My wife and I traveled to India recently, a trip that I always look forward to. We spent time visiting friends and family, but we also had planned a trip to visit five Shive temples in the south referred to as “Pancha Boota Stalams“. They are manifestations of the five prime elements of nature: land, water, air, sky, and fire. In addition, we visited Manipal University in Karnataka. Though they are now Manipal Academy of Higher Education or MAHE, I prefer to refer to them this way for a couple of reasons. This is how we knew the institution when I was going to College in the 70’s. Secondly, MAHE reminds me something that sends chills up my spine 🙂

As I have mentioned before, we always sign on for the $10 a day International Pass from AT&T, which is very convenient because you are using your phone exactly like the way you do in the US. However, because our stay was a little long, we opted to get local SIM card (which is not trivial for foreigners, but because we are overseas citizens of India, we can do so somewhat easily) with the help of a relative. This got us off to a very smooth start in terms of communication.

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It is true that when you are enjoying what you do, the time goes by fast! We are engaged in several major initiatives in Library and Technology Services and several of us are also involved in many other campus initiatives and projects.

Some of our colleagues have played a very important part in assisting with the Science Center Renovation as well as in supporting the reaccreditation activities.  This includes participation in multiple meetings regarding technology in the renovated spaces, be it faculty and staff offices or classrooms as well as provide data and narratives to those who are leading the reaccreditation preparations.

Not everyone is on the same page about wires in new spaces. Frankly, in our minds, we should take advantage of renovation to run conduits and run fiber even if there no immediate use because, in the end, that will be cheaper than scrambling to do this later. We have no idea what the needs of the scientists are in terms of computing and data access and network plays a very important part in all of this. For certain class of problems, wireless doesn’t simply cut it! However, budget and cost considerations are constant point of discussion during such a major project and our staff are doing a great job given how difficult things can be.

Several of the staff also played a major role in assisting with the move of the Science Library collections. They are distributed to other campus locations and remote sites. So far so good because almost 7 months later, we have not heard many complaints.

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I landed in this country on September 10th, 1978 and completed my 40th anniversary a couple of days ago. I am forever thankful for being able to come here and like several millions of others, no one ever would have predicted this would be my future. After losing my parents very early, I grew up with my uncle and aunt in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Thirteen of us in all (11 cousins, my sister and I), cramped up in a house roughly the size of a two bedroom apartment. I had no specific plans academically except I was very interested and curious. I was the only one of the 13 to pass the high school finals (which was a national exam) and since the admission to one of the then 4 Universities in Sri Lanka was next to impossible, my relatives funded my education in India.

I loved the undergraduate school I went to and then was fortunate to get into one of the best universities in India, Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Madras, where I did my Masters. My family wanted to me to work so I can support them financially. By that time, I was fascinated by quantum chemistry and really wanted to study further. To satisfy the family, I went for an interview at Bhaba Atomic Research Center (BARC). I was acing the interview and the interviewer asked me whether I thought of first doing a PhD and then applying to BARC. I told him that that was what I would really like to do. We then chatted for a half an hour about cricket and I left and he wished me well in seeking admission to a PhD program. I never heard from BARC!

Since almost everyone from IIT came to the US for Masters or PhD, that is what I also did. I applied to some four schools and got into one, CUNY. Thanks to students from IIT coming before me doing well, Professor David Beveridge was glad to have me in his flourishing group in Hunter College at CUNY.

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This is the time of the year when you hear “Where did the summer go?”. Thats right, summer just went and here we are, welcoming our students over the next few days before the classes begin. Our attention at this point is getting some of the most important communication out to the faculty, staff and students about the changes in matters related to the Library and Technology and making sure that every service that our faculty, staff and students rely on, that we support, works and works reliably and well.

We have an exciting year ahead of us with some major projects such as Workday Student, which I will continue to write as we march forward. We will soon be releasing news about a course catalog app based on course data from Workday, now that we have curriculum management live in Workday. We have some exciting news for our students in terms of their eligibility to become members of the Wellesley Free Library and enjoy the member benefits. (more…)

I have been a little lazy about writing though I have been pretty busy as always. I did write something in July for EDUCAUSE Review about the new role of IT. As you can see there, I was talking about our major initiative, Workday implementation, and summarized the lessons learned:

• Accept mistakes and correct them quickly. These complex projects affect a wide range of users, and it is impossible to capture all of the use cases and user needs up front. You should develop appropriate response strategy after the initial roll out by anticipating that you will hear complaints—especially from users who cannot do what they used to do in the older system. When this happens, accept responsibility for it, offer alternatives, and prioritize their delivery based on the institutional impact.
• Never underestimate the importance of change management. No matter how much you prepare, you will always fall short in managing the change and you will always receive complaints about issues ranging from communication style and frequency (for some it is too much, and for others it is too little) to too many new terminologies to not enough training or training at inconvenient times. To prepare, you should over-communicate, create targeted communications, and offer a lot of training, both for groups and individuals. You should continue these activities beyond the initial rollout and for however long it takes to help users acclimate to the new system. Also, where possible, ease users into the new system rather than cutting over everything one fine day.
• Establish clear governance and goals. It is very important to set achievable goals and make sure the community understands them. Further, having a clear governance structure is crucial for such a major implementation. Ensure that your governance body can make decisions quickly and that the implementation team can rely on it for crisis management, because plenty of crises will arise all along the way!
• Time your training appropriately. Staff members will be eager to get as much training as possible as quickly as possible. Timing the training in such a way that your staff can put it to use as soon as possible is essential. Avoid sending staff to training too early at all costs; waiting too long to send them is also unproductive. Choosing the optimal time—typically, within 60 days of rollout—is key.
• Praise the staff often and reward their efforts. Some staff members will enthusiastically participate in the project and view it as once in a lifetime opportunity. Because the work will be very demanding, praising your team members for the good work they do is critical to keeping morale high. Plan to reward staff performance as well, which will be very much appreciated.
• There will be staff turnover, so plan for it. At the most inopportune times, you will encounter turnovers. Some people will not want to go through an ERP transition and will leave midstream; their loss will likely be hard. Others will move on after gaining experience in the new system. These departures will diminish team morale, so planning ahead, having a strategy, and being up front and open with your entire team about these events—and how you plan to respond to them—will serve you well in the end.

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