Christina Baum:
You know, for example, it’s kind of forcing some really good conversations, right? Where perhaps within, so let’s say student affairs really are right there on the front lines with our students. For us, there’s five associate vice presidents within that division. Each of them obviously have their goals, their priorities of things that they’re working on. Previously, before having a structure like this, each of them would reach out directly, shoulder tap, various people in my division, and it’d be left to, to us to kind of figure out what are the relative priorities amongst these five ABPs and how do we help support these? You know, pushing that conversation back a little bit with the partnership director and saying, Hey, let’s put these in rank order. There’s a couple really powerful things. I think it exposes the volume of work and the requests and things that are needed, which really help us to partner better with that division to say, Hey, we need more resources If we’re gonna be, you know, delivering on all these things and this timeframe, we need to either, you know, extend the timeframes, change the scope, you know, scope, schedule, budget, the iron triangle or, or get some additional resources to help to be able to deliver faster.
Christina Baum:
But it helps explain some of the why. I think previously there was a perception that, you know, we weren’t delivering. We, you know, it was really slow. You know, there’s kind of those, those tropes, those cliches about it, right? But I think this really helps visualize the amount of work and help get those priorities and help have that, that conversation be more data focused and driven. So it’s really us working together to partner with these groups to solve a common problem. It’s not, you know, it or dx you know, versus any group. It’s us working together. And so it helps us have the right discussions, and we’ve seen some great situations where we can say, okay, actually that one’s not as much of a priority. Let’s back that one off for now and let’s focus on these key things. And so I think we’re seeing some really good results there.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s Christina Baum, CIO, and VP of Digital Transformation at Utah Valley University. We talked about how her organization is leveraging presidential appreciation for the role of technology data-driven prioritization within and across departments, and a new method for staffing organizational partnerships, all to serve as a sustainable catalyst for strategic change. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Joe Gottlieb:
Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast, focused on the new why’s, the new what’s, and the new how’s in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process, and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform. Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I am joined by Christina Baum, CIO, and VP of Digital Transformation at Utah Valley University. Christina, welcome to TRANSFORMED.
Christina Baum:
Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here. What would you like to talk about?
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, I’m glad you asked. I want to grab your thoughts on a fun topic that might sound a little cryptic, but we’re calling it leveraging IT as a sustainable strategic change catalyst, kind of a mouthful, <laugh>, before we dive into that, I’d love for you to share a, a few minutes on your personal journey, how you got connected to higher ed, and how it really motivates you to do the work that you do.
Christina Baum:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So, I’m from the northwest. Originally, I came out to Utah for school at Brickham University in Provo, Utah. Changed my major a number of times, but I just loved higher education. Finally settled into history and a minor in business. I was planning on law school at that point. Ended up being home with my kids for a few years and then went back for my MBA at Washington State University. My first job after that was for a company up in Pullman, Washington named Schitz Engineer Laboratories, and they built computers. Dr. Schweitzer had been a faculty member at WSU and had the first patent for digital relays. And the company was really founded on building equipment for electrical substations, keeping electrical grid up. I was an R and D as a project manager in a new division called Automation, and we were building rugged IO computers that could withstand extreme variations and temperature and humidity, and they were used on like oil rigs, manufacturing plants, things like that.
Christina Baum:
And it really just kind of exposed me to technology, and I realized I love it. And I had an aptitude for it and just picked things up pretty quickly. Quickly. We moved back down to Utah and I got a job at a VoIP company, and then went to work for Information Communication Services for ICS. That’s the IT organization for the LDS church. And I was an operations manager there responsible for, you know, the ops, the uptime, all of that within our portfolio as well as the budgeting. From there I went to become the solution manager for the database platform team. That gave me a really good kind of view into the whole stack, right? Working with, you know, server storage network as well as the application layer. And then from there, I had the opportunity to go to the time it was called LDS Business College.
Christina Baum:
It’s now Enzyme College, and it’s a small private school in Salt Lake that’s owned by the parent company the LDS church. And I was able to go there as the CIO and really was brought in to effect change and digital transformation. And so we did a lot of big projects. We, we moved our network completely over to the parent organization’s backbone, re IP, everything. Did an ERP transition from PeopleSoft to Workday for HR, finance, payroll website, complete rebuild. Just a lot of really fun projects. And then from there, I had the chance to come over to Utah Valley University, and I joined first in October, 2020 as an associate vice president. And then my predecessor who was the VP and CIO had the chance to move to be the dean for College of Engineering and Technology. And I was appointed into this role June of 2022. So it’s been a fun journey. I, I love higher education because I love seeing technology used in a way that really changes lives and really gives me so much meaning.
