After 42 years of dedicated service, Janie is retiring from her service at URI. She has served in a variety of roles in the IT department throughout her career at URI. She began her work as part of the Academic Computer Center in 1982, supporting programming and modeling software, research and external clients on the Prime minicomputer. She earned her URI MBA amidst the arrival of microcomputers and personal digital assistants. Janie was part of the original Help Desk pilot in Tyler prior to it becoming funded and growing into today’s IT Service Desk in the Library. She also ran the original Apple Higher Education Purchase Program on campus prior to it transferring to the URI Bookstore.
Starting in 1997 she served as Manager of Instructional Technology and Media Services, supporting technology solutions for remote and in-classroom teaching and learning and diverse multimedia production facilities. She contributed to learning space design efforts and oversaw the project implementation for electronic access and installed presentation capability in general assignment classrooms. One significant result of the long-term collaborative efforts of IT, Enrollment Services, Capital Planning, Capital Projects and Custodial during this time is the Joint Classroom Steering Committee. In 2019 Janie joined the newly created IT Teaching and Learning Services team, focusing on faculty support for EdTech, the learning management software, as well as applications that foster collaborative and accessible learning.
Over the years, Janie has served on countless University committees and working groups, and embraced the URI community as a family. She has been directly involved with dozens of grants, including writing, review and implementation. She has represented URI beyond the campus through conference presentations at EDUCAUSE and NERCOMP, CCUMC committee service, serving as our NERCOMP institutional representative, and maintaining connections with peers at regional schools, even coordinating the hosting of the Boston Prime Users Group conference at the Kingston campus one summer. She is well known on campus for her compassion and expertise, and her dedication to supporting students, faculty, and staff have made an enduring impact on the URI community.
We will miss her dearly, and wish her well in her retirement pursuits.
Congratulations on a remarkable career!