As part of Industry Insider — California’s ongoing efforts to educate readers on state agencies, their IT plans and initiatives, here’s the latest in our periodic series of interviews with departmental IT leaders.
Ed Clark is the chief information officer for the Office of the Chancellor at California State University, a role he has had since October. He was previously vice president for innovation and technology services, CIO and chief digital officer at the University of St. Thomas from July 2017-October and advisory board member at the Twin Cities CIO Leadership Association from January 2019-October.
Clark has a bachelor’s degree in English from Florida State University, a Master of Science in management technology from the University of Minnesota, and a doctorate of education from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His professional licenses and certifications include being certified as an Educause Presenter in 2016 and an Educause Review Author in 2021.
Industry Insider — California: As CIO at your organization, how do you describe your role? How have your role and responsibilities changed in recent years in terms of their intersection with IT and innovation?
Clark: My job, I would say that I’ve kind of divided it into two different roles in my mind. One is, at the Chancellor’s Office, I believe my role is to leverage all of our technology staff and all our technology investments to address the highest strategic priorities of our system. What does the chancellor want to do? Because we are the CSU, it’s going to be about student outcomes and student success. I also have a second role that is about working with our 23 universities and their priorities. They’re 23 different campuses. They have their own presidents, they have their own CIOs. So in that role, it’s trying to uncover what are the things we can collaborate on to really advance student success in the ways that they’re looking to do. It’s fantastic coming to the CSU, the largest four-year public institution in the United States, and working with all of these stakeholders to really provide student outcomes for the student population that needs it most. It’s really an exciting mission to be part of.
IICA: Does your organization have a strategic plan, and may we hyperlink to it? How big a role do you personally play in writing that strategic plan?
Clark: I think that the CSU does have an overarching strategic plan. It has a vision. I think with the search for a new chancellor underway, I would guess that our strategic plan, a new one, is going to emerge as a result of our getting a new chancellor with new priorities. I’ve been asked by all the stakeholders I work with to build an IT strategic plan that does advance our mission and goals at the CSU. And so, I’m going to be working with the CIOs. I’m going to be working with the campuses. I’m going to be working with the Chancellor’s Office to get all the stakeholders to help us, again, point our technology investments towards the most important things. And I think that is going to be an exciting process. Three months in, I don’t have that plan yet, but we are going to start working on it very soon. I think there is an existing set of IT strategic priorities that came about in 2016, and that was before the pandemic happened. As you can imagine, so many things have changed since then. Student preferences have changed, their behaviors have changed, remote and online have emerged as really critical parts of higher education. So, we know we’re going to really start from scratch in many ways. So many lessons have been learned by every industry, including higher education. But the one that is most interesting is, I think at first people were wondering, are students going to be happy with just coming back in person face to face? And more and more what we’re learning is, actually, preferences have changed probably permanently in many ways. And we’re going to have to figure out how to evolve higher education together to meet the needs of our students who are workers and caregivers and all those other things that they’re doing nowadays.
Editor’s note: find CSU campus strategic plans here.
IICA: What big initiatives or projects are coming up? What sorts of developing opportunities and RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Clark: The No. 1 goal is our Graduation Initiative 2025 (GI 2025) and it has these six priorities: academic preparation, enrollment management, student engagement and well-being, financial support, data-informed decision-making, and administrative barriers. And the idea behind all of this is, if we address each of those pieces, we will provide better outcomes. We’ll remove the barriers that stand in the way of our students so they can graduate on time, not take on lots of debt and have the outcomes they’re looking for, both from an academic side and a career side. So, in terms of the big projects I’ve been asked to work on right now, our No. 1 priority is enrollment management, which is not just the recruitment side of it, but the retention, right? If you’re in, we want to make sure that you stay on track and graduate on time. So, you’re not taking on extra debt, taking out loans and all that other stuff to finish your academic career. And that’s going to require some deep thinking and some change on our part. And that’s going to have to be led by that data-informed decision-making. So, the big RFP, or the big initiative I’ve been asked to head up right now is, how can we coordinate all of our data resources, which to date have been largely separate — separate campuses, separate functions, but it’s all great data. Can we compile it and really get those insights we need to help advance student success? That’s going be the thing we’re going to try to hang out.
IICA: In your opinion, what should individual CSU campuses or the organization as a whole be doing more of in technology?
Clark: I think it’s different for government than for higher education, but I would say there’s some overlap. I think if the question was about government — local government, or even state government — I think that this gets to digital transformation. There were so many great examples of all the administrative hurdles, for example, for citizens to apply for CARES funding or any kind of aid, making it mobile friendly, making it easy, having platforms that understood who they were without like, “I just said I was Ed Clark. Why are you asking me again who I am and what my address is?” Having the systems talk to each other so that you can actually get through the process and get the aid or the assistance you need. I think that applies in higher ed as well. Certainly, one of our big focus points has been access and affordability and for students nowadays that may not have technology, they may not have a computer, they may not have Internet access, this is something that all of our campuses are actively working on. We’re sharing best practices. We’re funding machines, Internet access, all these other things to make sure that, at that very simple part, we’re not leaving people behind. And I think that’s critical. I think moving from there, in higher education, I mentioned before there are all sorts of articles you can read in The Chronicle of Higher Education or in Educause or elsewhere. The demographics of our students are changing, and more of them are working students, they’re caregivers, and they need more flexibility. So saying, “Hey, come, come to this campus, between 8 and 5, face-to-face,” is harder and harder for this new population that’s coming out. And so that’s going to require a lot of evolution and change on our part. Can we offer more online sections, more hybrid or blended kinds of offerings, stackable credentials, all these things you’ve heard of. That’s part of what I think higher ed should be doing more of in technology.
