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Technology Conversation – EP. 14

Anchalee Phataralaoha: Welcome to our podcast Technology Conversations, where we discuss technology-related topics from how to find resources for your technology needs to how technology can impact our lives. My name is Anchalee Phataralaoha and I will be your host. 

I’m sure most of you have heard of UFIT and a lot of have reached out to UF Help Desk. Do you know that the Help Desk is under Academic Technology or AT, a unit under UFIT. And with us today is Mark McCallister, Director of Academic Technology. How are you, Mark? 

Mark McCallister: Hello, good afternoon.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: Thank you for being here. I have heard that you are with Academic Technology or AT for a very long time and how many years exactly?

Mark McCallister: So this year is actually my 30th year working full-time at UF as part of UFIT's Academic Technology department and its predecessor organizations at the University of Florida.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: What exactly is your journey from where you started until now?

Mark McCallister: Well, 34 years ago, I started out as a student employee working in the computer labs that I'm still responsible for today. And so I worked there for four years while I was a student, and then when I was about to graduate, they hired me into a full-time job as a supervisor for that team. I did that for a few years and then moved over to work as the technical coordinator for the Faculty Support Center for Computing, which eventually evolved into what we have today—the CITT (Center for Instructional Technology and Training), which is part of Academic Technology and UFIT.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: What does your day-to-day look like?

Mark McCallister: So these days I spend a lot of time working with a lot of different teams and folks, both inside different parts of UFIT as well as our customers across the university. From anything from looking at new needs that may be emerging across the university that we need to make adjustments in our services and platforms to best serve our faculty, staff, students, and everybody else that depends on our services.

And then, of course, working on a lot of the administrative responsibilities in terms of directing the unit and making sure that everything is on track and we're all rowing in the same direction to get things accomplished that our customers need us to do.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: Would you say your group primarily work for or serve faculty and students?

Mark McCallister: Well, we have broad responsibilities across the entire unit, the entire university. We have certainly primary responsibility for supporting faculty and students as part of the teaching and learning environment at UF. That includes things like supporting classrooms, our e-Learning environment, and all of the products, platforms, and services that are a part of that. We also support folks across all different roles and across the staff and administration of the university as well, providing general IT support—whether that's desktop support, classroom, AV technology, audio-visual and design work for new buildings on campus, and all sorts of different integration points for technology and services really for all of our constituents.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: Since you are with AT for several decades, I'm sure you’ve seen a lot of changes. What is the change that would you say is the most dramatic from past to present?

Mark McCallister: Well, I think we're probably in the midst of the third of those big..well—two of those changes happened during my career and one before my career. And I would say that the three big changes in technology in education were the origination or development of the personal computer, being the first one—technology, computing capabilities to individuals whether they are students, teachers, researchers, or whatever their role.

The second revolution sort of started near the early part of my career, and that was the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web. And all of that continue to evolve today in all of the different things that’s enabled—some good and some bad.

The third I think transformative change is the development of AI. It has been a huge change in how we think of technology, how we expect technology to interact with us, and how that’s going to evolve in the future.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: In the current age of everything AI, what is your take on that on our higher ed community—for both teaching and learning, as well as for the workforce?

Mark McCallister: I think the change cannot be underestimated. I think it really changes a huge swath of the way that we have done business for many, many years. You see the evolution—for us as consumers, the online e-commerce, the emergence of AI to direct us to easier ways to spend more money—was sort of the first place where that technology really started to change our lives with online commerce.

The biggest challenge that we have always really experienced with technology is the need for and the capabilities for personalization. That’s really so dramatically impacted by AI. I think the impact on that, in that space, for students and faculty as well, is that as that technology continues to advance, we’ll see more and more ways to practically and sensibly introduce personalization into the technology infrastructure as that becomes more and more possible and economical.

When it comes to the workforce, the adoption of AI technology and all sorts of different industries from service industries to manufacturing and production is really changing jobs across the spectrum that our students will be experiencing once they leave the university and seek employment in any field, including academia. It will continue to be impacted by these changes and what students will experience—what the skill sets they will need. And I think that’s sort of the genius of putting the emphasis at the University of Florida around becoming the AI University. It is really the fact that our leadership, Provost Glover and others, have really focused on comprehensively addressing what those changes are going to look like for all our students going forward through their journey at UF and beyond and how we do all the other things that we do for our communities at UF.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: With that do you think what are the required skills for the future for people to thrive—let’s say for students, faculty, as well as for staff?

Mark McCallister: The most important thing with AI technology is to use it, to experiment with what is available. We’ve been spending a tremendous amount of effort developing our NaviGator AI Suite of services at UF, which is a really, really interesting set of AI services that are focused on providing generative AI capability for all our faculty, students, and staff. Of course, we’ve been utilizing AI through our HiPerGator supercomputing infrastructure for many years. AI is certainly not new, but generative AI since 2022 has become dramatically easier for people to interact with and utilize. So it’s really sort of that technology that has just recently come of age in the last few years, and it’s really been kind of transformative for what we do.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: So it must be fulfilling to see all these changes, isn’t it?

Mark McCallister: It’s really interesting. One of the things I’ve always loved about working in this area is that there’s always something new—a new way to do the work we do, or a new technology to understand and find the best ways to utilize. AI is no different. It’s been a tremendous opportunity to look at emerging technology and figure out ways to use that to best benefit all of our constituents.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: What do you find most challenging in your position?

Mark McCallister: Well, one of the things that's been really challenging about the development of these generative AI tools is that they've emerged so quickly and continue to evolve at a lightning pace. Keeping up with that is something obviously we all have to do. But as part of running the organization, we have to make sure that we're providing the opportunities for all of our staff who are expected to know, understand, and utilize these technologies as well.

I think that's going to be a challenge just because of the speed of the evolution of the technology and wanting to make sure that we’re providing—it’s crucial for us to be providing those opportunities now for our students that are here today. We can't wait three years until we have it all figured out. We’ve got to move on that immediately so that those students have those advantages when they graduate and move on from the university.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: I'm sure you’ve heard people of this that -- with AI becoming more proficient and getting better each day, it’s going to replace us. What do you think about that?

Mark McCallister: Well, there are absolutely certain things that AI can do more efficiently than I can do. You know, we've seen AI accessible in our pockets from our phones, become more and more available to us. As we go forward, I think that will continue to just be more and more accessible to everyone and I think that will continue to be very impactful—just the general accessibility of the technology.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: Any final thoughts?

Mark McCallister: Well, it's an exciting time to be in academia, to be at the University of Florida particularly, doing all the things that we're able to accomplish in UFIT and all of the teams that make up our part of the university. I really enjoy doing it. I hope that we have every opportunity to continue to develop new technologies, new platforms, new services that make people's lives better and more efficient and prepare them best for whatever comes next.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: If you have to sum up Academic Technology in three words, what would they be?

Mark McCallister: Here for you. That’s what we are here for.

Anchalee Phataralaoha: Thank you, Mark for sharing your insights and spending time with us today. That’s it everyone! We will see you next time for a topic of interest in IT.