[hr]
Recently, Jackson State’s chief information officer, Dr. Deborah Dent sat on a panel, to discuss the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) being ‘intelligent’ campuses. The panel, entitled ‘Transforming Capacity Building through Vision and Leadership: Smart HBCUs’, was held during the annual National HBCU Week conference in Washington, D.C.
“My goal was to work with fellow panel members and organizers to continue to demarcate the basic smart campus and intelligent campus needs that all of us must have to enhance research and funding competitiveness,” she says. “Efforts are already in progress to move forward with our charge.”
Dent continued, ” We all have smart campus’ but we need to move towards having intelligent campus’. This will require us to access what we have and to develop a digital transformation strategy which aligns with the campus strategic plan. We must also engage a formal business process transformation and move away from automating bad business practices.”
The panelists were expected to:
- Discuss the transformation of HBCUs through collaboration to successfully compete for federal funding and garner private sector support.
- Provide promising practices for developing smart HBCUs for student and institutional success through leadership and vision.
- Begin a dialogue between HBCUs for collaboration in the development of smart HBCUs across the spectrum of our schools.