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About OIT
Meet Vice Chancellor Ramon Padilla, Jr.
Before joining the UT Knoxville and the UT System, Padilla led information technology departments in government and higher education. From 2014 to 2020, Padilla led the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities’ information technology services as Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer. Other positions he has held include Associate Vice Chancellor and Deputy Chief Information Officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011-2013), Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer for the State University System of Florida Board of Governors (2005-2010), and Chief Information Officer for the Jefferson County Government/Louisville Metro Government in Louisville, Kentucky. He was also an adjunct instructor at the University of Louisville and a freelance writer for CNET/TechRepublic. He has sat on the boards of multiple higher education institutions, including Florida LambdaRail and NWRDC.
Padilla earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Kentucky in 1984 and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Louisville in 1987.
Meet Chief Academic Technology Officer and Deputy CIO Dan Harder
Before joining UT Knoxville, Harder spent nearly two decades in higher education in various technology and leadership roles. From 2019 – 2023, he served as Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at the UT Health Science Center. Other positions he has held include Senior Director for University Information Technology at the Emory School of Medicine (2016-2019), Assistant CIO at Elon University (2013-2016), and several positions including Director at Duke University (2004 – 2013).
Harder holds a Bachelor of Music in music education from Appalachian State University and a Master of Project Management from Western Carolina University.
In this role, Harder will provide strategic leadership and direction for academic and research technology applications, including working with faculty to understand the teaching and learning environment, reviewing technological options related to teaching needs with faculty, and supporting the research needs of the university, among other duties and responsibilities.
UT Knoxville and OIT Mission Statements
The primary mission of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is to move forward the frontiers of human knowledge and enrich and elevate the citizens of the state of Tennessee, the nation, and the world. As the preeminent research-based land-grant university in the state, UTK embodies the spirit of excellence in teaching, research, scholarship, creative activity, outreach and engagement attained by the nation’s finest public research institutions.
The Office of Innovative Technologies (OIT) seeks to support the university’s mission by providing customer driven IT services in a consistent and credible manner.
2024 OIT Satisfaction Survey
There were 1560 people who responded to the 2024 OIT Annual Survey. The sample consisted of 46.8% students, 10.2% faculty, and 43.0% staff. The results are presented for the campus overall, as well as each campus affiliation: students, faculty, and staff. OIT used the structure of The Higher Education TechQual+ Survey as the basis for questions in the OIT Annual survey to measure satisfaction. The TechQual+ survey instrument consists of 13 items that are designed to measure the performance of three core commitments:
- Connectivity and Access
- Technology and Collaboration Services
- Support and Training
In addition to the core items, 12 significant technology-based services in use at UTK were included on the survey, 7 supported by OIT and 5 supported by the UT System.
- Official University Email – Office365, Gmail
- Online@UT (Canvas)
- Student Information Systems and Online Class Registration
- Zoom
- Teams
- UTVerse
- Copilot
- UT System Services – ANDI
- UT System Services – Cayuse SP/424
- UT System Services – IRIS
- UT System Services – iMedRIS
- UT System Services – Concur
The survey asked the respondents to rate each item on three factors: minimum service level expectation (need), desired service level expectation and perceived service performance. One of the main goals of TechQual+ is to measure how well OIT is meeting the technology needs of campus by calculating an Adequacy Gap score which is the difference between minimum service level expectation and the perceived service performance. When the Adequacy Gap is positive, perceived (or actual) service performance exceeds needs (or minimum expectations). One of the main goals of this structure is to measure how well OIT is meeting the technology needs of campus by calculating an Adequacy Gap score which is the difference between performance and need. Adequacy gaps are interpreted as:
- Positive adequacy gaps indicate that performance exceeded need.
- Negative gaps indicate that performance did not meet need.
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