Students, Staff, Professors, Parents: Smith College and Workday Reimagine the On-Campus "User" Experience

The Big Themes:


Looking beyond the walls of IT: As the CIO and VP of IT,
Samantha obviously fills a specialized role at Smith, but she
says that her "team" is everyone at the college, and that
achieving the IT department's goals requires input from many
other departments.

Continuous iteration as a North Star: Samantha shares a
favorite quote of hers, which comes from the center for teaching
and learning on campus but that she applies to IT: "There are
many ways to teach well, and all teaching is improvable."

Prioritizing user experience with Workday: Students today
have high expectations for digital experiences, and many academic
platforms do not meet those expectations. Samantha talks about
how Workday's UX tools are helping her deliver for Smith
students.



The Big Quote: "I think I and my team are seen as partners in a
much stronger way. Partnership isn't just delivering utilities.
Partnership is being in conversations, it's bringing people
together. It's calibrating, is this a big problem or a small
problem? Will this solve something that's been bothering us for
three years? So I think that has helped me be positioned as a
strategic partner."



This episode is sponsored by Workday.


Visit Cloud Wars for more.