Significant events and milestones of the AJCU-CITM group.
Since the inception of the Society of Jesus in Europe nearly 500 years ago, the Jesuits have served as scholars and teachers. In the U.S., twenty-eight institutions of higher learning constitute the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), whose organizational mission includes fostering inter-institutional cooperation among its members. Studying and improving educational effectiveness in support of the Jesuit mission is a primary objective of the AJCU.
In an effort to provide forums for the exchange of experiences and information among its member schools, the AJCU sponsors more than 30 affinity groups. The Conference of Information Technology Management (CITM), founded in 1986, is one of the most dynamic, and one of the oldest, of the more than 30 affinity groups organized under the AJCU umbrella.
Mike Zastrocky, then Director of Information Services at Regis, was instrumental in getting the group launched. While assisting business officers at member schools with early technology issues, Zastrocky had the ear of Fr. Bill McInnes, S.J., president of AJCU from 1977-89. Both recognized the need to bring the computing directors from each of the Jesuit schools together so that they could share and compare notes and learn from one another. Bernie Gleason hosted the first meeting of the group, held at Boston College in the fall of 1986, where about 30 people, representing 17 schools, attended.
The CITM has convened annually at member campuses across the country since 1986. On two occasions, the group joined its counterparts from AUSJAL—a consortium of Jesuit colleges and universities in Latin America—in Mexico. As the CITM looks forward to hosting its 30th meeting in 2015, it also acknowledges the people, the places, and the world of information technology that have forged and nurtured this supportive and collegial group of educators.
Jesuits have long had a presence in Latin America, founding their first university in the Americas, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, in Colombia in 1623. More than 350 years later, in 1985, the 30 Jesuit colleges and universities in Latin America formed their own association called AUSJAL (Asociación de Universidades confiadas a la Compañía de Jesús en América Latina). Within five years the association was ratified and its by-laws created.
Beginning in 1990, representatives from AUSJAL schools in Mexico, El Salvador, and Brazil attended AJCU-CITM meetings in the United States. Raymundo Cantú of Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) in Mexico City was one of these representatives, and in 1993 he extended an invitation to the AJCU-CITM members to host the meeting at UIA. After discussions over more than a year, the CITM members decided to convene the 1995 meeting in Mexico. However, this was not an easy decision.
During the annual conference in April 1994 at John Carroll University, the CITM had expressed concerns about meeting in Mexico. Three months previously, more than 3,000 people initiated a rebellion in Chiapas which drew international attention to the plight of indigenous peoples in Mexico’s second-poorest state. The uprising began on January 1, 1994, which was timed to coincide with the taking effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The CITM members agreed to wait until after the August 1994 federal elections to make their final decision.
Another problem to solve was the matter of the invitation itself. By summer of 1994, Raymundo Cantú had left UIA to work at another institution, and there was also a new rector of UIA, Carlos Vigil Ávalos, SJ, who was unfamiliar with AJCU-CITM. However, at a meeting of the AJCU and AUSJAL presidents, John J. Piderit, SJ, president of Loyola University Chicago, assured Fr. Ávalos of the merit of the group. Shortly thereafter in September 1994, the AJCU-CITM accepted an official invitation from the rector of Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City to have the annual meeting there.
As any conference chair knows, every meeting requires many months of preparation, and the 1995 meeting had its own unique challenges. One difficult undertaking included securing simultaneous translation services for all the sessions. And, in December 1994, the Mexican peso suddenly underwent a major devaluation. This caused the currency conversion between the dollar and the peso to fluctuate wildly on a daily basis, and it prevented the conference chairs from accurately estimating costs of the meeting. Ultimately the accommodations cost less than anticipated, and it enabled the group to use otherwise expensive translation services for the meeting.
In April 1995, representatives from 26 Jesuit universities in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Venezuela, and even Korea met at Universidad Iberoamericana for three and a half days. The meeting made history for several reasons: 1) the AUSJAL representatives voted to form their own conference of information technology directors; 2) this was the first joint meeting of an AJCU and AUSJAL conference outside of the university presidents; 3) the first group photograph at an annual meeting was taken here; and 4) the CITM celebrated its tenth meeting.
