Educause Leadership Institute

I'm in Boulder for the Educause Leadership Institute this week, along with my colleagues Sara Gomez and Lori Stevens, and about 60 other participants.

So far there have been some really interesting sessions - most notably (for me, anyway) a session on emotional intelligence by Mark Sheehan from Montana State University. This was a new topic for me, and I liked the emphasis on how mood is a determining factor in leadership. Mark noted that while managers spend most of their time dealing with process, policy, and culture in organizations, leaders spend much time working with vision. That seemed like a deep insight to me.

Today there was a terrific session on IT policy in higher education from Tracy Mitrano from Cornell's Office of IT Policy , talking about all of the people that have to be involved in formulating institutional policies around IT and how having policies can be very advantageous.

That was followed by a talk by Brian Hawkins, President of Educause. Brian talked about what is necessary to be a CIO in higher education. He stressed the need to be more than an person knowledgable about IT - that it's necessary to be able to think and act knowledgeably in the interests of one's institution no matter whether it's in the realm of student recruitment and retention, faculty tenure matters, athletics or whatever.

And of course, we're taking advantage of Boulder to get out and do some professional team-building - here's some pictures of Sara, Lori and I taking a hike to to Boulder's Red Rocks this afternoon.