Karen Warren

Biography

Karen serves as Assoc VP for Information Technology at Wesleyan University and has oversight for the user services, technical services, and academic technology teams. Combined, they provide the foundational support for all other IT operations in the University, develop strategic input regarding systems and infrastructure, and provide support for teaching and learning through the use of technology. Karen oversees the ITSM initiative for Wesleyan and is responsible for initiating department-wide changes to IT processes including incident and change management, configuration management, and the service catalog.

Karen is currently a member of the EDUCAUSE board. She on the faculty for EDUCAUSE's Senior Director Institute, both online and in-person.  She has served as Chair of NERCOMP, the Northeast Regional Computing Program, a consortium of Universities throughout the Northeast.  She is an experienced presenter, having spoken at the NERCOMP Annual Conference, ServiceNow Knowledge, EDUCAUSE Annual Conference and other professional workshops. Active in campus life, Karen is committed to crossing functional and departmental lines to bring solutions to the Wesleyan community.  

Karen served as co-chair of CT Education Network's Education (CEN) Education Advisory Committee and has served on CEN's strategic planning team.

Selected projects include core network refresh, enterprise WLAN upgrade, ServiceNow implementation, and migration to Office 365. 

Prior to coming to Wesleyan, Karen spent 15 years at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, CT where she was IT Director for 10 of those years.  Karen focused much time on the importance of broadband access in K-12 education, forging a strong and lasting relationship with CEN.  Having spoken at numerous conferences regarding the benefits of broadband in K-12 education, Karen was invited to participate on a panel at the FCC on the importance of ERate to broadband in schools.

EDUCAUSE Publications

  • Correcting Career Missteps
    • Multimedia
    • Author

    We can’t always make the right choices on our career path, but if we learn from our mistakes, we have a much better chance at future success. In this episode, we ask higher ed IT leaders, what was your biggest career misstep and how did you course correct?

  • The Higher Education IT Service Catalog: A Working Model for Comparison and Collaboration, Second Edition
    • Briefs, Case Studies, Papers, Reports
    • Author

    This paper provides specific guidance regarding the necessary components of an effective IT service catalog, such as the taxonomy, terminology, attributes, and descriptions for common IT services. It is a revision of the 2015 document and uses feedback from earlier implementations and the people who created them to address gaps and changes in the landscape of information technology.

EDUCAUSE Presentations