Leading the Oct. 27 panel “IT Leaders as Institutional Strategists," Columbia University's Teachers College CIO Dave Comroe and Pete Groustra, assistant vice president for projects, programs and governance at Boston University (BU), said they’ve been focusing on transparency and practical efficiency as the foundations for aligning IT with institutional priorities.
Comroe said credibility with finance leaders begins with demonstrating stewardship over existing resources. Early in his role at Teachers College, he said, he identified unused software licenses and underused systems, freeing up the budget for projects he wanted to pursue. He said it’s especially important for IT leaders to focus on recurring costs in these assessments.
When Comroe later proposed a $2.5 million network upgrade that wasn’t budgeted, he said the finance office approved it because the need was well documented and trust was already established.
“It’s really helping in these really lean times,” he said. “That goes back to the trust. They know I’m being responsible with the resources I do have.”
Groustra said BU has taken a similar approach, emphasizing the need to track return on investment in both financial and non-financial terms.
“What does success look like? Do you want to reduce the number of calls to advising by 50 percent?” Comroe said. “Let’s come back in a year. Did we meet those? Why not?”
To reduce long-term costs, Groustra said BU increasingly looks beyond commercial software, using a system they’ve already invested in or building on an open-source resource.
On the subject of aligning IT goals with the priorities of other departments, Groustra said it can be a challenge, because different departments feel ownership over data they collect and use, but institutions tend to benefit from a more unified approach.
“This is not alumni data or admissions data or graduate admissions data,” Groustra said. “This is university data, and we're investing in systems that better support that.”
Similarly, at Teachers College, Comroe said departments often want to see data from other groups without sharing their own.
To get differing departments on board with technology collaboration, Groustra said it’s better not to start off with conversations about technology at all. Instead, he suggested, start by discussing what problems to solve.
Comroe added that those discussions should be tough but fair about assessing the problems at hand, including any issues with existing business processes like project management.
“Good technology [and] good process can lead to outstanding results, but if one of those two were bad, you’re probably going to have a poor outcome at the end, even after a huge investment,” he said.
Discussing AI initiatives is no different, panelists said, suggesting the conversation should begin with problems rather than the tech itself. Comroe said with AI in particular, it is important to define what each party means by "AI," because without that, it’s difficult to track which AI investments, big or small, are successful.
For example, BU is piloting an internal chatbot called TerriorGPT, which integrated multiple large language models under university oversight.
Teachers College has enabled Google Gemini for faculty and staff, but not yet for students.
Outside of large-scale chatbot deployments, panelists said they favor short-term pilots that test feasibility quickly. Groustra said two or three weeks is enough to get a sense.
“We need to have success or failure early,” he said.