Joe Gottlieb:
Oh, great to hear that. And what a neat background you really got in on the ground floor of, you know, computer architectures, then discovered the whole stack and great foundation for what you’re doing now, I’m sure. So let’s talk about this, this fun topic of sustainable strategic change. What does, what, what would it mean for it to become the catalyst for sustainable strategic change as a leadership model? And, and I, I don’t wanna leave you too far here, but if that’s kind of fitting with what you’re doing, it fits something that I, I love to talk about and I’d love to get your thoughts on.
Christina Baum:
Yeah, absolutely. So when we talk about, you know, sustainable strategic change, I think really in my mind, there’s very few projects nowadays that don’t involve some technology in some form or fashion, right? So when we think about the, the strategy that our institutions have, it really is infused closely with the technologies that we’re employing to help accomplish and achieve those strategies. So really, I think the role of, of it being a catalyst for that and the leadership model is really recognizing that where we’re putting time and resources is tantamount to deciding what efforts are moving forward for the university. So it’s really critical that we have that in mind, I guess, and, and then figure out based on that, how do we create processes, models, et cetera, that allow it to really be a strategic partner at the table and to help sustain that change. So it’s not personality based based on, you know, who’s there and if they value tech or not. But it’s really something that’s inherent in how we, how we deliver, right? And how we meet our students’ needs. And so I think it’s being strategy driven, keeping focused on the mission and the goals, and just minimizing the distractions that can come up.
Joe Gottlieb:
I, I love the way you’ve emphasized the notion of what I’m hearing you say is objective process versus politics, right? You, you know, you come out and say that, but, but that, because it could be the bottleneck and they could become the enabler, right? And the people that have the power could have undue influence. But when you get away from that and you get more towards, let’s find out holistically what’s best for the institution to do at this time, and let’s share that understanding and let’s move forward in that regard, because this flow of IT services could be abused or, or, or it could be unnecessarily held up by some of this tension and energy. Does that, does that match your experience? Yeah,
Christina Baum:
Absolutely. I think that there’s various kind of tiers in the maturity of an IT organization and how it’s viewed, right? And I think that it can be viewed as, as a ticket taker, right? Like, we just tell you what to do and you go and you do it, and we found some new product at a conference, and we come back and tell you we just want this, right? And, and that’s certainly less strategic. So we want to make sure that, you know, it is involved and infused in the direction that we’re going. And that, as you mentioned, it’s not tied to any political, you know, environment, but it really is part of the nature of the university and how, how they’re valuing and prioritizing that. So yeah, I think it’s really critical. And I think that creates then that balance, right? Between, you know, not thrashing and, and following <laugh>, you know, just, you know, taking whatever tickets come in and just doing everything exactly as asked, but also, you know, having that vision, having that strategy, and focusing on what the long-term goal is,
Joe Gottlieb:
Right on. And the opposite extreme would be. So also not dragging the institution without good relevance Absolutely. Towards, you know, pet projects and cool technologies that may not yet serve your students or, or, or may be too far ahead of what everyone can pace with and, and use effectively,
Christina Baum:
Right? Absolutely. Well, because, you know, for us, we’ve really honed in on what our mission is with technology. And for us it’s really to remove student barriers. And I can share more about that, but if we’re using something that’s not really proven yet, if we’re too <laugh>, you know, too on the bleeding edge, it actually might introduce friction points and barriers for our students. So there’s a really good balance there of being innovative, but wise to make sure that it’s the appropriate application of that technology at the right time to meet student needs.
