Mike served as the University of South Carolina's Chief Data Officer (CDO) from January 2014 through June 2024, charged with leading enablement of analytics and data governance in support of the mission and strategic priorities of the university system’s eight institutions and Palmetto College. He advocates for development of a data-informed culture and promotes the value of data as a shared asset. His team champions improvements to the quality, integrity, availability, and stewardship of data for the betterment of academic programs, administrative services, operational efficiencies, employee experience, research, and student outcomes. Through a governance framework of people, policy, standards, and guidelines, the team assists colleagues across the university in striking a proper balance between protecting data across its lifecycle and making it available for analysis and insights. His team manages CarolinaAnalytics and CarolinaDataWorks, the university’s cloud-based platform, services, and project spaces that enable data science and analytics with data that is curated, validated, and reliably joined across key data domains.
Additionally, Mike co-chaired USC President’s Advisory Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, holds an appointment as Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Arkansas Little Rock, and co-founded the Higher Education Chief Data Officers (HE-CDO) group as a jointly sponsored initiative of EDUCAUSE and the International Society of CDOs (isCDO).
Mike holds a PhD in Higher Education Administration, a master’s degree in Student Personnel Services, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Mike served on the board of directors for Carolina Wildlife Center, which rescues, rehabilitates, and releases orphaned and injured wildlife. In his spare time Mike can often be found hiking mountains in search of waterfalls with his rescued and foster coonhounds.
This paper defines data protection as “the principles and processes for protecting data from corruption, misapplication, compromise, misuse, and loss.” Data protection leverages evolving technology and emerging practices to focus on how to apply the three critical information security imperatives: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
This paper provides guidance on establishing a data stewardship program for administrative data. It clarifies the different types of data stewards and managers and their roles and responsibilities, where they reside in an organization, how they work with colleagues to ensure that the data are maintained, and what special skills or training are needed to meet both university responsibilities and best practices.
The role of chief data officer meets two urgent needs on campus: leading data administration efforts and building analytics capacity to drive decisions with data.
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