Among the notable events of the conference, the attendees reviewed the statements from the 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus which concluded in Rome only weeks before the joint meeting in Mexico, especially the call for more collaboration between professionals and specialists among the different Jesuit schools in support of the Ignatian vision of education. They particularly focused on Article #10 from the statement on Jesuits and University Life.
In the end, the representatives from the AJCU and AUSJAL schools realized they faced similar issues, and the meeting was a success. It provided a foundation for the 2003 meeting at ITESO in Guadalajara, and that subsequent gathering offered even more substance and a larger number of attendees.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were a period when university librarians and IT leaders found themselves (and their staffs) collaborating more closely on a number of projects: online catalog systems, personal computers in libraries, Internet access, and electronic information access, to name a few. A few universities were even trying to merge IT and Library organizations (Fairfield was an example in the AJCU world). It was natural that people in both the CITM and Conference of Library Directors began thinking there would be value in holding joint meetings.
A survey conducted in December 1994 by Charles Kratz, Library Director at the University of Scranton, polled members of the Conference of Library Deans on when they would prefer to meet, and whether there was interest in a possible joint meeting with CITM. The results showed that there was support for such a meeting.
Coincidentally, the University of Scranton was scheduled to host both the CITM and Conference of Library Directors meetings in 1998. Kratz and his superior Jerry DeSanto, Associate Provost for Information Resources who also had responsibility for IT, proposed holding a joint meeting. The meeting was held at Scranton April 26 – 28 and had 64 attendees: 23 with library affiliation, 33 with technology affiliation, one person responsible for both, and Fr. Charles Curry, President of AJCU. There were also two librarians and four technology staff from AUSJAL institutions. The attendees were very pleased with the event (evaluation forms universally rated the event at four or five on a one to five scale). Both groups agreed to continue to meet jointly on an every-other-year schedule.
Subsequent joint meetings were held April 10 – 12, 2000 at Xavier; April 7 – 10, 2002 at Georgetown; May 3 – 5, 2004 at Marquette; April 30 – May 2, 2006 at LeMoyne; March 30 – April 2, 2008 at University of San Francisco; March 4 – 6, 2012 at Boston College; and May 17 – 20, 2015 at Loyola University Maryland.
In the mid 2000s conversations were starting within the AJCU about a “Messina Commons,” or ways to take advantage of the communication and resource sharing aspects of the World Wide Web to encourage greater collaboration in service of the missions of Jesuit higher education. These conversations were shepherded by Fr. Charles Currie, then President of AJCU, and Fr. Paul Locatelli, then President of Santa Clara University and Global Secretary for Higher Education for the Society. Fr. Locatelli recruited Chris Lowney, a former Jesuit seminarian and former Managing Director of J.P. Morgan, to lead the discussions.
A number of people within CITM were involved in these discussions, and Chris made a presentation about the rapidly evolving ideas at the 2008 meeting at the University of San Francisco.
Jesuit Commons was formally launched in 2009 as a 501(c) (3) organization with Lowney as volunteer President and one paid employee. The Commons’ mission was “to use technology to foster innovative educational and other collaborations across the Jesuit world-wide network in order to benefit extremely poor communities – including refugee communities around the world.” There were two initial projects created to help further that mission.
One project, the Jesuit Commons web site (www.JesuitCommons.org), was intended to be a virtual meeting place where members and friends of the global Jesuit network could find each other, learn about each others’ work and skills, share resources and ideas and collaborate more easily to advance Jesuit projects around the world, and raise funds to support such projects. While the site attracted attention from a number of people who registered and indicated willingness to contribute to projects, the vast majority of these individuals were already extremely busy working on their own projects, and the hoped-for serendipitous coalescing of passionate people around exciting projects never really occurred. The web site was closed after several years to allow the energy required to keep it current and running to be directed to other activities.
