Karen Julian, chief information officer at the University of St. Thomas, recently spoke with the Star Tribune about her new appointment to the top tech job at the university and how things have changed over the course of her 30+ year career at St. Thomas.
Has anything changed within IT related to St. Thomas’ move from Division III to Division I athletics?
Everything is information driven. We had to restructure how our tutoring sessions are handled and recorded. I mean, now, we have NCAA compliance. That in and of itself is huge compared to how we had to report to the MIAC. That was also very structured but it was a very quick switchover to have all of our systems in place to do all of our compliance reporting.
What’s been the biggest challenge over 30 years within IT?
Technology as it’s evolved has always been important to the university and we rely on it. What has changed is that I believe that we are now very much a strategic partner in helping decide, where we’re going, what we’re prioritizing, and we’re much more of a partner with the rest of the university. We’re just integral to everything now.
Does that involvement across the enterprise also include the development of the new on-campus sports arena?
It has already started. It’s a new challenge. That, again, is why I’ve stayed here. St. Thomas is always doing something new and it just presents continual learning for our teams. Because we get opportunities. We’ve never built an arena like this before. So that’s exciting. It’s an exciting thing to be a part of.
