New Responsibilities

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

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.

Listening and Watching

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As the new guy on campus I have been doing quite a bit of listening — and watching.  As I mentioned in my previous post I have taken time to walk around campus a bit, albeit not nearly as much as I had hoped during these first two weeks but enough to see the beauty that has become Stony Brook University. I read an old piece in the NY Times (funny that that is my new hometown newspaper) from 11 years ago talking about the efforts underway to make the campus a source of pride. Very interesting to see the “after” without having seen the “before.” Let’s say I am impressed with the progress.

One of the interesting connections to that are the improvements that are underway on the technology side of the campus — less visible from the outside, but just as impactful in my opinion to the overall satisfaction of our faculty, staff, and students. I am thrilled about the new, nearly pervasive wireless access students will be greeted with in the Javits Lecture Hall this fall — this is just one small example of our collective work getting ready for fall 2013 and the networking upgrades that the DoIT team have been working on the last few years. This one thing is a huge deal to the nearly 60,000 students that pass through these learning spaces each week — and it will be to faculty too as we watch them envision ways to engage their learners in this newly enabled space.  I am confident that my colleagues in Teaching and Learning with Technology will be ready with ideas on how to leverage the affordances of this space with new connectivity.

I’ve also spent a ton of time listening in both traditional and non traditional ways.  I’ve had plenty of meetings with both our own staff in DoIT and with members of our administration. Each meeting I learn more — my Evernote app is exploding with new pages! It pushed me to do something I haven’t done in a while — I turned to Twitter to see what I could find from as many SBU channels as I could … and I found a ton. So much so that I started a Twitter list that I am adding as many Stony Brook related accounts i can find to and I am watching it as much as possible.  It is a vibrant and connected community and I encourage you to follow along (and suggest new follows for the list).

It doesn’t just stop with twitter. Our students are very active on tumblr as well and I am particularly fascinated by the sbufresh tumblr … really quite amazing. I was impressed enough to send a note to our director of communications last night and today she reached out to the owner of this very helpful tumblr to help us find a new channel for us to share some information.

Today I walked campus as new student move in was on display. It is always humbling to watch parents take a final stroll with their children as they get ready to leave them to start their freshmen years. It is in that I hope we can all see how critical our mission really is — to play a part in making the years they spend here an overwhelmingly positive experience. I saw so much today that filled me with pride and as the new guy, that was an emotion I wasn’t sure I was expecting to have. Seeing the student volunteers, the staff ready to lend a hand, and knowing that we were working feverishly behind the scenes to make sure the IT infrastructure of campus is ready for the big day on Monday was really great. I know most of us will be on call this weekend and I know we will be ready for them.


A Week In

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Is it too early to reflect on the new job? Maybe, but I do have some observations … and not all are related strictly to the things I have been doing in my new post.  First some easy ones.

It is beautiful here — and by here I mean both on campus and the surrounding areas.  Each day I’ve made a point to check another part of both out.  Walking around campus it is easy to see that there is a value placed upon the physical aspects to campus. It shows wonderfully and as I explore I come to appreciate the effort that is going into making this place beautiful.  You may look at that and wonder why it is so important, but it is. If you think of the big picture, keeping our campus looking first rate is part of the path we are on here at Stony Brook.  My previous campus at Penn State prided itself on always looking its best and it was a strategic decision, one that paid off in lots of ways — an easy measurable is that PSU annually gets over 100,000 applications. Obviously not all of those are because the flowers are well placed and the grass is freshly mowed, but it helps and I appreciate that about what is happening here.


Then there is the surrounding area. Wow.  Each day after work I have taken time to go see the water. When you arrive from central Pennsylvania, the potential to hear the waves and see the sunset over the Sound is simply breathtaking. I am soaking it in and it is part of a ritual that has helped me round out the days and reflect on all that I am learning. If you live around here and you haven’t done it in a while try to do it with fresh eyes.


A couple additional observations from the first week … the DoIT staff have been wonderful to work with across the board.  I’ve been in meetings almost constantly since the minute I stepped on campus and in each of them I have obviously had to lean on my new colleagues at times. Each time, they’ve come through.  I find that our team is very smart and very committed to making this University a better place.  This extends past DoIT as well … I have had interactions daily with other senior administrators and I am struck by the collective intelligence and commitment to excellence.