However, the original “version 1.0” effort has been followed by other, more targeted initiatives which have harvested its lessons learned: www.jesuitnetworking.org and educatemagis.org
The second project, Higher Education at the Margins, has been much more successful. Under the leadership of International Director Dr. Mary McFarland, JC:HEM (as it’s now known) attracted external funding very quickly and partnered with Jesuit Refugee Services to pilot a model to deliver online courses in locations with extremely limited resources. Within six months of initial funding and overcoming almost unbelievable physical and technical obstacles, JC:HEM staff and volunteers established an online classroom at the Kakuma Camp in Kenya, expanding subsequently to Dzaleka Camp in Malawi and locations in Aleppo, Syria and Amman, Jordan. The first JC:HEM students graduated with a Diploma in Liberal Studies from Regis University in September 2013. In September 2014 a total of 43 students from the Kakuma and Dzaleka camps graduated. The first graduates from the JC:HEM site in Amman, Jordan are expected to graduate in May 2015.
JC:HEM is now revising and expanding their initiatives based on the pilot experience, and it’s ramping up staffing and infrastructure. External funding will allow for the creation of a new curriculum featuring 30 courses that are designed to allow easy customization to reflect the local cultures where the courses are offered. New partners are being added, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, St. Aloysius Gonzaga Institute in Taunggyi, Myanmar, and Apu Palamguwan Cultural Education Center in Bendum, Philippines.
Many people have contributed to the success of this initiative, of particular note Cindy Bonfini-Hotlosz, who serves as CIO for JC:HEM and was instrumental in setting up the labs in Kakuma and Dzaleka; Chris Gill and Jim Jones of Gonzaga, who spearheaded the purchase and shipment of equipment to those labs; Pablo Molina, then CIO of the Georgetown Law School, who was on-site at Kakuma to help set up the second lab; and Lisa Davis and Charlie Leonhardt of Georgetown, who were instrumental in establishing learning management and student information systems to support JC:HEM. The CITM donated $10,000 to JC:HEM to support production of a documentary for the pilot period that is expected to be completed in June of 2015.
References
Lowney, Chris, “Jesuit Commons: What It Is and How You Can Help,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education: Vol 40, Article 12, 2011 (available at http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol40/iss1/12).
“Blank Page, Blue Sky, High Risk: An Interview with Chris Lowney, President of Jesuit Commons,” Jesuit Higher Education 1(2): pp. 146 – 152, 2012.
JC:HEM, “2014 Annual Report Executive Summary,” 2014 (available from http://image.jc-hem.org/JCHEM/media/ExecutiveSummary2014-no-letter_Final.pdf).
Please note this is an early and partial history written by Joel A. Cohen, Ph. D. (February 8, 2015) and edited by the AJCU-CITM history project team. Additional information and contributors are welcome.
The senior IT administrators in the AJCU Conference on Information Technology Management (CITM) believed there could be value in sharing data from their campus IT organizations. Survey items could be used to stimulate discussion at the annual meeting (e.g. list the three most important items that you will face this year). Some of the IT administrators believed that a comparison with other AJCU institutions might be used to leverage resource improvements on their own campus. Toward the impending Year 2000 and its predicted IT problems, several institutions were purchasing administrative software systems, and a census of what institutions were using for administrative software was useful. Similarly, institutions were implementing different email systems, instructional management systems, and telecommunication systems. It was helpful to know what others were trying, and having this information could lead to subsequent communication and problem solving among AJCU schools.
Joel Cohen recalls that through the AJCU-CITM listserve, there were a number of ad-hoc surveys conducted around specific issues. At some point the CITM group decided to conduct a standardized survey for which Joel became responsible.
The first standardized Benchmarking Survey was completed in 1998. Data were collected via an MS-Word document and entered into Excel. In 1999, at the meeting hosted by Holy Cross, Joel presented a PowerPoint report and shared detailed data with the respondents.
For a variety of reasons, Joel Cohen had difficulty obtaining or interpreting some responses. In some instances it was difficult to find the right person to complete the survey. At times the difference in budget categories among institutions made response difficult. But typically, there was response from over 20 institutions. The instrument was adopted from the CLAC (http://www.liberalarts.org/about) survey that was already being completed by a number of AJCU institutions.
By 2003, Joel Cohen stopped doing the survey, and Bob Clapp from LeMoyne College took it over. After Bob left LeMoyne, a committee was formed chaired by Louise Finn from Loyola Maryland and much of the heavy lifting was completed by Loyola Chicago staff. One improvement that was made in the early 2000s was the use of web-based survey tools.
