Dana Sanderson

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Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Dana Sanderson - 00:00
Hi, my name is Dana Sanderson, I'm the Chief Information Officer at the
University of Prince Edward Island, which is my alma mater. In the early
80’s I was a student here, I graduated in 1984 from an administration
degree, which has been the base of much of my career and has allowed me to
do many things. Presently, I am now back later in my career and now I am an
employee, so I'm getting to see a different side of the school and work
with different people and most importantly though, I still get to talk to a
lot of students.


Slide - Memories - 00:37 
I turned 18 on my very first day at University of Prince Edward Island and
in the old arena attended my first rock concert with Matt Minglewood, so
that was the start of my social side of my life at UPEI. Earlier in my
second year, I took my very first computer science degree course with which
I struggled but I met a new professor by the name of Steve Howard and he
helped me through that and through that I learned that "you know what?
there might be something to this computer science thing." And I think,
lastly, the other memory is just all the people and all the events. Being
at the Barn for the social times, attending dinners, meeting with
classmates, meeting with professors and have the ability to walk into a
professor's office and just talk, it might be about university, it might be
about life, it just might be about current affairs, I don't think that's
something everybody gets to do on other campuses.


Slide - Student Life - 01:39 
Well student life in the 1980’s is certainly different than perhaps
student life in the 2018’s-2019’s, it was a different time, it was a
different society, you know? Did we; it was smaller, did we make better
connections, our connections weren't digital, they were personal; our
activities weren't behind a computer or in front of the TV, they were maybe
at a bar or maybe at the Barn, maybe in the Library, did we occasionally
have the occasional drink in a party, certainly did! Oh, I think that still
happens today but the atmosphere of where it happened and the place where
it happened and the features of the places where it happened were certainly
different. But you know what? When I look around students here, I just see
that happening today, on this campus, it's just done different; It's not
that it has really changed that much, it's just done a different way. Man
there were some good times here in the 80’s though and when I heard the
Barn burned, that was a sad day 'cause a lot of memories in that old barn
but that being said, we can talk to anybody that was here when the Barn was
here and you say: "Hey, you remember the Barn?" everybody remembers it,
kind of a strange memory for people to have but that's what it was, it was
a focal point and the Library you know what? the Library has been a focal
point has it changed? yeah it has changed a lot since I was here but you
know what, it's still the Library, when I walk here I go "You know what? I
remember walking in here, I remember being part of this, I remember sitting
in the cubicles up the stairs cramming for an exam, now it's nice to walk
by others and see that they're cramming.


Slide - Community - 03:28 
I think– I think one of the things I most remember of being a student
here was the sense of community, this was a relatively small campus in the
1980’s; it was easy to see a professor, it was easy to talk with students
and students knew each other simply because of the size of the campus and
the atmosphere and to me it just gave a much better education, I think it
gave me a much better rounding in terms of an individual because you could
work across so many different areas and talk to so many different people.
The other thing that sticks out, as a business degree person, is yeah, this
crazy course called 'Policy'; Everybody who really worried about it, I
think you started it in the first year but that was a stepping stone for me
to learn how to be really creative, be a problem solver, to work with all
kinds of different people under very intense pressures and deadlines, an
experience that has stayed with me for a very very long time.


Slide - University Educated - 04:35 
Just a little side story, I grew up in a farm in Greenwich which is now
part of the National Park of which our climate lab works very closely with
on a small farm and my father said to my two brothers and I, he said, 'you
can be anything you want to be but you'll be university educated, you can
be a university educated farmer or fisherman, I don't really care but
you're gonna have a university education and you're gonna get it from UPEI"
And my two brothers and I, are proud alumnus. And I’ve carried that with
me a long time and I still carry that with me, whether I left this province
and worked in other provinces, or went to other areas and met other people
I went, I was never I was always proud of being from UPEI and people would
say it was small, it was this, it doesn't really matter what it was it was
the foundation. You know what? That's boded very very well for my
professional career but I think it's boded even more for my personal life;
I got a lot of friends and a lot of connections from this University and I
still have them it's 39 years later I still can walk down the street and
see somebody, or get an email, or talk to somebody and tell a story about
what happened here. This is a great place.


