Author: Cole Camplese

New Round of Coffee with Cole

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I cannot believe we’ve reached the end of the fall semester here at Stony Brook! The first four months of my time here has flown by and while I have tons of things to reflect on over the Holidays, the one thing I may have enjoyed the most has been the Coffee with Cole sessions. They filled up so quickly that lots of people got left out, so I decided to schedule another batch for the spring semester — oh, and did I mention I really liked them?

DoIT VP Coordinator’s Office

So do me a favor and jump over and pick a date in the spring where you can join me for coffee and open, informal conversations. And while you are at it, join the Yammer group!

Photo credits Todd Stadler on Flickr

(Virtual) Coffee with Cole

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I’ve been enjoying the Coffee with Cole sessions I’ve been doing every few weeks … so much that I intend to extend them and open some more up (so look for an invite). Since I can only do so many and that space is limited to five guests I decided to add a new channel to connect. I created an open group in the Stony Brook Yammer space called, “Coffee with Cole.” Please feel free to join the group and leave comments, post questions, or suggestions. I am subscribed to the group via email, so I should see everything that gets posted there. Join the conversation!

Coffee with Cole in Yammer

Presentation to Stony Brook Council

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This morning I had my first opportunity to address the Stony Brook Council and share with them a bit about the work we do here at the University. I didn’t want to do a standard, “this is IT” update so I tried to share with them a handful of contemporary challenges we face every day across higher education and talk briefly about how we are addressing them. I wanted them to see IT in a different light, as what it really is — an enabler of success on our campus.

To that end I focused my remarks on a few core areas that I thought they might be less likely to associated with IT — teaching and learning, enabling access, security issues, and how we are helping to push the Operational Excellence agenda forward. I tried to keep it light, but also express how much we do to support the teaching, research, service, and administrative missions of the University. I’d be happy to share the presentation either face to face or online at some point.

Wireless Use

The talking points for the above slide really made an impact — people don’t think of the utter scale of connectivity we manage every minute on and around our campus. I pointed out that it isn’t just laptops anymore, that it is also phones, tablets, game systems, google glass, and other things consuming our connections throughout the day and night. I think it really hit home just how critical the network is when showed a slide that listed some of the other services that run on the network — door access, ticket sales, security cameras, digital signage, and more.

The other thing that was an interesting was to see the overall reaction to our focus on teaching and learning. They were very impressed with our participation and support of the first SBU MOOC … and I made sure to highlight bot the higher than normal completion rates and the unique local and distance students taking the course. I think it really illustrated how innovative we are. The other tidbit I made sure got in there was the rapid growth in technology supported classrooms … I made the case that technology is truly a competitive advantage on a campus, sometimes tipping a student towards enrolling here.

Classroom Growth

All in all I felt it was a good conversation and a good way to introduce our work to the Stony Brook Council.

Addressing University Senate

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Today at 3:30 I will be addressing the Stony Brook University Senate. I was invited by Senate President, Dr. Fredrick Walters to both introduce myself to the Senate and provide a brief update. I don’t intend to spend more than 10-15 minutes talking, but will be sharing both my observations from the first 8o days here as well as my overall strategic priorities for DoIT.

Strategic Priorities

My DoIT Strategic Priorities

I think it will be interesting to see if there are questions afterwards … and know that I will either update this post or do another one after the fact. I am making an overt offer to attend department meetings and to invite the larger community to attend the Coffee with Cole sessions. Again, we shall see. At the end of the day, I am just honored to have the opportunity to represent DoIT and get to know our University Senate.

cDACT Tour

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I was lucky enough to get a very interactive tour of the Consortium for Digital Arts, Culture, and Technology, or cDACT, lab by Margaret Schedel today … she invited me over to see a bunch of the students in action.  All of them are doing such amazing things with art, music, and technology. It was an absolutely inspiring way to spend an hour and a half of my day. I highly recommend checking it out!


A Chance to Connect

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I haven’t updated this space in quite some time and for that I am sorry … my intention is maintain a space that encourages engagement and discourse and that only happens when someone starts the conversation.  So while I haven’t been great at writing here I have been spending a ton of time talking to people all over campus in real time.  One of the things that has come out of those many conversations is the need for me to be available for all sorts of formal and informal get togethers.  I was talking to a few colleagues the other day and I mentioned the idea of having small group discussion opportunities over coffee every now and then.

With that I’ve decided I’d book some time at the Hilton Garden Inn on campus and just do some small group conversations over coffee … it pains me to call it, “Coffee with Cole” but that’s what it is.  So, if you are interested in an opportunity to just get together and talk, sign up!

The idea is for six of us to just have a chance to hang out and talk.  I’ve booked the following days from 8:30-9:00 in the morning to get together:

  • Nov. 6
  • Nov. 20
  • Dec. 4
  • Dec. 18

If you want to be a part of it, just click the link below and sign up — it is first come first serve.  I’d hate to sit and drink coffee alone … no one wants to see that.  If it works I’ll keep pushing the idea and schedule more dates. I hope to see you there!

http://doodle.com/d4ze3q6verzuzxm3

New Responsibilities

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I recently keynoted Mount Union College’s faculty fall convocation. I focused almost exclusively on the notions of digital expression as a form of scholarship, new forms of conversations, and various disruptors to higher education in general. As a part of that I do a bit of a deep dive into social computing and the social web as it relates to what we are being faced with as educators, leaders, and citizens. I mentioned at one point in passing that I had started a new blog as the Vice President for information technology and CIO at Stony Brook University and that I was struggling a bit with where to draw the line on what and when to write. I left it at that and continued along my typical path when talking to room full of faculty and didn’t think again about it.

After the break, they unexpectedly asked if I would stay an extra hour to do some open question and answer. The first couple questions were typical and then I got thrown a curve ball — “what is your responsibility as a campus leader to engage members of that community with social media tools like blogs, twitter, facebook, instagram, and others?”

I’m not sure why the question caught me off guard, but it did.

I answered it the best I could … I told her that if you want to find ways to connect with the larger campus you need to leverage as much of the social web as possible. That means taking the step to share thoughts in the open — and knowing the line that cannot be crossed when doing so. It means once that content is out there that it is out there and people can easily push it into other social spaces to help various members of the extended community discover it. It also means participating in new ways — what I mean by that is taking the time to comment back when people engage, it means liking pictures on Instagram, and maybe reposting stuff on tumblr. I do think all of this is actually part of the emerging requirements if you truly want to engage your community as a leader.

Universities are tough places to drive communications effectively. There are so many varied audiences that plug into very different channels. For that reason alone, I think it is critical to understand the affordances of social platforms and leverage them to effectively reach the various people in each segment. Should I be blogging about my early days at Stony Brook? I think so. I would be curious to know what others think.