A day in the life of a community college CIO

A CIO's day shouldn't be about fixing technical issues -- it's about building relationships and setting the strategy.

Luke VanWingerden, CIO at Tri-County Technical College, draws on seven-plus years leading IT at a community college to share what a typical day looks like -- and the leadership lessons he's learned along the way.

VanWingerden's experience underscores the following lessons for CIOs:

• Eliminate personal admin access to stay focused on IT strategy.
• Prioritize relationship-building by being visible.
• Address core system weaknesses before chasing new tools.
• Be pragmatic about AI adoption.
• Push current vendors to release effective AI features.
• Model healthy work-life boundaries.

In the following interview, VanWingerden shares insights into the daily routines and strategic choices that help him create real change across his organization.

Editor's note: The following transcript was edited for length and clarity.

As CIO for Tri-County Technical College, what falls within the scope of your role?

Luke VanWingerden: My scope covers all physical technology, whether that's academic, operations or the business side of the institution. This includes all our simulators, such as welding VR simulators, as well as our academic technology -- hardware, support, networks, data center and core environments.

The other half is the digital side: our campus portal, academic software and online services, business systems, intelligence tools and the data behind them.

I'm also responsible for strategic initiatives, including shaping our AI strategy and partnering with business units. I strategize on how we can become more sustainable and help departments become more operationally effective.

What does a typical workday look like for you?

VanWingerden: When I have key leadership changes, my day changes drastically. I might become interim CISO or director of support and service delivery -- or even on the data side -- because I can't bring in a consultant to do that role. They can help, but they can't do the thinking around it. However, we're fully staffed now, so my world is getting steadier.

Every day, I try to touch base and make sure nothing requires escalation. I've walked around campus for eight years with a yellow coffee mug that says '#1 Dad' on it -- that relational aspect is key. I make my way around campus and try to be approachable, because then I can have a pulse on things -- not tactical things -- but things that are happening in general.

Then it's lots of meetings and engaging with the team to say, 'Where are we going? How do we set priority? How do I remove barriers?' I don't have administrative rights to anything. My role is all about strategy and removing barriers.

Then, depending on the time of year, I set time aside to actually think. As of late, I've been thrust into the role of leading key strategic projects as well -- almost that of a project manager. I would rather not do that, because it takes me away from some of the strategy.

Can you tell me about your IT strategy?

VanWingerden: When I started here as CIO seven and a half years ago, we had one cloud-based product. At that point, it was clear we needed a way to evaluate whether moving more services to the cloud made sense. Modernizing our enterprise environment was also important because our environment was outdated.

A lot of our strategy is about holding folks accountable to come back and say, 'We want to move forward, but we need to get our enterprise environment to a place where we can actually connect to it.' We first need that core environment, and then we can have process efficiency and workflow automation -- and I'm not talking about AI, just automation.

Last year, for just one of our divisions, we automated over 2,000 hours that they didn't have to spend on a couple of key processes. For us, it's not about IT owning that -- it's about getting folks to own that and bring that to us. Folks talk about process inefficiencies, and so they want another tool. I say, 'Timeout. It's not a process inefficiency in your tool -- the problem is that we don't have a good document management system or core system.' So that was a lot of the strategy upfront -- getting folks to step out of their own world and look at the bigger picture.

How are you thinking about AI right now?

VanWingerden: We've adopted it from a generative AI perspective. But what does that mean as an enterprise? We took a step back to assess whether the organization was truly ready for AI adoption, and to clarify what the institution wanted to achieve. We're not just saying, 'Let's go buy another chatbot.' That wouldn't help us operate more effectively or serve students. Just getting a ChatGPT Enterprise license and telling people to feed whatever data they want into it -- that does nothing.

I know some peers who were trying to block it. We didn't do that. When generative AI tools began to emerge, we already had data and security policies in place to govern it. They're broad enough to outline how you handle student data, so AI was no different. We really encouraged people to take a critical approach and use it safely -- the same thing we're getting our students to do.

Once Microsoft Copilot became available, we told folks to use it, but that they don't have permission to put employee or student data out there as a full data set. I said 'We're getting there, but don't do it yet.'

So, our AI strategy was getting folks to own the risk of their decisions. If they own it and do something stupid, they should come let us know and not try to hide it. Thankfully, we haven't had any major issues.

How are people at the college using Copilot?

VanWingerden: I don't know, because we opened it up. We said, 'Go do great things. Here's Copilot. Make sure you're logged in appropriately.' It's built into our learning management system, which is excellent.

However, our strategy is really to push our current vendors to build more practical AI capabilities into their tools. At conferences, every vendor booth touts AI. So, I'm saying to them, 'Well, you advertised it. What are you doing with it? I still don't see any evidence that you have anything.'

If our vendors offer more effective AI features, then I don't have to find one silver bullet across everything. I can say, 'Okay, our HR team has it built into their system, and it's appropriate for the employee records, taxes and payroll.' On the student side, we could use AI to help a student walk through the enrollment cycle -- that use case will look very different from the payroll side.

That's how we're pushing vendors. I'm not trying to become an AI expert. I don't want to become that, because it'll just be normal in three years and a part of everything we do.

How much of your day is spent dealing with planned things versus unexpected problems?

VanWingerden: I got into IT doing people, relationships, projects, strategy -- not hands on a keyboard. I've never configured a switch or blocked a DNS entry. I'm relying on my team to be the experts and handle the technical side.

My recommendation to all CIOs is to get rid of all admin access. Otherwise, when you walk into that meeting with the president, he'll say, 'Hey, my computer's broken.' The meeting where you were going to talk about strategic things is now talking about his computer. Luckily, I have a good president, and I don't have to deal with that, but I've been at other places where that's happened.

However, a lot of my peers are dealing with unexpected technical issues every day. Thankfully, I have a leadership team that supports me not being in that reactive role. We used to have somebody who was super technical, and we didn't move on strategic stuff.

When we have situations, it doesn't take the whole day. My team is working on it and keeping me updated. You have to be willing to let go and let somebody else work on it and fill you in.

How do you manage work-life balance?

VanWingerden: Career opportunities will always be there, but your family won't be. Work-life balance starts with the culture of my team and helping them see that we're not going to choose every upgrade to be on a weekend.

Often, the business partner isn't going to be there over the weekend to test it with you. So, I decided that doing upgrades on weekends or holidays won't be our default. There is a time and place for that, but I wanted to protect the evenings, weekends and holidays.

I also try to take at least one two-week vacation every year where I'm completely unplugged. I attend to my kids. Living in proximity to our work was important. We moved near here so I could take my kids to school every morning. I've done that for the last seven years. On Fridays, I pick my son up from school because we get off at 2 p.m. It's great.

When I got here, our culture was to work all the time. It was almost a badge of honor. I really had to model a more balanced approach. We've been able to recruit a lot of talent with this approach because many folks in the industry are burned out and seeking better work-life balance.

Tim Murphy is site editor for Informa TechTarget's IT Strategy group.