Joe Gottlieb:
Okay. So now that we know where this conversation is headed, let’s paint the setting at Utah Valley University, which I know was heavily influenced by a period of dramatic growth. So let’s go there first. Yeah,
Christina Baum:
Absolutely. So we were founded in 1941 as a tech school originally, and it grew up into a community college and then a state college in 1993. And then we became a university just in 2008. So really not that long ago. We have rapidly grown in terms of mission and programs offered and student headcount. UVU is actually the largest school in the state in terms of headcount, the number of students that we’re serving. When I talk about that, it’s, we don’t have a football team, right? So nationally folks may not recognize <laugh> know Utah Valley University, but we do serve the largest number of students, just under 45,000 students as of fall of 2023. So we have certificates, associates 101 bachelor programs and 18 masters at this point with 60 fully online degrees. So it really is an awesome mission.
Christina Baum:
We are a open enrollment dual mission school, so we’ve maintained that technical track certifications, community college feel, but while also offering those bachelor’s and master’s programs. So it is open enrollment. You know, our marketing motto is, you know, a place for you that there’s a place for everybody there at UVU and that we wanna help every student to be successful. Because we grew up so quickly, though we do have some technical debt we’ve been working to pay down our, IT is quite centralized, which is fantastic. But we haven’t kept pace always with what we’ve needed in terms of budget, organizational structure that kind of thing. And I think that, ’cause we were so small at one point, I think that there’s more of a, a mindset of, well, let’s just do it ourselves. We can just build it in house and not always taking into account some of the costs that are hidden with that. But yeah, it’s a fantastic time to be at UVU.
Joe Gottlieb:
So how did you come to realize that the institution had become a bit bound by the artifacts of rapid growth and, and then needed to transform its approach to something more sustainable?
Christina Baum:
Yeah, yeah. I think part of it was certainly budget related, right? Recognizing that as we’ve grown and stretched we, we say wolverines are gritty, right? And so we certainly want to make sure we’re always being frugal of what we’re doing, but just recognizing some budget constraints, certainly. And then also recognizing that we didn’t have a great way to identify priorities and what we should work on and be able to communicate that and set expectations with stakeholders across campus. And the third artifact, or, you know, I guess symptom I would see there was, we, we didn’t have internal to my division, clean and clear ownership, right? So we had some products and services for which four or five people thought they owned it, <laugh> then we had others that, you know, nobody felt like that was their, their responsibility, right? So it really kind of necessitated us taking a step back and saying, how do we better structure to make sure we have clear ownership, clear, you know, priorities and can deliver?
Joe Gottlieb:
I, I find clarity on roles and responsibilities, and obviously ownership is one of the key fundamentals to get right. And if it’s not right, it can really lead to lots of downstream effects that you don’t want. So if you don’t mind me prying a bit there. Yeah. W were, can you describe, maybe there were multiple types, but you mentioned that, was that in your organization or in the way that you were partnering with other parts of the institution to serve them? And, and in terms of the ownership of that partnership, or gimme a little bit more on that and, and, and ideally the diversity of those things, if, if they, if diversity existed.
Christina Baum:
Yeah, I would say both, right? So I think across the organization, you know, prior to president, Dr. Astrid Tamina is coming to UVU and she’s our current president, she came and joined in 2018 when really had a clear vision of how technology should be strategic. Prior to that, though, the role was an A VP level reporting to a vice president of operations which was, was fine, but I think that it wasn’t necessarily at the table for a lot of the decision making. And so priorities didn’t get filtered down in a way that would be as actionable for us. And so definitely partnership with other areas across campus. When President Tamez came, she elevated that role to be a CIO and vice president and be part of president’s cabinet reporting directly to her. And as I mentioned, she was a VP at Microsoft before she came to UVU.
Christina Baum:
So it’s fantastic for us that she really, really understands the value of technology as a strategic partner. So that really helped. But then we still had situations where it was viewed more as a ticket taker, as I mentioned, and perhaps less strategic. So not really in the conversations where they were decisions being made. And so we’ve actually been going through an arduous process of doing a reorg within my division to help with this. And we created some new roles that are called partnership directors. So we have partnership directors that are focused into various areas across campus. So for instance, a partnership director who work specifically with academic affairs, another who works with our student affairs and our marketing group, and another that works with our people and culture, you know, HR and finance. And they really embed with those groups to understand, be part of their leadership strategy sessions and meetings, understand what their needs are, and help them come up with good prioritized lists of what they’re looking for and bring that that back. We also have a partnership director who’s currently our senior director for Operational Excellence within Digital Transformation, or dx that’s my division to help prioritize those projects that any particular area may not care about, but that we know are necessary and strategic for digital transformation on a broad scale. So yeah, so we help prioritize those, bring those in, and that’s really helped us to the first part you mentioned of how we interact with other groups across campus and getting some more sense and, and order, I think there.