Creation of the CITM Shared Services Work Group was approved at the CITM business meeting of the 2008 conference held at the University of San Francisco, based on a proposal by Tracy Schroeder. The initial charge to the Work Group was to
- Research best practices in the area of shared services
- Explore and propose a governance model for AJCU shared IT services
- Define the scope of the AJCU shared services effort
- Identify the top three potential areas for a pilot AJCU shared services project
Initially chaired by Tracy Schroeder (2008 – 2009), and subsequently by Bret Jacobs (2009 – 2011) and Patrick Frontiera (2011 – forward), group membership varied from six to nine people over the course of work. The group focused on opportunities in three areas: a shared hosted or open source LMS, joint disaster recovery or hot site opportunities, and PPM SaaS.
Despite much work, little progress was made on the first and last opportunities. However, a disaster recovery matchmaking program was designed that allowed pairs of AJCU institutions to provide co-location services to each other. The program was successfully launched in 2012, pairing Fordham and Santa Clara Universities.
Largely through the work of Steve Gallagher as CITM president, an AJCU purchasing portal to aggregate volume was launched in 2012 and consortium pricing was arranged for D2L and Canvas.
For a more detailed version of the Shared Services history, click here.
Informal mentoring activities have always existed across the AJCU institutions, predating even the creation of the AJCU CITM. The formal CITM mentoring program had its roots in a problem raised in the 2006/7 academic year by Tracy Schroeder, at that time Vice President for IT at the University of San Francisco. She had several staff who she felt had strong leadership potential but needed mentoring to develop their potential. Tracy was reluctant to mentor people within her organization but believed, with the strong shared values across AJCU schools, that it would be possible to establish mentor/mentee relationships across AJCU institutional boundaries.
This suggestion was welcomed by several people at various campuses, including Ellen Keohane of the College of the Holy Cross, Jason Benedict of Fordham University, Chris Gill of Gonzaga, and Susan Malisch of Loyola University Chicago. This group, including Tracy, met in person and via conference calls, exchanged emails, and gradually developed a program involving formal applications to become a mentor or a mentee, a process of matching mentor/mentee pairs, and a proposed timetable. At the Business Meeting of the 2007 CITM meeting the group requested and received approval to pilot the mentoring approach.
A subsequent call for participation from Tracy and the matching process created five mentor/mentee pairs, with participation from seven AJCU institutions. The resulting experience was “magical” and “remarkable” according to comments from participants and the organizing committee.
The mentoring program was incorporated as a permanent activity of the CITM at the 2008 Business Meeting, with a charter to “provide AJCU member schools with an effective staff development resource for outstanding staff who, in the judgment of their sponsors, have leadership potential. The AJCU-CITM Mentoring Program will offer these staff the opportunity to develop their skills and broaden their perspective on the issues and challenges Information Technology professionals face in higher education.”
A committee of approximately seven CITM members oversees the mentoring program, and its responsibilities include: the development of the nomination and matching procedures for mentors and mentees; assessing the experiences of the mentors and mentees; and providing support and safeguards throughout the duration of the mentor and mentee relationship. The CIO of each AJCU institution may nominate two mentors and one mentee. The mentoring relationship is designed to last for six months with an optional six month extension, and it culminates at the annual CITM meeting.
The program remains effective to this day. There have been several changes of leadership, and membership, in the mentoring committee. Participation levels in the program vary from year to year, with shifts in the number of mentor volunteers, the number of mentees seeking a match, and the number of successful matches made, but virtually everyone who has participated as a mentor, a mentee, or a committee member views the experience as valuable and rewarding. Mentors credit their mentees with asking challenging questions which require the mentors to see themselves and their work in a new light. The mentees praise the program for giving them the opportunity to ask difficult questions in a trusting environment and to learn from experienced administrators who treat them as colleagues and partners.
AJCU CITM TTL History and Timeline
May 17, 2016
1999: Dick Vigilante started JesuitNet to foster collaborations among its member institutions for online course development, faculty training, program marketing, and computer support. In hindsight, it can be viewed as the nucleating point for what became TTL.
