, right?
Aaron: You know, as I've said before, be intentional, but you have to plug away at those relationships. You know, they're not built overnight. That trust isn't built overnight. And to be able to change their perception of IT, as a collaborative partner, you know, that helps us move our business forward, it takes a while to do. It takes a while.
Gerry: So, last question, and again this question, if you don't have an answer for it I totally understand. This is the $64,000 question. How do you see IT fitting into the university structure in the future, I mean where do you go from here? You've established the relationship, you've got a seat at the table, is there anything else you see that is another challenge that you wanna overcome?
Aaron: Our high school classes are shrinkin'. You know, those that graduate from high school in Mississippi, we're gettin' smaller classes. And so you know, and then those students are looking for different things. You know their expectations of us, you know, their social methodology is just different from what the traditional classroom is, you know. We're getting younger instructors that expect to teach differently, right? Our business office, you know, they're seein' fewer people at the window, right, 'cause everybody's expectin' to do business online. You know, "My credit card oughta just follow me wherever." From the cafeteria to the bookstore to the business office, you name it, you know. "I shouldn't have to pay for a parkin' ticket "at the business office window,"right? So all of those things take strategic decisions, strategic foresight, that just has to be up there, that we see at the VP level. You know, where decisions are born, right? So that's really where wanna move forward, and we really see that as becoming sort of the model for universities, colleges, across the nation, that you have to have that person there that can see into the future. Because we're state-funded, we can't necessarily be leading-edge, or even cutting-edge, right, but we have to be right behind that, you know? Because we don't have the advantage of being able to play with our dollars, right? Test out cool stuff, right?
Gerry: Well it sounds like exciting stuff's goin' on at your college though.
Aaron: Absolutely. But yeah, so that's kind of where I see it.
Gerry: Cool, man. That's all I have. Is there anything you wanna add that we haven't touched on?
Aaron: I guess the other thing is for people I guess in my position to realize that you're not alone. So you know, I read a lot of material, I get a lot of stuff from you know, EDUCAUSE, and I read the magazine. And for us to be collaborative, I guess, you know, as a team, and share this kind of information. And sort of, you know, there are the technical trends that are out there, and you know, a lot of those I would love to take advantage of. And you know, there are private schools that can really do some amazing stuff. And I sort of watch them and try to take some of that stuff and see if I can embed it, you know, in small ways here at our college, you know, kind of a deal.
Gerry: Let them be the test case.
Aaron: Absolutely, without breakin' the bank. But we love for those types to share what they're doin'. And let it sort of trickle down to us.