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Three 2012-2013 MOR Associates IT Leadership Program graduates wanted to find a way for themselves and other ITLP graduates to apply their newly found leadership skills, connections, and momentum. In 2015, their efforts resulted in the formation of UW–Madison IT Connects.
The story
When Bruce Maas became DoIT CIO in 2011, he provided funding for anyone in the IT community to participate in MOR IT leadership professional development programs. After the 2012-2013 MOR program Brenda Spychalla, Assistant Director for IT, MERIT, Brandon Bernier, Director of User Services, DoIT, and Deborah Helman, Director of Wendt Commons especially bonded and challenged themselves to determine how to:
- Best apply their newly recognized IT Leadership Program skills
- Sustain the drive and energy of the program
- Work on regular connected IT Leadership projects
Some of their obstacles included.
- UW IT being a large distributed environment
- An untapped IT Leadership program pipeline
- Disconnected leadership programs and projects
To start on their initiative they sought experience and support. They reached out to Dan Jacobsohn, School of Education CIO, who was a former MOR program graduate and had experience spearheading two leadership initiatives at UW–Madison: Leadership Improv and Second Tuesday Leadership Breakfasts.
They sought financial and administrative support from Bruce Maas to start two new leadership initiatives: the IT Leadership Conference and ITLP Forward.
The IT Leadership Program Forward was created to make the MOR IT Leadership Program’s process clear, supplement program discussions, and set the expectation that graduates would give back to the IT community.
Dan, Brenda, Brandon, and Deborah created the first Information and Technology Leadership Conference in December 2013. It was named “Information & Technology” instead of “Information Technology” to encourage broader participation from the library and other information groups.
These new initiatives addressed some specific needs or gaps, but Brandon, Brenda, and Deborah were still puzzled about how to go bigger and how to regularly engage the community in a meaningful way.
They decided to pilot a topic series for ITLP alumni to research and deliver recommendations addressing critical information and technology issues on campus.
The goals of the pilot were to:
- Leverage the IT Leadership Program- provide a way for them to give back
- Build the ITLP community around issues of high interest and value
- Deliver actionable recommendations on current and critical needs
The topic they chose for the pilot was women in IT. The pilot was very successful and resulted in the creation of the Women in IT group (WIT). Although the pilot was successful, they were skeptical of the sustainability of a topic series. Would every new topic result in a new group?
Brandon, Deb, and Brenda looked for other Universities that had models for organizing IT community engagement and partnership. Penn State and NYU had umbrella structures for organizing IT professional development that inspired Brandon, Brenda, and Don Nelson (Bruce Maas’s chief of staff) to write a proposal to create a similar organization at UW–Madison.
They proposed providing leadership opportunities for IT Leadership Program alumni under one brand that would aggregate costs and share work among distributed co-chairs and a 3 person steering committee. Their proposal to Bruce Maas for the creation of UW-IT Connects was enthusiastically accepted.
The newly formed IT Connects steering committee and co-chairs held a kickoff with sponsor Bruce Maas on December 7, 2015.
There were 6 original groups in IT Connects:
- I & T Leadership Conference
- IT Leadership Program Forward
- IT Mentoring Program
- Leadership Improv
- Second Tuesday Leadership Breakfasts
- UW- Women in IT
Source: Brenda Spychalla 2024 presentation to IT Connects.
UW–Madison IT Connects events
- January
- January 28
- January 282025 IT Mentoring Kickoff (In-Person)The In-Person IT Mentoring Kickoff for 202511:30 AM, Union South