In May, we welcomed Ted Hanss as the LSA CIO. Since then, he has been spending time visiting and familiarizing himself with teams across the college. He brings a wealth of experience from his recent role as Health Sciences CIO at Yale University. Previously, Ted held several positions at U-M, including Director of the Center for Information Technology Integration, CIO of the Medical School, and Associate CIO for Michigan Medicine. Ted holds a B.S. in Biology from Boston College, an M.B.A. from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and an M.A. in Information Science from the U-M School of Information. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Erica. They have two sons who also reside in the area with their families.
We interviewed Ted to learn more about him and his role as LSA CIO.
Q: What attracted you to the LSA CIO position?
A: Several factors. In conversations before applying and during the interview process, I heard of challenges and opportunities that aligned with my background and interests. This included aspirations of the dean and other leaders to not just align with our peers inside and outside the university, but to innovate and be a leader. I have guided organizations through change, including periods of financial austerity, and believe that experience will be valuable over the next few years as we navigate uncertain times. I have also been part of IT centralization efforts both from central and distributed IT roles and felt I could contribute to defining a future that benefited both the college and university as a whole.
Furthermore, everyone I spoke with—from departments in LSA to the Dean’s Office to the Technology Services staff—described Technology Services as a well-respected unit of talented and committed professionals. In past roles, I’ve often built new teams from scratch. Here, I see the opportunity to take an already strong organization and enhance its services and processes to best support LSA’s students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
Finally, having worked at U-M before, I felt I knew the environment well enough to be effective. At the same time, LSA is new to me, presenting fresh challenges and opportunities to learn. Lastly, knowing Cathy Curley’s values and leadership approach during her tenure as LSA CIO assured me this would be a good culture fit.
Q: What are your top priorities for your first year as the LSA CIO?
A: My top priority is to connect with the people of LSA—faculty, staff, and students—and understand their needs and how Technology Services can support them. I also want to learn more about Dean Ceballo’s vision and develop a strategic plan for Technology Services that aligns with and supports that vision.
Internally, I will work with Technology Services staff to identify areas of improvement, both in how we work and the services we deliver. We’re part of a purpose-driven organization where our work directly supports teaching and learning, research, and community engagement. That means we must continually sharpen skills, collaborate effectively, and ensure our services are sustainable and impactful.
Q: How do you see technology shaping the future of LSA?
A: Technology should be an enabler, not a driver for change in itself. We want our community to leverage technology through well-supported and sustainable service offerings. Therefore, we need to monitor emerging technologies through a lens that contextualizes the fit in LSA. With the breadth and diversity of the academic programs in the college, there will be different rates of adoption that we must accommodate, from early adopters to those requiring more time to integrate new technologies into their instructional and research efforts.
Q: How do you plan to engage with students, faculty, and staff to ensure their technology needs are met?
A: Over the summer, I met with LSA staff and administrators and a few of our student employees. Now that the academic year is underway, I will expand my engagement with faculty and students to hear directly from them. I’m looking for suggestions on how best to do that. We don’t have existing faculty, staff, or student advisory committees, so I’m considering ad hoc connections to different communities. I have reached out to the LSA Student Government to gather student perspectives on how both Information and Technology Services (ITS) and LSA Technology Services meet their needs.
Q: What advice would you give to members of the LSA community who are interested in leveraging technology for innovation?
A: Engage us early. Someone looking to do something that appears outside our service catalog may find that we already have the capability to meet their needs or are also exploring the same area. We can then work together on approaches that may include proofs of concept or pilots that have the potential to scale to a wider community of users.
Q: What is one aspect of LSA Technology Services that you found especially noteworthy?
A: The openness and collaboration here are remarkable. People have been generous with their time in explaining their work. I hear consistently how strongly connected we are across the different units within Technology Services. Sometimes we approach similar tasks differently, so there is an opportunity to more closely align. I’m confident our culture will support continuous improvement and taking steps to mature how we work. The more efficient we are and the more uniform the services we provide, the better the experience will be for the community we support.
Q: What do you do outside of work to recharge?
A: I enjoy time with family and friends, travel, cooking a wide range of savory cuisines, and reading spy/mystery novels and biographies. I regularly bike along the Border to Border trail, especially the segments north of Chelsea, around Dexter, and through Ann Arbor along the river.
Q: What is one thing people might be surprised to learn about you?
A: While my primary role is administrative, I’ve been fortunate to include teaching and research in my career. This helps me understand firsthand the systems faculty and researchers rely on. I taught computer and information systems to undergrads in the U-M School of Business in the 1990s and now teach in the School of Public Health. This semester, I’m teaching “Introduction to Health Informatics” to students in the Health Management & Policy Executive Masters Program. I’ve also been the PI or co-PI on grants totaling over $12 million from federal agencies, corporations, and foundations. The areas have ranged from building scalable IT infrastructure (e.g., AFS, Kerberos, etc.) for U-M and others, including solutions that IBM shipped as products, to studying team science and the factors that contribute to positive collaborative work across researchers from different countries, open educational resources, and healthcare capacity building across Africa.