Joe Gottlieb:
Interesting. So that last category sounds to me, for example, any remaining tech debt, you know, would be addressed by that more internal IT sensibility that says, wow, all of this is gonna get easier if we make an investment over here Mm-hmm, <affirmative> and eradicate this chunk of tech debt that’s holding us back. Is that, does that track with reality?
Christina Baum:
Absolutely. Yeah. So certainly paying down tech debt anything we can do to streamline our products and services reduce duplication triplication, where perhaps an individual group is, is quite happy with the solution that they’re using, but we’re paying maybe more than we need to, to have, you know, duplicate triplicate systems. And so those would be projects, those migration efforts and things like that as well as anything, and we’ll chat more, but in the AI front or things like that, that are emergent, innovative type things that we want to prioritize to really help move the strategy and the vision of what technology is at UVU and how we deliver. That
Joe Gottlieb:
Makes sense. And so you determined a new approach was necessary in terms of the way that it was operating and the context of that operation in both the organization, but also in leadership management, et cetera. So how would you describe it? Would, you know, is is this sustainable strategic change management or would you, would you talk about it in a different way?
Christina Baum:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it definitely is. I think that the sustainability part comes by having our org structure centralized around these priority focused, strategy focused groups. And I think that then helps sustain and maintain that that focus on priority. And I think then also is there’s the change management aspect, right? Thinking about like ad car and change management approaches. This also gives us liaisons and all the various groups across campus to really help like I said, embed into those groups, understand their needs, and be able to articulate back what it is that we’re delivering, what we’re doing to really help facilitate good communication and change management. ’cause It’s always gonna happen, right? Technology is <laugh>, you know, moving quickly and there’s always something new, but that gives us that, that seat at the table across these various groups on campus.
Christina Baum:
Certainly there’s change fatigue, right? I mean, the reorg itself, I think we felt a great deal of, you know, change fatigue and moving people’s cheese, right? With creation of some of these different roles. But we’re seeing good results already. Our, our CFO has mentioned that just since implementing this partnership director role, that he’s seeing more projects, more things getting done and completed because it’s really kind of unlocking, I think, some potential we’ve had for more capacity within our division. So it’s been awesome that way. But yeah, the partnership directors, yeah, clustered technology into categories. So we also have those partnership directors have some direct reports to them when the technology is specific to that area, and then they can directly oversee and manage that work. If it’s something that’s more broad, then we have that be a clustered team that’s supporting all of the different partnership directors. So as part of our structure, it allows for a little bit of give and take that way in terms of where we have people focused.
Joe Gottlieb:
So does the partnership director role then also focus in on expectation management?
Christina Baum:
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and you know, for example, it’s kind of forcing some really good conversations, right? Where perhaps within, so let’s say student affairs really are right there on the front lines with our students. For us, there’s five associate vice presidents within that division. Each of them obviously have their goals, their priorities and things that they’re working on. Previously before having a structure like this, each of them would reach out directly, shoulder tap, various people in my division, and it’d be left to, to us to kind of figure out what are the relative priorities amongst these five ABPs and how do we help support these, you know, pushing that conversation back a little bit with the partnership director and saying, Hey, let’s put these in rank order. There’s a couple really powerful things. I think it exposes the volume of work and the requests and things that are needed, which really help us to partner better with that division to say, Hey, we need more resources.
Christina Baum:
If we’re gonna be, you know, delivering on all these things in this timeframe, we need to either, you know, extend the timeframes, change the scope, you know, scope, schedule, budget, the iron triangle or, or get some additional resources to help to be able to deliver faster. But it helps explain some of the why. I think previously there was a perception that, you know, we weren’t delivering. We, you know, it was really slow. You know, there’s kind of those, those tropes, those cliches about it, right? But I think this really helps visualize the amount of work and help get those priorities and help have that, that conversation be more data focused and driven. So it’s really us working together to partner with these groups to solve a common problem. It’s not, you know, it or dx you know, versus any group. It’s us working together. And so it helps us have the right discussions. And we’ve seen some great situations where we can say, okay, actually that one’s not as much of a priority. Let’s back that one off for now and let’s focus on these key things. And so I think we’re seeing some really good results there.
