Lost in Seattle

After I first started working in higher education nearly fourteen years ago I started hearing stuff about this person called “The Provost.” I was completely unfamiliar with the term, and it was not really clear to me what this “Provost” person did at a University But “The Provost” was always discussed with great reverence and awe, so I decided very early on in my career that I wanted to be a Provost.

I mainly just liked the name.

I grew to learn that the Provost is the Chief Academic Officer at a University. Minimally, all the Deans report to the Provost. At some schools, the Provost is also in charge of the budget and a variety of other areas. Provosts are, in fact, a Very Big Deal, and are generally recruited from a pool of well-respected academics with 100-page CV’s and the power to bend steel beams with their minds.

Suffice to say, I realized that I probably won’t ever be a Provost.

However, I just scored a position that’s probably the closest to a Provosture that I’ll ever get: a job as Associate Vice Provost with the University of Washington’s Office of Information Management. It has the word “Provost” right there in the title!

The OIM manages the University’s data and information systems, which is no small task. There are the “central systems” that admit students, enroll them in classes, keep track of finances, get people paid on time, and generally take care of business. These systems are aging, but are still largely effective at doing what they do.

Over the years, however, a vast and largely disconnected network of “shadow systems” has emerged throughout campus, and these systems now rival the “central systems” in terms of size, complexity, and importance to University business. They generally arose when a department decided it needed to track or report on data that wasn’t available in the central systems, so they built their own tools and applications that provided the functionality and flexibility they needed. Some of our more enterprising departments have built up vast organizations with highly skilled staff hired to maintain and further develop these systems.

My new job is to work within this “shadow network” of systems developers and database administrators, help them contribute their innovations and developments in ways that benefit the many rather than the few, and learn more about how our central systems can be improved.

Since my soon-to-be-former department is a major producer of these “shadow systems,” I understand their importance and the fact that no Master Control Program can ever hope to replace them all. But I also see that there are significant advantages to getting programmers and developers together to share information and to build up a layer of services on top of our central systems that can help them develop faster, better, strong tools in support of their areas.

This new position will be a significant challenge and I’m looking forward to jumping in.

Next, I’ll see if I can snag me one of those “Emeritus” titles….