I was struck this week by the connections to SUNY and the emphasis on working in a collaborative fashion.  On two different occasions this week I spent time with SUNY leadership and was very impressed with both their vision and approach.  Yesterday, Dr. Hao Wang, SUNY CIO, held a “listening tour” stop on our campus and invited CIOs from SUNY schools across the the eastern region and Long Island.  It was a great way to hear from colleagues and peers and have conversations related to where we could work together to solve big system level challenges.

I’ll close by saying it was an intense week filled with great conversations. I am aware of some of what is to be done, but also by what has already been accomplished. I am now turning attention to the next couple weeks as we welcome students back to campus and I can start to really dig into some of the larger issues at hand. A good first week.

A Welcome and an Invitation

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I’ve been blogging for quite some time and have always found it to be a great outlet to work through ideas, share thoughts, communicate my thinking, and invite comments and feedback. I will use this space as much as I can and I imagine it will change over time — in the early days it will mostly be about reflecting on the learning curve and to share initial thoughts on my early interactions here. As time goes on I expect it to become more of an outlet to keep people posted on what I am working on, thinking about, and things that are of general interest to me, to the DoIT community, and those from the outside looking in.

I’ll invite you now to be an active part of this space — push me with comments, links to posts, and even ideas that I can use to create new content. I want this to be about the notion of “the conversation.” I am a true believer in discourse and in actively engaging those around me. I crave conversations and if you’ve ever heard me speak you will know that I firmly believe that the Internet is creating new opportunities to engage in very new forms of conversations. This is a primary reason for this space — a place for us to engage.

We are all incredibly busy doing what we do to support the faculty, staff, and students of our institution and taking time to blog may seem like a waste of cycles to some. To me it is part of the larger process of communicating across all of Stony Brook University. A space like this should provide greater access to the things that are driving our individual and collective agendas. I will try to use it for that.

I can’t meet with all of you on a regular basis … the reality of time and scale just will not permit it.  If there are things that you want to know from me that you think others will benefit from hearing, send me a note and let me know … that could very well be the prompt I need to take some time and articulate some thinking.

For now you should know that I am very active on the social web — some for me personally and some for professional pursuits. I don’t maintain multiple accounts, as I try to think of my online identity as an aggregate meta identity … so you won’t need to follow me across various twitter accounts, there is just one.  I try very hard to maintain my social presence in an intelligent way … Facebook, for example, is reserved for family and friends, but please feel free to plug into me on Twitter. Like many of you I have a life outside of work and I tend to share things on Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, and other outlets that are much more about who I am away from the office.

This is as much an invitation as it is an introduction, an invitation to engage in new forms of conversations. I will work to do my part, but my hope and ultimately, my expectation, is that you be a part of that. I am well aware this won’t work for everyone, but if it opens another channel for those that it does work for then I’ve succeeded in one small way. So, I will close with a very humble thank you … thank you for allowing me to become a member and a leader of this team. I will do my very best every single day to make sure we are doing what we need to continue to delight the people that count on us the most at this great University.

What do you think?

Office Artifact

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Crazy thing is that most people probably don’t know this, but I designed the ETS logo. I did it right after I started while at home one night. I wanted a mark that we could identify with. Here’s the funny thing — I got called on the carpet for making a logo and they said something to the effect of, “you can use it for now, but not for too long.” I got off the elevator at Rider Building the other day (where the ETS offices currently are) and there it was being proudly displayed on the flat panel in the hallway. I think the mark worked — it gave us an identity and it started the process of making ETS a recognizable entity on campus.

15 Years & Moving On

/ Cole Camplese / 5 Comments

I haven’t written one of these since I left the IST Solutions Institute to become the director of Education Technology Services back in 2005. I think since I am wrapping up my last day at Penn State after 15 years I thought I should at least reflect on that to a degree and thank the people who have changed my life for the better. I’ve had quite a few jobs here at Penn State over the years, growing from an instructional designer with the World Campus in 1998 to my current role of senior director for Teaching and Learning with Technology. Each stop along the way has been a blessing … not without challenges, but this has been truly a magical experience. Before I head off to Stony Brook University, it might be good to share a couple of thoughts on this whole journey.