Joe Gottlieb:
Fantastic. So I wanna believe that those partnership directors not only then can help a, a, a, a customer of yours, a a large area, like the example you gave where there might have been five leaders that each have their priorities and they were all doing the shoulder tapping, right? And now you’ve cohered that and helped that group to be more orderly about making their own hard choices because they’re all affected and they come under one leader anyway. And it’s one part of the organization, the institution. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But then at that next level up, do the partnership directors in any way get to participate in a forum or contribute to a method that allows the institution, perhaps at the cabinet level mm-Hmm, <affirmative> to step up and make that next level of choice, which is, wow, student services has to have these things right now, and we’re gonna pause this other thing over here that, that, you know, is led by a very senior person. Let’s make it up. Let’s make, maybe it’s recruiting, you know, bad example, probably ’cause, but because growth is so important, but maybe, maybe you’ve had your growth for the moment and you’re really concentrating on student services and you’re moderating your little growth. And so the relative priority is, is not obvious, but, but explicit. And so arriving at that shared understanding, that holistic alignment, how is that happening or how will you see it happening as this organization really hit stride?
Christina Baum:
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. So we are having kind of a scrum of scrums, if you will, with those partnership directors to coordinate together when there’s resource constraints, right? So really for the first time, we’re now able to identify when we do have those resource constraints, which is huge, right? Being able to see and visualize your work and understand where that’s, you know, being impacted. The next step there then is, is having those conversations. And if it’s with some of my peer VPs to say, okay, you know, this or that, or we can do this and this needs to wait, you know, maybe not yet. Or we need to identify if both things, you know, resource constrained or needed. We need some additional resources then, right? But it really, again, it grounds those conversations into more data and it really helps us to, to identify and have those preemptively, right?
Christina Baum:
Because I think in the past, these resource constraints existed, right? But we would sort of just say yes to everybody, and then if we didn’t deliver, then we’d find out we had resource issues on the backend when we were supposed to have delivered something and didn’t in a timely fashion. So it really pulls forward the conversation, and it’s much better to have that before we’ve, you know, waited, we’re down the path three months and gosh, it’s not gonna happen. We’re not gonna get that thing done for you. Right? So we can really have the strategic discussion, and at a cabinet level, we have frequent retreats together to discuss what are our goals for the year, how are we aligned? What’s our strategy? And share, you know, share those, those vision statements and those, those goals within each division with each other so that I can look and see what are folks planning on for this next year? How do I help support that? And I can also articulate, here’s what we are planning on and here’s the support I’m gonna need. So it really is kind of setting us up for success that way.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. Excellent. And on this one more, one more question about this area, and that is, has your CFO and and finance organization been able to partner with the, this sort of emerging apparatus whereby, like the example you gave where it’s like, okay, we do our best to prune down the priorities and make good self selections in each of the areas. So no one area is, is dragging us down completely. But there are choices to be made and when there’s, when there’s two number ones, you know, right? Or, or there’s just two things that have to happen in parallel and it’s overrunning the resources. Have you been able to have a mechanism that then allows the budget to flex? You can’t just make up a new plan. You can’t just pull dollars out of the sky, right? You usually have to rob Peter to pay Paul. Yeah. But regardless of how having a, an explicit mechanism owned by finance and supported by finance is what’s required, right? So have you got, have you gotten to that place yet, or so far that has not been the thing that has been suddenly added to this arsenal of, of levers?
Christina Baum:
Yeah, no, absolutely. We’ve had a lot of conversations around budget. We really sat down and, and looked at, again, some of this sounds like table stakes, but what all do we need both immediately and in a five year horizon and forecasted out, you know, keep the lights on, what does that look like? As well as the digital transformation we want to be doing? What are we anticipating for needs over the next five years and shared that broadly across campus. Especially with our finance division, we really partnered, we kind of bottom up the numbers to really say, okay, this is cashflow wise what we’re needing to accomplish this. We’ve then had a lot of really exhaustive conversations about how can we re gain more efficiencies with shared services, and how can we reduce duplication triplication and claw back some of that money to use more strategically.
