How a Chief Information Officer should advance the University of Frankfurt digitally
frankfurt ⋅ Sometimes Ulrich Schielein actually speaks like an officer. He calls information technology a “strategic weapon” to improve service and products, and speaks of an “arms race” between IT users and hackers who wanted to harm them. However, the friendly Franconian does not wear epaulettes, and only those who misinterpret his official title will take him for a military man: Schielein recently became Chief Information Officer at Goethe University, i.e. the person with ultimate responsibility for all digital matters – a post that is in this form has rarely existed at German universities. The title Vice President, which the business IT specialist can now also use, sounds more civil. The university senate elected him to this office for a period of six years.
University President Enrico Schleiff didn’t want a professor for the post of full-time IT manager, but an expert from outside, whose perspective would not be clouded by operational blindness. In Schielein he found a man who had previously earned his money mainly as a management consultant. Initially he dealt with computer-based training and further education in the employment agency, then he helped energy suppliers and telecommunications providers to modernize their data processing. His path followed him from Berlin via Paris and Munich to Brazil and finally to Kronberg, where he was last managing director of the management consultancy Accenture.
At the age of 55, Schielein wanted to start something new again, as he says. So he now mainly takes care of four at Hesse’s largest university: the university computer center, the digital studies, the university areas and the high-performance computers with which the university conducts research. As far as online studies are concerned, Corona has brought an innovation boost, the results of which Schielein will consolidate. He is convinced: “After the pandemic, teaching with hybrid components will remain.” The Vice President wants to “package content that is generated once in several products” – i.e. make teaching materials from one event also available in other courses, for example at the Goethe -Business school.