We arrived childless in 1998 from Philadelphia after the sale and closure of a small training software company. I came for a job as an ID with the just launched World Campus and Kristin came to do her PhD. We were committed to staying just long enough for her to finish and then we were out of here. Obviously it didn’t go that way and we are thrilled with the time that we have spent here.

After 18 months in the World Campus I needed something different and got a lucky break to join another start up, but this time in higher education, with the launch of the School of Information Sciences and Technology. I spent six years working with amazing people building teams, technologies, processes, and friendships. It was an amazing time in our lives — we had our first child, we were enjoying success professionally, our friends were all around us, and my eyes were being opened to a whole new world of potential with the Internet. I discovered blogging, the social web, and relationships with companies like Apple. We were building and exploring as a team … and learning so much along the way. Then some people left, including my dear friends and colleagues Eric Zeisloft and Keith Bailey … and then my wife, Kristin, decided to leave PSU as well. There was still a killer team, but it left me wanting to explore more.

I again got lucky … as I was ready, the director of Education Technology Services was open and I went after that position. I wanted to really test the things I was successful with at the College level in the context of a central organization. I wanted to see if we could replicate that level of innovation in a central IT services organization. I will be honest, it was a real struggle for me at first — I had to build new relationships and help those around me see that we could transform the University and ourselves. It took time, but the work done at ETS has proven to be some of the best I have ever done. We built an absolutely amazing team … one that I am proud of beyond belief to this day. We went from barely attending national conferences to dominating the agendas. From impacting a few students to supporting thousands. From offering services that were stable to ones that inspired. Truly a great ride.

In 2010 I was asked to step into the senior director role that I currently occupy. That jump was something that challenged me in new ways and pushed me into new leadership territory. At the same time I was asked to be faculty in the Educause learning technologies leadership institute … another thing that pushed me in crazy ways. I amped up my teaching as well, taking the Disruptive Technologies grad class to new places with my friend and colleague, Scott McDonald. I have worked so hard with the people around me to get TLT into great shape and I am so proud of the collective work we’ve done. While my role has changed, I still believe so deeply in education and the power we have in our hands to make positive impacts on our institutions. That is something I will take with me as I head east to Stony Brook University.

It has been an amazing ride and I wouldn’t change much of it. From the time I got here I wanted to be part of the bigger picture — I wanted to build a community of people who were interested in doing great work. I know I have bothered some people along the way, but I’ve come to accept that as the reality we all face when we push. I will never forget my time here and I will lean on all that I have learned the last 15 years. It is an interesting thing feeling so much passion for a place that you aren’t really from, but State College has been so good to us. We’ve been met amazing friends, have had the pleasure of seeing our two children born here and enjoy the surroundings, and we are so blessed to be leaving here with a sense of accomplishment and deep gratitude. I will miss State College, the people who have touched our world, and Penn State for the rest of my life. I depart with nothing but a deep caring for all that is Penn State and what it has given to me. I would need all the space on the Internet to thank everyone who has impacted my life here … suffice to say I have nothing but gratitude for all of you.

WC Instructional Designer –> Manager of Instructional Design and Emerging Technologies –> Director of Education Technology Solutions –> Co-Director of IST Solutions Institute –> Director of IST Solutions Institute –> Director of Education Technology Services –> Senior Director of Teaching and Learning with Technology

Keynote: NJEdge, Spring Lake, NJ 7/25/2013

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Later this week I will head out to the beautiful New Jersey shore to provide the keynote for this year’s NJEdge Summer Luncheon. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to share insights into new forms of conversations happening online in the support of teaching, learning, and scholarship. We will explore the notion of the “conversation” as it exists across the social Web to see how we, as educators, can take cues from this emerging dialogue. It is our responsibility, not to dismiss these discussion forms (and forums) as passing fads, but to realize the embedded pedagogies that exist within these emergent spaces — pedagogies we must understand to fully imagine what the future of digital media means to scholarship. While we will clearly discuss these new forms of conversations occurring online, we will also explore recent disruptions not just to individual classrooms, but to the entirety of the academy. With the accepted rise of MOOCs and the vast amounts of dollars being poured into education technology startups by venture capitalists, we will work to expose the landscape as it exists today and help shape a discussion about what this means to us all going forward.