Christina Baum:
We’ve put together a, we’re calling it a balanced budget proposal for, you know, the next two years to say, here are the things we’re gonna be canceling to, to recoup some of these expenses to use more strategically. And finance has been very involved in that and helping us with that. And it helps as well to have a president that’s very supportive, you know, and wants us to be innovating and doing things with technology. So yeah, it’s been it drives then a lot of those conversations about K we need to migrate and we know that this is painful, but here’s the why behind it and here’s the bigger vision of where we’re going and how, you know, this little piece saves us money here and we’re able to use that over here instead.
Joe Gottlieb:
It all sounds very healthy. So which I love to see, right? This is not the norm. And so I, I, I must recognize and you know, tip my hat to the kind of rhythm you have going there. It really, it really is pretty special. It, it exists, but it’s hard to get there, right? It’s really hard to get there. So how are you using this new approach to socialize and converge on shared standards and solutions? You alluded this a little bit, right? But at the end of the day, there’s leverage in standardization and sharing, obviously. Yeah. There’s need for specialization at times, right? But, but it seems like with this kind of approach, you can, you can get more people in the boat on the level of alignment and, and the opportunity to capture, right? Yeah. What that synergy, you know, looks like. How’s that working for you?
Christina Baum:
Yeah, I think there’s a couple things we’ve done there. So one, like I mentioned is a lot of transparency. We’ve been very transparent with our budget and what funding we do and don’t have to accomplish the goals that we have for digital transformation. So just sharing that I think really helps people understand where we’re at and the need and they can see, okay, yeah, I need to get off. We’re migrating off a box and Dropbox, for instance, to kind of centralize into our Microsoft environment with OneDrive and SharePoint, and here’s how much we’re gonna save. And yep, it’s a little bit painful, but here’s how that fits in the larger picture. Beyond that, we have some, some vision and strategy we put together in conjunction with a lot of people across campus. And so one of the first things when I came into this role that we had some retreats with our academic technology steering committee, A TSC and other groups, and really kind of said, let’s just ideate for a minute.
Christina Baum:
What does the world look like in five years when we’ve been gloriously successful at digital transformation? Right? What can you do then that you can’t do now? And let’s just not even right now put on any constraints or think about, you know, we can’t do that ’cause of this, that, and the other. Let’s just think about what does that world look like and let’s, let’s gather statements of what that world would be, right? And so we did that with a variety of different groups across campus to get people just kind of thinking, what can technology do that it’s not doing? From that we kind of collapsed, you know, the feedback, comments, et cetera. And boiled it down to may sound like a lot, but 26 statements. We lettered them A through Z and it’s over a five year horizon that we’re targeting getting through those.
Christina Baum:
And we’re calling it our beach picture. And that goes back to a boss that I had a few bosses ago that we kind of talk about if you can go on vacation, sit on the beach and know that back at the office, you’ve got the right people, the right processes, things are automated, things are just smooth and they’re just running well, what does that look like? Right? So we call it our beach picture, and we put those statements together and where we’re about ready to cross off our first one. It’s taken a couple years with the reorg and to get ourselves kind of structured and ready to really go after those aggressively, but we’re gonna have a really big ceremony and have the people involved in helping with that, get a big, big pen and have them, you know, mark off and cross off that letter and say, we’ve accomplished that. Right? So I think getting people rallied around something like that, that’s visionary, that’s like, here’s what we’re gonna be able to do that you can’t do now, makes it worth it when you say, okay, we’ve gotta migrate some files. Here’s what we’re doing. Yes, it’s disruptive, but this is all to help us accomplish something we’ve all agreed upon is a better future than what we have currently. And a lot of that’s very focused on our students, what students can do, what faculty can do, faculty and employees of course.
Joe Gottlieb:
Right. Okay. So this has been a great little discussion about how your sustainable strategic change management is working there. I have to imagine that while implementing this evolved approach, you have found AI to be both a complication and an opportunity. So address that for me, if you don’t mind.
Christina Baum:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, AI is here to stay, right? I think we crossed the Rubicon back on <laugh> November 30th, 2022 and, you know, past point of return. Yeah, absolutely. I think it can be an accelerator for us in a lot of ways. We have a, a task force at UVU that’s that’s, you know, pulled together from academic affairs, student affairs people and culture. I’m a part of that as well and really focused on, you know, what does this do for us at UVU and how do we leverage this and cross various areas. We’ve partnered here in Utah, there’s Silicon Slopes, right? Which is kind of, you know, fashioned after, I guess Silicon Valley and it’s really our, our major tech hub, right? And so we’ve got an organization we’ve partnered with there. They came to UVU and had a summit on ai, just really informational and, and helpful that way.
