Episode 21 - Technology in Higher Education with Helen Norris

State of the CIO

Studies show that by 2025 the United States will have 1 million jobs in technology but not enough people to fill positions.

A low amount of students are studying tech industries, but Helen Norris, VP and CIO of Chapman University, is encouraging this to change. Believing she would become a high school math teacher when she enrolled in college, she stumbled upon computer programming and shifted her career into the technology industry. Playing many roles in IT including a systems administrator, programmer, network engineer and working on a service desk, her experience has prepared her to become the CIO she is today.

With demographics showing that the U.S. doesn’t have enough people working in technical fields, Norris knows that the nation will be at a disadvantage if more people don’t enter into STEM. Norris shares the importance of STEM in higher education, her thoughts on women in tech and why education is so important in order to fill spots that may be missing in career advancement.

Key Takeaways:

• Studies show that by 2025 the U.S. will have 1 million jobs unable to be filled because there won’t be enough people in the tech field
• There hasn’t been a huge shift in the number of women in tech: some teams will still only have one to no women
• A high percentage of students at universities are women but men take up the majority of STEM fields

Listeners who’d like to contact Norris can send an email to [e-mail] or follow her on Twitter @CIO_ChapmanU.