As a champion of Michigan’s Center for Academic Innovation, I’m always looking for opportunities to highlight CAI’s work. When I saw that CAI is recruiting for an associate director of media and technology solutions, I reached out to see if I could help spread the word with my new “Featured Gig” series. Jeremy Nelson, CAI’s senior director of creative studios, shared his thoughts on the role.
Q: What is the university’s mandate behind this role? How does it help align with and advance the university’s strategic priorities?
A: Earlier this year, President Ono rolled out Vision 2034 for the university, which provides a road map for the next 10 years at our institution. A key priority is furthering our efforts to achieve “life-changing education” for our students and learners, including aspiring to “a future in which a U-M education connects and empowers learners everywhere to reach their full potential by expanding access, offerings, and delivery to a more diverse community of individuals.” Many people and capabilities will be involved in this work; among them, a robust and scalable media infrastructure is critical.
For example, the university made a major investment in professional studio infrastructure and equipment this past year by building six new state-of-the-art production studios within the Center for Academic Innovation, one of them being an extended reality virtual production studio. The associate director of media and technology solutions role will lead a highly technical team of media and technology professionals that will maintain these studios, the network and server infrastructure, and media management to ensure we can continue to scale high-quality educational media productions to meet the educational pedagogy goals of our faculty.
As more of our academic partners build capacity to deliver online degrees, high-quality media production will be a core component of this. This role will help inform the strategy for developing high-quality media for online for-credit and noncredit programs and deliver on our goal to provide network studio capacity for the campus.
Q: Where does the role sit in the university structure? How will the person in this role engage with other units and leaders across campus?
A: This role will be situated within the Creative Studios team at the Center for Academic Innovation and report directly to me. The person in this role will have an opportunity to deeply understand the current needs from faculty partners around the support and infrastructure needed to create MOOCs and online degree media. The Center for Academic Innovation works with all 19 schools and colleges in the Ann Arbor campus, and this person will engage with leaders from all units to help understand their needs, consult on media and technology solutions for their unit, and help create and implement our network studio strategy to deliver high-quality productions for all partners.
Q: What would success look like in one year? Three years? Beyond?
A: In the first year, we are really looking for a leader that will come in and take the time to deeply understand our current processes, workflows, and needs to develop a long term plan for success. At the end of that first year, we will call it a success if we have built out a set of scalable and flexible operational processes and an infrastructure plan that will position us for continued growth.
At the three-year mark, we will have fully implemented a series of network studios and media production capabilities across the institution that will support broad academic needs for online teaching and learning to meet the pedagogical needs of each unit and the learning needs of each learner. The challenge to deliver quality at scale requires constant attention and a dedication to continuous improvement and agility. At the Center for Academic Innovation, we welcome these big challenges and are looking to be that enabling force for faculty and units to focus on what they do best, all while pushing the boundaries on innovation.
Q: What kinds of future roles would someone who took this position be prepared for?
A: This type of role will be a combination of someone who can balance deep technical problem-solving with high-level strategy and thinking. This person will help grow and develop a team of professionals that deliver state-of-the-art media technology solutions to solve academic goals. This person will be prepared for technical leadership roles that involve media production in any discipline.
The great thing about working at CAI is that you have the opportunity to work with faculty that are experts in almost every field, so on-the-job learning prepares you for many different disciplines. I see this type of role as a great opportunity for someone to build their skills in relationship building, cutting-edge technical problem-solving and strategic systems thinking. I am excited to work with someone to help us achieve our next set of goals for CAI and the University of Michigan.