Christina Baum:
And we’ve had a lot of conversations around what training do we need to offer for faculty, staff, students. We’ve had a variety of trainings already and for faculty and students in particular, returning attention now to employees and how do we help help folks to use that. We’re kind of a Microsoft shop. We have an a five license and so we’re really going into copilot, right? We’ve got copilot licenses baked into our A five license, and we’re purchasing copilot for M 365 here and there. And we’re gonna be doing quite a bit that way ’cause it will tap into the Microsoft, you know, graph API, so we can leverage all of our workplace documents and have access to all of that. So that’s one piece. On the faculty side, we have required that all faculty include some sort of a statement about how AI is being, you know, allowed in their class that students aren’t guessing and they know if it’s okay or not, okay.
Christina Baum:
And so we’re trying to, to embrace it. We’re not requiring faculty to make any particular statement, right? Just that they have to, to say what’s allowed in their class. And so kind of pushing things that way. And then we’re doing some things ourselves within digital transformation. Again, that innovation piece, we were looking for something that we could do to really help our students have greater access 24 7 to, to tutoring services. And we didn’t find anything at the time that was available on the market. So we begun to build something and it was in partnership with a, a company, silicone Slopes company that gave some donation in kind and we’re calling it TA in a Box, right? Or maybe you’re gonna rebrand it to, you know, Ava or something interesting. But essentially it allows students to have a chat bot like experience, it’s a Bolton to Canvas, which is our LMS, and allow students to ask questions.
Christina Baum:
And, you know, it renders up really good answers based on the course curriculum. So a student could say, you know, tell me about differential equations or whatever, right? It could say, oh, that was talked about in lecture three at minute 1536, let me deep link you right to that, right? And a student can watch that section that’s targeted what they’re asking about. It can go through their homework and their quizzes and put together a personalized study guide for the student for an upcoming test. You know, things like that to really make it easier for student to be successful. We’ve piloted that already. We’re gonna have another pilot coming up this fall. Most of the feedback from students has been very positive to begin with. We were reluctant to connect it to like chat GPT, just we didn’t wanna have the risk of hallucinations and things if it’s, you know, UVU official <laugh>, you know, piloted but branded tool.
Christina Baum:
But for this fall, we are connecting it. So it’ll broaden a little bit and be more conversational for students. And we’re targeting long-term, not really having this across all of our courses, but we’ve identified at UVU our top 30 courses is what we call them, and they’re the courses that have the most significant impact on students’ retention and completion. If they’re successful in those top 30, you know, they really are more likely to successfully complete. So our, our goal is to have this be available for students across those top 30 and to eventually morph this more with our student mobile apps. It becomes more of a teaching digital assistant for students and really can become kinda this one stop shop, right? Our, our goal really is to reduce friction for students, make it easier for them to interact with the university, reduce the overhead and the, the challenges they may face. And so we are hoping that with our student mobile app we have, it’s easier to pay tuition, register for classes, you know, your library books, things like that. If we can merge this in, it really becomes something that’s an invaluable tool for our students.
Joe Gottlieb:
Sounds great. So we could talk all day long, I’m sure, but I’d like to bring this to a close. So let’s offer our listeners three takeaways on this fun topic of leveraging it as a sustainable strategic change catalyst.
Christina Baum:
Yeah, absolutely. I’d say first advocate and or offer, depending on your role strong executive support to view technology as a strategic partner with a seat at the table when all the key decisions are happening. Second, I’d say structure your organization to support work that is priority driven and identify ways that you can see and visualize and track that work. And lastly, I’d say identify ways to converge on shared solutions and services to best leverage resources and focus investment into innovation that aligns with your unique mission and, and your identity as an institution.
Joe Gottlieb:
Great summary. Christina, thank you so much for joining me today.
Christina Baum:
Thank you. It’s been wonderful
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of Transformed. Yo, stop the music. Hey, listeners have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode and whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you and they can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.