Slide - Get Involved! - 05:55 
I was pretty fortunate when I was here at the University because it was
small I got to participate in the Student Union, I was president of the
Business Society, if there was an event I actually worked with the radio
station at that time, Radio CIMN—C-I-M-N 'Eleven Ninety' which was an
experience I never thought I would have at a university and that was the
great thing about UPEI and still is the great thing about UPEI, the ability
to get involved, it's not purely academic, it's not purely social, it's a
very well-rounded opportunity here and it was great, I miss them some
days.


Slide - Why UPEI? - 06:36 
If I go back to the very first days of this campus when I was here and I
look at where we are today, some 40 years later, this is a totally
different campus. We have matured, we have done so many things we were a
different campus, 25% of our students are international, 81 countries,
y'know 7 faculties; everybody's got a master's program or building out a
PhD program and we are just not that little small school on Prince Edward
Island but we still have that small school feeling, in that you know what?
you can still come here as a student, feel welcomed, feel safe but feel
connected and that your university education is just not about what
happened in the classroom, it’s truly what happens on the campus and in
Charlottetown and then the Island community. It's a fantastic place,
there's so many opportunities here that weren't there when I was here and
that there's days I wished where maybe it'd be nice to come back again and
do it all over.


Slide - Your IT Career at UPEI - 07:47 
This new Network project and Network is only a small part of what IT does,
you know how I look at IT it’s; 'Information' and 'Technology' the
network is the 'technology' part, we are going to put in something that's
going to help us grow, that's gonna allow students and researchers to work
much more collaboratively, not just in the island, not just in Canada but
around the world very secure, very stable, very fast and technology is not
gonna get in their way. However the world of IT is actually moving more to,
it's more about information than it is about the technology and our ability
to have things in place with whether it be with their network or whether it
be with their applications or whether we are working with our researchers
on new and innovative activities, allows us to gather data and learn new
things and apply them quickly and that's what IT needs to be about on this
campus. It's not a thing, it's something there that it's there to support
something, it's not about IT, it's never been about IT, it's about having
the right things in place to allow our students to be the very best they
can be, to our researchers to be the very best they can be, our professors
to be the very best they can be and that they're not being hampered with
technology, in fact technology is allowing them to be more efficient, more
effective, more creative, more innovative.


Slide - Passion for Learning - 09:18 
You know I think when I was here in the 80’s and anybody was here in the
80’s we said "Oh get a degree and that's what you work for and that's
what it'll be and that will bode you well for the rest of your career",
What I quickly learned was, it's a great base but you had to learn many
different lessons along the way. You know, when I was here I took a
computer science course, one and barely passed it. However through
experiences, through readings, through conferences, through whatever means
I could I learned a lot more about Information Technology and what it could
do for people and what I also learned is that you always have to learn.
Whether it be personal, whether it be career, you always have to have the
ability to learn and you have to have the things around you to learn. You
know, I look around the campus here and I see that I see seniors at the
Senior College, I see I'm not even sure how old she was Dr. Olive Bryanton,
probably our oldest PhD cross the stage in her 80’s and go "that's pretty
amazing." You don't get that unless something has kindled you about wanting
to learn and I think at UPEI, I got that.


Slide - Final Thoughts - 10:42 
So when I joined here in September of 2014, you know one of the very first
things I did was to talk to as many people as I possibly could about what
their role was and what they did and how they helped with the student
experience and then how the technology enabled them and this just showed me
what they had. Surprisingly, they had technology that was built probably
while I was here in terms of systems that helped operate the University.
The world is different, our students are different, we are all different we
are much more digitally connected than we ever were and continue to be so,
and as such we needed to be inventive, innovative, think about the future
and that's really what I've been tasked to do and to help lead and
organization to do, as we've made a lot of changes not just for today but
changes for the future how are students engaged with us, from the very
first time that we reached out our recruitment to, how they find it about
their march and how they learned and what they've learned and what are the
other things available to them and what do our staff and faculty have that
make their life easier, so they can focus on the things that are important
for their role whether it be up in research or administration and teaching
and learning. I'm really excited about the next project that we are about
to kick-off. We are gonna change our whole network infrastructure, what
does that really mean? We are building a brand new highway that we can run
faster cars and faster systems and with much more connectivity than we've
ever had. Will I be here? in 2069? I hope not but I hope the things we've
done have put in place the foundation for that just to continue to grow
over the next 50 years.