From the time he was seven years old, Bob Matney has been interested in technology, playing with computers at an age when many boys spend their days with a bat in hand playing baseball. With 20 years experience in IT coupled with this lifelong passion for technology, Matney is prepared to take over as Ashland University’s new Executive Director of IT.

“I have officially been in IT for 21 years,” he said. “I have done everything from printer repair work to computer repair to being a technical consultant.”

Matney began working in higher education in 2000, first as an adjunct professor at North Central State College before moving into a fulltime assistant professor role, teaching computer information systems classes. After four years in the classroom, Matney moved to the production side of the college where he managed a 30-month, $1.6 million project. He was responsible for transitioning North Central State’s administrative systems into Datatel’s Colleague, which required him to understand the entire college’s business processes. This provided Matney with valuable experience as he moved up within the college.

“What that experience gave me is a chance to understand pretty much the entire workings of a college,” he said. “Once we came through that transition we had some people move up from the director of IT and then I assumed that position and held it for two and a half years.”

The position reports to Stephen Storck, AU’s Vice President of Business, who was excited to hire someone with experience in higher education, who understands the differences in culture from a business.

“We tend to do things by consensus with lots of input from multiple bodies whereas in business it tends to be top down,” Storck said. “It’s kind of like the military. You don’t question the general or the lieutenant; you just do what you’re told. Higher ed doesn’t work that way.”

This is the first time this position reports to Storck. Previously, this was a cabinet-level position.

“When Curtis White was here, he was the VP and Dr. Finks restructured cabinet to make it an executive director’s position and it reports to me,” Storck said. “Frankly, we did that for budgetary reasons. Its not that we are saying IT is any less important than it was before.”

IT has experienced significant turnover recently, which Matney will attempt to settle quickly.

“I don’t have any plans for any major restructuring,” Matney said “I think the IT department has been through enough flux with some of the things that have happened, with Curtis (White) and Kurt (Eckert) as well as with other folks leaving that I want to be that rock, that people see that there’s some stability. 

I don’t want people to see me come in and worry that there’s massive changes and nobody will know where they’re going to work tomorrow.”

Storck has held off on filling these positions, choosing to afford Matney the opportunity to evaluate the department. 

He asked the remaining staff to pick up the slack in the short term, and to continue to provide service to the university

“IT is a service department,” he said. “They service the students, faculty and staff, so we’ve got to provide that good quality service.”

This academic year will mark the final year of ANGEL, the university’s learning management suite, or LMS. Matney and Storck have already begun the search for the next system, which will likely be Blackboard.

“From my vantage point it makes sense but what we’ve said to the blackboard people is we want the faculty heavily involved. 

This is the LMS that they’re going to be using they’re the primary users so we want to be sure we get input from them,” Storck said.

As always, budgetary concerns exist, and the department will have to overcome these throughout the year.

“We’ve got lifecycles on the equipment and we just have to work through that and just get the stuff repaired and replaced,” said Storck. “The issue is like everything else, ‘Do we have adequate funding?’ 

We would like to have more funding so we can have better technology but its just like everything else at the university there’s only so much money.”