Q&A: Looking back at RO’s Leah Meicher’s two-year term as co-chair of campus I&TLC Conference
When the Information and Technology Leadership Conference celebrated its tenth anniversary on December 5, the Office of the Registrar’s Leah Meicher took to the floor to moderate the event’s keynote address, a fireside chat with new Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr. Charles Lee Isbell, Jr.
Each year, the event brings together UW information and technology leaders — from fields ranging from data analytics to library science — to network and discuss issues facing the campus community and higher education as a whole.
Here, Meicher, Assistant Director for Student Enterprise Applications, describes her experiences and takeaways from this year’s event, which took place both in-person at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and virtually. She also reflects on the end of her two-year term as the event’s co-chair.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: For those who are unfamiliar with the I&TLC Conference, can you share a little bit about it?
Leah Meicher: As the title says, it’s information and technology leadership. You don’t necessarily have to be in a manager or supervisor position to attend; you could be an aspiring leader or someone who is considering being a leader, you’ve had some training as a leader and you want to just connect and network with others in a similar field and engage with people, whether it’s both virtual and in person. It’s… a welcoming environment for all the participants who partake.
Q: How did you come to be involved in its planning?
LM: I saw this email come across my inbox looking for volunteers to participate in the planning committee for I&TLC, and I’m like, ‘This looks like a perfect opportunity for me to sign up [for] and get involved and reconnect with people that I worked with before [during my previous stint with the RO] – and if it’s not the same people, then I’m still reconnecting with people outside of the Registrar’s Office, and so that’s what kind of drew me into it, and because it had a leadership development sort of purpose to it.
I’ve always been seeking out opportunities for any sort of leadership development and to be able to participate with people who were in the same fields [and] have the same similar aspirations, I thought it was a great opportunity to kind of bond with those people.
Q: What has your experience in this role been like?
LM: I definitely got… what I was looking for. The networking and building relationships and the relationships… have been great. I’ve gotten to know [Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost for Information Technology] Lois [Brooks] and [DoIT Chief Technology Officer] Todd Shechter; they’ve been really great in promoting and sponsoring this sort of engagement with information and technology professionals on our campus.
The first conference that I was on the Planning Committee for had a lot to do with guiding change toward inclusion, diversity, and equity, and accessibility…. That was kind of when we were all trying to navigate how to address that from a remote work environment, and so that was kind of my [first] involvement in this conference was that theme, you know, where we’re in the IT field – information and technology – and what are the issues that we need to address as leaders when it comes to DEI in a remote environment, and so that fascinated me.
It’s just the subject matter and the presenters that come forward, and we try to stick to people who are on campus to do the presentations, and so it’s just getting to know people who are in these areas of campus that you never hear of.
Q: Tell us a little about how the conference went. What were your key takeaways?
LM: I think this conference went really well. We had over, I think it was over 200 attendees altogether, and that was virtual and in person, and I think it was probably 180 in person, so it was up from the previous year. That was a huge success that we were able to draw people in.
It was at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in the DeLuca Forum and that was an awesome venue. We want to return to that venue again; hopefully, we get it for next year.
To have our new Provost, Dr. Charles Isbell, come and find the time to sit and chat with us, I think that was a wonderful experience, hearing his perspective on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and his experiences [on] his journey from the Georgia Institute of Technology, coming to Madison and his thoughts on Madison and the culture, so it was an interesting perspective hearing from [him].
Q: Obviously, technology plays a key role in the work we do on campus. How does your participation help advance the Registrar’s Office’s mission and leadership in the information and technology landscape?
LM: I&TLC is about developing leaders, and I’m looking at [the Registrar’s Office’s mission to] “develop staff, both professional and student, to progress in their desired career that leads to an enjoyable, productive, and stimulating workplace,” that’s I&TLC, and the fact that it doesn’t just focus on a certain title or a level of management or supervision, it addresses the fact that everyone can be or has the potential to lead. Our thing is lead from where you are, whether you’re a manager or supervisor, and the work that you do you’re leading something and you have the potential to lead, and so that’s something that I&TLC [focuses on.]
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The year before, we found that we were getting the managers, the supervisors, the project managers who had leader in their title, and we marketed the conference… for [2023] in a way that we were just blasting to any all areas of campus. The language was about, if you are in a position where you’re thinking about leadership or wanting to, or you’re aspiring to be a leader, this is the conference for you.
The collaboration and engagement with the campus community… I think it puts the Registrar’s Office on the map, and I hear that from people like Todd Shechter and Lois [Brooks] where we want to recognize that there’s information and technology people working in that field across campus – it’s not just in DoIT – and so my piece is any chance I get whenever I introduce myself, I make it loud and clear that I’m from the Registrar’s Office and we do have a team of very talented information and technology people on our staff with the data analysts, we have developers, project managers, business analysts, and not a lot of people are aware of that.
Details about the next conference, set for late 2024, are still being determined. Visit the IT Connects website to learn more and to watch the sessions from December’s conference.
Details about the next conference, set for late 2024, are still being determined. Visit the IT Connects website to learn more and to watch the sessions from December’s conference.