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Why Everything Feels Like a Priority in Higher Education IT In higher education IT, many projects don’t move forward or stop. They enter what I’ve come to think of as an orbital queue . The work isn’t abandoned. It isn’t stalled. It keeps circling. Once you notice this pattern, it becomes hard to unsee. Projects drift in and out of focus, pulled closer by urgency, leadership attention, or external pressure, then pushed outward again when windows close or another priority ec

Why Change Often Arrives After the People Who Asked for It Are Gone In the last two posts, I’ve been writing about why time works differently in higher education IT  and the human cost of operating inside a multi-clock institution. This week, I want to look at a discrepancy that quietly shapes many technology decisions on campus: The long memory of staff and faculty, and the short institutional memory of students. Two Groups, Two Very Different Clocks Staff and faculty often

Why “Just Decide” Is Rarely the Right Answer in Higher Education IT Last week, I wrote about why time works differently in higher education IT  — why decisions aren’t governed by a single calendar, and why speed is rarely the primary constraint. This is the second part of that conversation. Because once you understand that higher education runs on multiple clocks, the next question becomes harder: What does that do to the people making the decisions? When Time Stops Being Tec

In higher education, “When is the right time?” is almost never a scheduling question. It’s a risk question . Because there is no empty week on a campus. There is no moment when nothing matters. And there is no change that doesn’t outlive the maintenance window it happens in. The Illusion of the Perfect Window We’re often told to: wait until between terms wait until summer wait until after finals wait until “things slow down” But those moments are illusions. Students are still

Shadow IT Leadership Series — Post 5 Over the past several posts, this series has explored Shadow IT through a lens that many higher education leaders rarely get to see: Shadow IT as a signal,  not a threat The hidden costs  institutions absorb The innovation pressure  that creates workarounds The leadership practices  that turn conflict into partnership But there is one final piece — the part that ties all of this together. A framework that explains, predictably and consiste

Shadow IT often enters the conversation only after it has already gained momentum. A system shows up on the network. A department quietly renews a contract. Someone asks IT for support for a tool the institution has never heard of. By the time this happens, the instinct is often corrective: tighten the rules, reinforce policy, or bring out the checklist. But in my doctoral research with CIOs and CISOs at U.S. public R1 institutions, the leaders who consistently improved  thei

For years, Shadow IT has been framed as a governance problem — something to monitor, restrict, or eliminate. But in my research with CIOs and CISOs at U.S. public R1 institutions, a different story emerged. Shadow IT isn’t simply unauthorized technology. It’s the manifestation of innovation pressure  inside the institution. This distinction is critical. It reframes the problem from “people breaking rules” to “people trying to meet needs the system isn’t ready for.” And once l

Shadow IT Leadership Series - Post 2 The Hidden Costs of Shadow IT That Higher Education Leaders Often Miss Shadow IT is usually treated as a matter of compliance: unauthorized tools, unmanaged risk, systems that sit outside governance. These concerns are real — but they’re not the whole story. When I interviewed CIOs and CISOs at public research universities for my doctoral dissertation, a pattern emerged that reshaped the way I think about Shadow IT. The most significant co

Shadow IT in Higher Education: Why We’re Asking the Wrong Questions Shadow IT is a phrase that tends to spark an immediate reaction in higher education—sometimes frustration, sometimes fear, sometimes resignation. But after several years researching this topic for my dissertation, and presenting the findings at EDUCAUSE 2025 , I’ve come to a conclusion that may surprise some IT leaders: Most institutions fundamentally misunderstand what Shadow IT actually is. In the public re