IT infuses everything about college life from financial aid to creating schedules

In 1989, Karen Julian enrolled at what was then known as the College of St. Thomas after graduating from Lakeville High School — without ever visiting the campus.

The school and community grew on her. She excelled in classes and a work study job evolved into a full-time position that paid for tuition.

She never left. She kept that job while she finished undergraduate and graduate degrees and then moved up into different positions at what is now the University of St. Thomas.

Julian became interim chief information officer when Ed Clark left in August to take the CIO job for the California State University system. The interim was removed from her title in March.

The chief information officer is a relatively new position in corporate America and even less so in academia. Now many schools have programs and certificates for students hoping to become a CIO.

Julian is only the third CIO St. Thomas has had and among only a handful of women CIOs at major colleges and universities.

Information technology and data security now infuse all aspects of student life and the amount of personal data that students share with the school at all levels needs to be protected and secure.

When Julian started at St. Thomas, the innovation and technology services department she now leads had about 25 employees among the school's 1,402 full- and part-time employees. Today, it has over 100 of the 1,933 employees at the university.

How did you decide on St. Thomas?

It's a funny story. I actually didn't even visit the campus even though I grew up in Lakeville, because I just really didn't have a lot of guidance about going to college. I just had heard great things about St. Thomas and just kind of envisioned myself here even really, with pretty little knowledge outside of what I saw in the viewbook.

What was your first job at St. Thomas?

I was a work study student — I started that in 1990 in the financial aid office — and then while I was still an undergrad, a position opened up in 1992 for a programmer. And, I applied and started working as a programmer before I graduated.

Did the full-time job pay for school?

Once I became an employee, I started receiving tuition remission, because back in the day, there wasn't a waiting period.

How has financial aid changed over the years?

Financial aid evolved into a combination of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management. And I spent all of my time before I came to ITS running basically what we called enrollment operation. It was kind of a decentralized IT unit that supported all of admissions and financial aid.

What are some of the things around technology and data that are different today than they were when you were a student?

I was a computer science student. I sat in a classroom learning COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language, an early computer programing language) by watching my professor write the code on the board.

Now students have their own laptops, smartphones and tablets. How different is their expectation of technology among students today?
The vast majority are very comfortable with technology, they can navigate even things that aren't necessarily easy to navigate. They're not afraid of technology.

Has anything changed within IT related to St. Thomas' move from Division III to Division I athletics?

Everything is information driven. We had to restructure how our tutoring sessions are handled and recorded. I mean, now, we have NCAA compliance. That in and of itself is huge compared to how we had to report to the MIAC. That was also very structured but it was a very quick switchover to have all of our systems in place to do all of our compliance reporting.

What's been the biggest challenge over 30 years within IT?

Technology as its evolved has always been important to the university and we rely on it. What has changed is that I believe that we are now very much a strategic partner in helping decide, where we're going, what we're prioritizing, and we're much more of a partner with the rest of the university. We're just integral to everything now.

Does that involvement across the enterprise also include the development of the new on-campus sports arena?

It has already started. It's a new challenge. That, again, is why I've stayed here. St. Thomas is always doing something new and it just presents continual learning for our teams. Because we get opportunities. We've never built an arena like this before. So that's exciting. It's an exciting thing to be a part of.