Robert Kuhn was Executive Director of Technology at Simmons College for more than five years until mid-January, 2009. Bob oversaw the building of a single technology organization, insourcing and consolidating after a five year period of outsourcing and building.
An expert in harnessing information technology to the service of higher education, Dr. Kuhn has amassed a wealth of experience in his 30 years as a higher education IT professional. As a mathematics doctoral candidate and later faculty member at Harvard University, as well as on the faculty of Boston University, he developed strong convictions about what IT could and should do for academicians and administrators. As a senior IT manager at Harvard University, Radcliffe College, Boston College, and Simnmons College, he put those visionary ideas into most effective practice.
As Senior Consultant with Compass Consulting and Vantage Technology Consulting Group, Bob focuses on assisting clients with governance and strategic planning for information technology, academic technology planning (including computers in the classroom and distance learning), and disaster recovery preparation. His core competency begins with the application of information technology to the central activities of a university: learning, teaching, and research. But it extends deep into the fundamentals: system support, operating systems, applications technologies, and networking.
In general, service owners just want the system that meets their needs. Discussions with IT about integration with existing systems on campus, support costs for the new implementation, and total cost of ownership frequently become adversarial.
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