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jim-jorstad

Jim A. Jorstad

Senior Fellow, Center for Digital Government

Jim Jorstad is Senior Fellow for the Center for Digital Education and the Center for Digital Government. He is a retired emeritus interim CIO and Cyber Security Designee for the Chancellor’s Office at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He served in leadership roles as director of IT client services, academic technologies and media services, providing services to over 1,500 staff and 10,000 students. Jim has experience in IT operations, teaching and learning, and social media strategy. His work has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Forbes and NPR, and he is a recipient of the 2013 CNN iReport Spirit Award. Jim is an EDUCAUSE Leading Change Fellow and was chosen as one of the Top 30 Media Producers in the U.S.

The growing scope of a university CIO’s job necessitates a deepening relationship to an institution’s business interests, digital transformation, cybersecurity and development of internal talent.
The pace of change and technological innovation over the past few years has given education and IT leaders a lot to think about. Five things that stand out are online learning, AI, cybersecurity, staffing and diversity.
As with any powerful new technology, the potential for artificial intelligence to analyze large volumes of data and automate processes comes with a risk that it will be used for nefarious purposes.
Chip-maker Nvidia joined the trillion-dollar club recently, and it’s eyeing AI’s transformative potential in life sciences, physics, climate, cybersecurity, data science, robotics and simulation.
To fill critical IT vacancies in an increasingly competitive job market, colleges and universities may need to broaden their searches, hire from within, and review and update requirements for hire.
AI chatbots are here to stay, so it’s time to get acquainted with them. Center for Digital Education Senior Fellow Jim Jorstad sat down for a one-on-one with ChatGPT recently and came away impressed.
The pandemic brought accelerated tech adoption, new funding opportunities and operational changes to higher education. The near future may require careful prioritization and institutional investment.
Some tech companies are nixing traditional four-year degree requirements for new hires as skills-certification programs increasingly provide adequate training at lower costs. But their long-term potentials are different.
With the ever-growing list of uses for data in higher education, being an asset that touches all aspects of a university’s mission, comes a need for users to understand the big picture of data privacy and security.
With no end in sight to extreme weather patterns that could have implications for data centers and even cybersecurity, the time is ripe for IT leaders to plan for energy efficiency and resilience.