In my experience, the question of where instructional technology should live has as much to do with the people inhabiting certain key positions at the University as it does with the philosophical choice of institutional location.

That said, I do recognize that so many of my colleagues at other institutions have NOT found hospitable homes within IT. I think this has more to do with the fact that many people in positions of power within IT aren’t necessarily sensitive to the academic mission of a University or College. I’m not sure what the solution to that is–but having worked for two CIOs in my career who were simply stellar, I do know it is possible for a CIO to both be effective IT leaders AND promote the academic (and research) mission above all else.

All of THAT said, in my heart of hearts I wonder what this business of “instructional technology” is really about sometimes. I’m honestly not sure where we fit into our institutions, and the extremely varied experiences of my colleagues at other colleges and universities seems to be evidence that many of our institutions don’t know where we fit, either.

Thanks for the comment!

To my mind and with my own situation as the context, it comes down to placing the instructional technologists in with the computing group. Back when I was hired (at Vassar College) in late 1998 to support GIS, there was no one doing this kind of focused high-end technology support. Hell, I never really did a job like that before either. But the smart professor-types knew they needed someone to load software and find GIS datasets, keep the machines running and still be able to “talk shop” with the profs, to be able to support faculty members outside the primary user group, which was the geographers and the geologists. And over these past ten years or so the position has seriously evolved as the web and other emergent technologies have. I hate to sound like a snob, but you can’t do all that good stuff, be technically focused and still be able to mix it up with faculty on their level, with just a high school degree or with a background limited to technology training. I’d even go so far as to say, having an advanced degree in which primary research was conducted is essential for these roles on campuses.

Anyway, your former boss, instead of encouraging you to take Apple Certification (?!), he/she should have encouraged you to give talks or write papers with faculty on the cool projects you collaborated on, work on grant proposals for bringing in some technology that faculty were asking for but lacked internal financial support, or to seek coveted, academic fellowships, all of these are critically important to the educational mission and are more beneficial to my professional development than learning the latest on how to image a PC lab, staunch out viruses and fix printers and scanners. The computing group and those who rise to the top and become CIOs do not know what to do with those of us in the academic computing world.

Thanks for the comment. It’s always good to hear that others are going through this same process as we struggle to figure out the best way to envelop emerging technologies into our institutions and our lives. And, Gene is right — confession is good for the soul!

Glad you like UMW Blogs. The only credit I can take is for the current homepage design. The rest of that vibrant community is a reflection of the amazing faculty and students at UMW — and the blood, sweat, and tears of Jim Groom!

In any case, what your stories remind me is that so much of what we do that makes our work meaningful we’ve done because we’ve had a community of people supporting us in the risks needed to get there.