Oberlin’s information center for information technology recently launched a new initiative, the Technological Consulting Council, to improve technological interconnection on the campus.
Information Director Marcel Mutsindashyaka wrote in an email at Goodbye That the TAC was created to improve technological planning and decision -making on a campus level, with a mission to align technological investments on Oberlin’s objectives, increase operational efficiency, reduce risks and support global school excellence.
The TAC is a collection of campus leaders who help guide the technological decisions that support its mission. The TAC is organized in three basic teams: the strategic team, the tactical team and the operational team. The strategic team is made up of senior leaders, including the president, the deans, the vice-presidents and the information director. The strategic team works on the direction of orientation and priorities of the TAC. According to Mutsindashyaka, the tactical team is made up of the key department and operational managers who work together to transform the strategies of the strategic team into action. Finally, the operational team works on academic technology and business applications and helps campus partners by assessing needs in different fields.
The TAC website has shared that its current areas of interest are developing a clear and coherent technological supply policy and preparing for the implementation of a new business resources planning system. ERPs are systems that allow organizations to automate certain tasks to allow smaller workflows, including student information, financial information and human resources. The current ERP of the campus, banner of Elucian, is from 1995 and is no longer supported. Between 2025-2030, the Oberlin TAC will create and implement a new ERP system.
Emerson Rosen-Jones, a major fourth year computer science and a member of the ERP working group, which aims to describe the objectives of upgrading the ERP, has discussed how students will be affected by the technologies that the TAC will implement.
“I went to a conversation (and I learned) how something like Blackboard can be used to improve accessibility for students,” said Rosen-Jones.
Rosen-Jones also mentioned that replacing banner and other technologies would make the recording of the courses more user-friendly and efficient.
In addition to the increase in software conviviality, Mutsindashaka explained that the TAC will implement cybersecurity risk management programs, identity management and access, learning technologies, etc., but that the program is particularly focused on modernizing the ERP system, expansion of cloud services and improving digital actions and accessibility.
“Now we hear different voices,” said Rosen-Jones. “There have been monthly meetings and some questionnaires and now, this week and next week, there are larger windows of the two sellers who have been decided and therefore all the members of the TAC plus additional people who are underway for this specific project to vote to find out that we think better.”
In his email, Mutsindashyaka explained the objectives of the TAC for the future: align technological investments with the evolutionary academic mission of Oberlin and formalize the feedback loops between services and the TAC to improve transparency and communication around technological initiatives, technological risk management and data governance.