IICA: How do you define “digital transformation?” How far along is your organization in that process, and how will you know when it’s finished?
Clark: I don’t think a digital transformation will ever be finished, because I think digital transformation is getting your organization or your industry to reflect the expectations of today’s users, customers, whatever your base is. I’m sure you use Amazon. Amazon does know who you are. You go in, it knows what you’ve ordered in the past, it can predict what you might order in the future. The convenience of having it delivered here or to your other addresses or to your parents’ address or even to a locker. It’s convenient, fast. You can make lots of decisions. You can compare your purchases. These are expectations that, whether we like it or not, are now built into how we use computers and how we use technology today. I can say fairly confidently that many industries, and higher ed is one of them — higher education and state government don’t necessarily reflect that those are the expectations. How are we going to reflect that? It’s hard in a large system like ours to be a student on two separate campuses. You’re going to have two different addresses. The systems aren’t going to be the same. I think that these are things that, to really have digital transformation, we would somehow make this a seamless experience for our students. Removing those administrative barriers and hurdles, which is part of our GI 2025. It’s an ongoing journey because the expectations are always going to increase and change over time. And so, are you keeping up with today’s digital expectations? That’s a tough thing to do in lots of industries.
IICA: What is your estimated IT budget and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Clark: The total IT budget is $110 million. This includes $92 million of the Chancellor’s Office budget, plus $18 million of cost recovery funds that we pay for, but it is reimbursed by the campuses. Shared services and those kinds of things. We have a common network service that our campuses use; we’re part of the (Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California) CENIC consortium, where we’re trying to provide that high-speed Internet to all of our campuses across the state, and those kinds of things. So, there’s a cost sharing piece of that. Right now, we have 186 positions.
IICA: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors, including via social media such as LinkedIn? How might vendors best educate themselves before meeting with you?
Clark: I think LinkedIn does work. If a vendor is interested in the mission of the CSU and has ideas on how technology might be leveraged to deal with things like enrollment, like retention, like our GI 2025 initiative, those are the kinds of things I’ll be focused on. If it gets very specific to, “Hey, we’re rolling out a new penetration testing regime,” it would be better to contact those members of my leadership team that are heads of all of those functional areas.
IICA: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Clark: First of all, I need to give the credit to the CSU. They launched this Graduation Initiative 2025 several years ago. And they’ve made amazing progress. If you read the literature and study this topic, making progress in this area is very difficult. And the fact that the CSU has done so well with increasing our graduation rates and making better outcomes for students is certainly praiseworthy. And that was before I got here. But since I’ve been here, I will say that I am very proud of the relationships I’ve been building, the bridges I’ve been trying to build within the Chancellor’s Office, across the 23 campuses with the CIOs, and the fact that every person I’ve talked to has been completely committed to overcoming silos and hurdles in pursuit of this larger goal: how will we work together to advance student success? And I’m proud of the role, the small role I’ve had so far in trying to build the bridges, trying to find a vision that can unite us as we move forward.
IICA: What has surprised you most this year in government technology?
Clark: This ChatGPT, I’ve been using the OpenAI platform for various things for a while now. And I think that what surprised me is, there’s some hostile reaction to things like ChatGPT, but I think as other people have said — I just saw a post by Jeff Selingo who said ... something like, isn’t this just this generation’s version of a typewriter? The idea that this is a tool that we can use, and it will save time and it can help a lot. I’m surprised by the level of animosity that some people have towards it. I think it’s an exciting tool. Like I said, I’ve used it myself, but I think it’s something that will eventually be seen as a tool that is super useful for specific things.
Editor’s note: In a recent LinkedIn post, author Jeff Selingo shared excerpts from his newsletter exploring “Is ChatGPT the Calculator for this Generation of Students?”
IICA: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Clark: I read, as you can imagine, all sorts of periodicals about technology, about student success, about higher education, everywhere from online sources like LinkedIn to publications like yours. It’s a strong interest area for me. And I enjoy learning what people are doing and what neat practices are emerging that I could maybe apply in my job, in my profession.
IICA: What are your hobbies and what do you enjoy reading?
Clark: I’m a hobbyist artist and musician. I’m always trying something new and I love playing instruments and putting together a new song. I do like doing that. That’s a really fun hobby of mine. I play guitar. I’m probably best at bass. I love reading about technology. I love reading about the future and predictions and how bad they often are. And to that end, I also really enjoy science fiction. That’s one of my favorite fiction genres.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
CIO: Evolution Needed to Meet Changing Student Needs
