The summer is winding down and we are all getting ready for the start of yet another academic year. As always, there are noticeable changes that will affect our faculty and students when they get back. Some will see them as welcome changes whereas others will see them as annoyances. In a few cases, the changes we have to make are out of our control, but the users don’t necessarily care. We are getting ready to communicate these changes.

I attended a day long meeting last Monday in Northampton organized by NERCOMP. The program committee which plans the annual conference met in the morning and I was assigned to one of the most boring tracks – Policy, Regulations and Security. We were a fun group so it was OK. One of our tasks was also to come up with the theme and suggestions for keynote speakers for the upcoming conference. Because of the topics I suggested, I may have earned a nickname “The Disruptive Technologist”. No, I was not disrupting the proceedings, but earned the title based on the topics I was suggesting.

During the subsequent discussions, I heard more than once, “Working in Higher Ed is not what it used to be”. I have a feeling that some of what I was proposing prompted the others to mention this to me. I was stressing on the urgency for us to realize that we cannot get too comfortable with what we do, instead, we need to be extremely agile and develop constantly in new areas. I totally agree with this statement. In fact, who wouldn’t? More importantly, isn’t this true everywhere we look? Isn’t it also true that it has always been this way, it is just that it has been accelerating more recently?

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