2002: Dick Vigilante held a meeting at EDUCAUSE attended by David Lees and others to talk about forming an EdTech group that would represent a diverse mix of instructional technology, teaching and learning, and assessment individuals that fell outside of JesuitNET's distance learning focus.
2004: The Marquette conference was the first meeting with a separate EdTech track. More and more EdTech people were attending CITM meetings and many of the EdTech topics came via JesuitNet, the Continuing Ed deans, and various CITM members.
2005: St. Joseph’s: David Lees was instrumental in making sure the two separate tracks – CITM and EdTech – continued at the Conference. David stayed involved with EdTech, though he avoided running it, preferring the role of Agitator. After the 2007 Regis Conference, Vicki Rosen became coordinator-in-charge, along with some officers and committee members.
2006: LeMoyne: The EdTech attendees voted to change EdTech to Technology, Teaching, and Learning (TTL).
2007: Regis: The TTL attendees began discussion in earnest about becoming a separate AJCU conference – Conference on Technology, Teaching and Learning CTTL – as originally envisioned by Dick Vigilante. A wiki was created for pertinent documents drafted by the CTTL Governance Committee: John Bansavich, David Lees, Bruce Montes, Mary Morrisard-Larkin, Vicki Rosen, Estelle Siener, and Bill Thieke.
2008: USF: Vicki Rosen concentrated on the Bylaws. David Lees, Bruce Montes, Estelle Siener, and Bill Thieke weighed in on the details and intent of TTL for the next several years. John Bansavich, Mary Morrisard-Larkin, and Claudia Forbes (Regis) kept track of meeting minutes and other procedural tasks.
2009: Rockhurst: This was the first Conference where TTL – Technology, Teaching and Learning – replaced EdTech as a separate track.
Consultation with AJCU President Fr. Currie indicated the AJCU Presidents would not favor another conference, although the intention was never to split completely from CITM, but rather be a separate concurrent Conference. Perhaps TTL could be a Special Interest Group within CITM, but no other SIGs were found among the various AJCU Conferences. The TTL group then adopted the designation “Affiliate” as a possible solution, although this too was not used by any other Conference.
After the conference, Vicki Rosen wrote to Susan Malisch, CITM President, on behalf of the conference attendees, requesting that TTL enter into a "collegial affiliation" with CITM. The CIOs responded with a request that the proposal be modified to integrate the TTL membership with CITM without creating a new affiliation since the CIOs saw the staff providing “TTL services” as a vital and integrated part of the IT operations at the various schools.
Dick Vigilante noted that a majority of the TTL membership came from IT, but there were also academics from Centers for Teaching and Learning, Educational Technology Departments within Schools of Education, and Academic Technology and Research within Libraries, all of which lay outside IT.
In early 2010, Vicki Rosen worked with Susan Malisch, Dick Vigilante, and TTL members to find new language to address these concerns. The Bylaws were revised and TTL became a Special Interest Group, with a SIG representative to serve on the CITM board.
2011: Santa Clara At the business meeting, two sets of amendments to the Bylaws were discussed. By unanimous vote, CITM approved amendments calling for creation of SIGs within the AJCU CITM membership. This was followed by approval of TTL as the first SIG and Vicki Rosen was elected as Liaison Officer with AJCU CITM. The following October, TTL named representatives to the Mentoring, Shared Services, Benchmarking, Distance Learning, and Web Site committees and working groups.
2012: Boston College At the business meeting, a motion was passed to renew the sponsorship the AJCU-CITM TTL SIG for another year. Also there was some discussion about possible SIGs within AJCU-CITM, for project management officers and information security officers. EdTech/TTL had successfully scouted and then paved the way for other SIGs within CITM.
2013: Loyola Chicago Crista Copp of LMU was elected by the TTL SIG as the liaison officer. TTL had become part of business-as-usual in CITM. Later in 2013, TTL began to hold webinars on topics of interest to the membership and to use the Wiki to share information between annual meetings.
2014: Gonzaga University Business as usual.
2015: Loyola University Maryland Business as usual.