As chief information officer for the University of Akron, Thomas Gaylord, Ph.D, has his work cut out for him.
His job: To give students in Akron the technology tools to compete in science and engineering with their counterparts in San Francisco, New York and Asia . The caveat is that he must do this on a very limited budget and with the approval of a constituency that doesn’t always value entrepreneurial risk-taking.
“There is no more difficult job in the public sector than the chief information officer job at a university, because we don’t have all the resources to do everything everyone wants us to do, so we have to be playing the razor’s edge to accomplish something,” he says. “I cannot bowl a single gutter ball. This type of structure is unforgiving.
“If I make one big mistake, I’m history. Risk-taking is not particularly valued in this industry.”
Even within those parameters, Gaylord has found success. His most noteworthy achievement during his two-year tenure: Implementing a completely wireless campus. Students and faculty at the university’s main Akron campus, as well as its Orrville branch, can access the Internet from any classroom, dorm room, green space or sports arena, with one exception — the opponent’s side of the football stadium.
The Wired for Wireless program was unveiled a year ago, at a cost of $1.7 million. The University of Akron is still the only public university in the state with a completely wireless campus.
For someone who sees the advent of the Internet as “the biggest paradigm shift in education since the blackboard,” this was an important accomplishment.
“It’s going to change education in a massively huge way,” he says.
Gaylord predicts the Internet will soon allow educators to provide to 100,000 people courses that are as high quality as individual instruction within a classroom. And that same model can be used in a workplace, he says.
“We can see a company that has employees all over the world will soon be able to provide educational content to a sales force, or a repair group, anywhere,” he says. “We can provide this education across the world, at basically the price that it would be costing you to deliver it to an individual person. We have to leverage technology so that we can compete.” How to reach: The University of Akron, www.uakron.edu
