Dear colleagues,
It is with deep respect and mixed emotions that I share the news that Assistant Vice Provost Shawna Dark, our campus Chief Academic Technology Officer and the head of Research, Teaching, and Learning (RTL), will be leaving her role at UC Berkeley to accept a position as Vice Chancellor for IT and Education Technology at the West Valley-Mission Community College District. While I am certain Shawna’s leadership and experience will be a tremendous asset to West Valley-Mission, we will certainly miss her at UC Berkeley.
With Shawna’s leadership, RTL has matured into a highly productive and strategically aligned unit, actively implementing initiatives that embrace new models of educational excellence. Near the beginning of her tenure at Berkeley, she successfully led RTL through numerous crises, including a global pandemic, during which her organization helped the entire campus pivot to remote instruction within a few days. RTL has also led the charge in revolutionizing instructional technology on campus and since 2020, expanded support from 11 to 21 instructional technology platforms, including the adoption of DataHub, Berkeley’s instance of Jupyter. Moreover, RTL is actively driving Berkeley’s commitment to accessibility by significantly expanding lecture capture capabilities, increasing coverage from 35 classrooms pre-pandemic to 99% of general assignment classrooms today, fundamentally transforming instructional delivery across campus. Shawna has also greatly expanded RTL’s Center for Teaching and Learning, including key additions for inclusive teaching and new programming initiatives for faculty development. Through campus partnerships, RTL’s Research IT team has engaged in strategic partnership with NASA Ames at Moffett Field in support of research computing as well as designed, implemented, and operationalized the Secure Research Data and Compute platform (SRDC) for work with highly sensitive data. Shawna has also taken a leadership role at a national and global scale in discussions about how AI technologies will impact teaching and learning in higher education. In summary, Shawna has worked to ensure higher education at UC Berkeley continues to evolve in teaching and research practices that are inclusive, equitable, and accessible. I want to take this opportunity to thank Shawna and all the leaders and team members in RTL for their valuable contributions to our campus.
Shawna’s last day will be November 15. We are now opening an application process for an interim Chief Academic Technology Officer who can lead RTL while we seek to find a permanent replacement. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else for the interim position, please complete this application. Applicants to the interim role must be current UC Berkeley employees. We will begin reviewing applications after Thursday, October 17 at 5:00 p.m., and the application deadline is Thursday, October 24 at 5:00 p.m. Any questions about the interim role or the search process can be directed to my office at vpue@berkeley.edu. At a later date, we will open a nationwide search for the permanent role.
Please join me in thanking Shawna for her impressive and impactful contributions to teaching, learning, and research at UC Berkeley.
Best wishes,
Oliver O’Reilly
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