New CIO Wants College Info-Tech to be More Responsive to Modern Needs

Kamalika Sandell, who started earlier this summer as NJIT's chief information officer and vice provost, is settling into her role and looking to make a positive impact.

Sandell was previously deputy CIO at American University. She's worked in the information technology field since the 1990s, spent time in the corporate world, earned a master's in organizational development and speaks three languages.

"Even pre-pandemic, higher education was going through a full-scale transformation," Sandell observed. “We know that today’s students want choices — they want to choose the modality for learning, the courses, they want to balance learning, research and hand-on experience, they want a campus with choices that enables them to engage and explore at their pace and time. … They want to be the architects of their own experience.

"When you translate this into architecting enterprise services that can support them, we need to build these services in a completely different way than how they had been built during the early 2000s. The same applies to learning and research from a faculty point of view. We want to incorporate research involving massive simulations and research involving data science and artificial intelligence," she continued. "It’s the art and science of building enterprise-level services that are differentiated, specialized, scalable, apply broadly and incorporate specific choices, but integrate without friction and are smart enough to continue evolving without massive application changes.

"I like building scalable services, and I like building teams who are empowered to explore and innovate as the needs of the institution changes," Sandell added. "I was looking for a challenge, a place that is bold and ambitious with its vision and not afraid to support transformation. Transformation comes with a level of risk-taking, not limiting ourselves to model things the way they were modeled 10 years back but to model things anticipating what lies ahead."

Sandell said the information services and technology department has an opportunity to serve as solutions architects. In IT-jargon, that means acting as strategic partners who strive to understand problems and explore solutions that add technology as a key anchor, sometimes changing the way things had been working in the past, in order to bring in the level of transformation that is needed.

"The fundamental underpinnings of a great group are already there, but the strategies we are using are extensions of the same strategies that were there in 2000-2010. Those don't scale in their current form, not anymore," she said.

An example is the university's high-performance computing systems for researchers. Such systems tend to be designed for horsepower but aren't always exactly what researchers need — they can be dragsters designed for top speed in a straight line, where a Formula 1 car designed to be nimble on tight turns is a better choice.

"What we don't want to do is to get in the way of innovation," Sandell said, balanced against concerns such as security, risks, resources and budgets.

Computing is not necessarily for the guys and the geeks. If you want these apps to suit your tastes and your needs, then you should probably be part of making it come to life.

Sandell first used Unix workstations in college. Her first work was IT support for a local police station in India, arranged by her grandfather. She entered a computer engineering program and was one of only three women in a class of 32 students.

That left a lasting impression. "When I talk to elementary and middle-school aged kids, I always remind them that computing is not necessarily for the guys and the geeks," Sandell said. "If you want these apps to suit your tastes and your needs, then you should probably be part of making it come to life.

"We need diversity in every possible way. Information technology is a broad profession but sometimes to young minds it gets very narrow — they say, 'I have to write code'," she noted.

Sandell emphasized that plenty of important jobs in STEM fields do not require coding, but simply a technical aptitude and curious mind. "I love learning programming languages and new platforms. Every time I learn something new, it's like flexing a different muscle. I don't have a favorite — I’m just glad this field allows us to learn something new constantly."

Sandell regularly coaches girls to consider technology careers and said she's pleased to learn about the efforts of Ying Wu College of Computing Associate Dean James Geller to recruit and retain female students, as part of a $520,000 grant through Northeastern University.

Her predecessor Gregg Chottiner oversaw the addition of university-wide cybersecurity training, an increased move to cloud-based services and more cooperation with campus departments in selecting systems. He also moved the university to develop capital budget plans for technology. 

Now, Sandell said, it's time to build on existing work, initiate data and enterprise services that offer differentiation and personalization, and leverage public and private partnerships.