From Donald Welch, NYU's VP for Information Technology and Global University CIO
It’s Earth Month. I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. We junior high schoolers thought we were doing our part by walking to school (even though the buses ran anyway). Luckily, smarter people were running the world and we have made significant progress. The air and water are much cleaner than when I was […]
As many of you know, the ServiceLink Transformation (zBoot) project is a significant undertaking by NYU IT to transition from our current instance of ServiceNow (which was heavily customized to meet a number of user requirements that are, in many cases, no longer necessary) to a new ServiceNow environment that removes many of these customizations […]
In continuing support for elevating NYU’s cybersecurity readiness, I want to let you know about two new resources that have launched on the NYU IT website. Role-Based Cybersecurity Checklists We’ve launched a trio of cybersecurity checklists—one for everyone at NYU as well as one for technologists and IT professionals and one for researchers—that guides you […]
One of the questions that you’ve asked me to address is over-delegation. As we strive to empower our people, how do we avoid giving people more responsibility than they are ready for? As attributed to Mother Teresa, “God will never give me more than I can handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so […]
This month, we’re kicking off a spring cybersecurity campaign called Be Cyber Smart—Restart. Security updates failing to install because people ignore the prompts to restart is one of the most obvious and easy to fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities at NYU. Right now it is our biggest problem. When those prompts to restart happen in the middle […]
A few decades ago I read a Harvard Business Review article that said the role of executives was to drive change. The article made the case that this was an executive’s only role. At the time I didn’t completely buy it. I thought of all the things I was doing to keep the organization functioning, […]
Earlier this month, I was invited to be a guest on the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, hosted Amrit Ahluwalia, to discuss the importance of technology in higher ed and the strategic role CIOs can play in ensuring the right infrastructures and support systems are put in place and kept up-to-date. While IT is certainly here to […]
I read an article in the WSJ on Feb 2 by Yascha Mounk at Johns Hopkins titled, “You Don’t Have to Be a Jerk to Succeed.” Sorry, it is behind a paywall if you are not a subscriber. The article catalogs the characters in pop culture like Logan Roy, Dr. Gregory House, and Miranda Priestly, […]
A few weeks ago I attended the Campus Futures AI Conference, which brought higher ed leadership (IT and non-IT) and industry experts together to discuss the impact that AI can have on our campuses. I know AI continues to be of interest to many of you and have received Ask Me Anything requests to provide more info […]
A couple of thoughts on leadership. I was listening to a presentation about transformation and one of the speaker’s points was the leadership needed to transform. The speaker listed four qualities of exceptional leaders. These qualities align with my personal beliefs on leadership. Simplify complexity and operationalize it Drive ambition for the entire organization Play […]