New support director launches Cornell's IT Managers Council

By Beth Goelzer Lyons

Last month, Sunny Donenfeld joined the Office of Information Technologies as director of distributed support, a new position responsible for facilitating communication and coordination among CornellŐs information technology (IT) providers.

Donenfeld

"Through his work with the Cornell Computing directors, Sunny has demonstrated his ability to work collaboratively with technical support providers around campus," said Jim Lombardi, assistant vice president for information technologies. "His work experiences here and at Stanford have given Sunny a balanced view and the perspective, and sensitivity, needed to deal with issues of concern to the central and distributed units at Cornell."

One of Donenfeld's first tasks was to kick off the IT Managers Council, a new advisory board which meets for the first time today, Oct. 28. Comprised of one representative from each college and administrative unit, the council is one of the IT workforce planning recommendations considered critical to achieving a cost-efficient and effective IT support system at Cornell.

To form the IT Managers Council, each college or unit designated an overall manager of IT. Some colleges and units were already organized this way; many others needed to rethink their structure a bit. Their work means 36 managers of IT now serve on the IT Managers Council.

Prior to the first meeting, Donenfeld met with each manager individually, seeking to understand the priorities of the colleges and units and also to learn what managers want and expect the council to accomplish.

"The IT Managers Council is an opportunity to not only cooperate, but also to learn from one another and apply the innovations that spring from this community and from existing technology and information systems working groups," said David Yeh, who represents Student and Academic Services.

The IT Managers Council will meet monthly, initially focusing on workforce planning recommendations, among them aggregating IT training; creating career development paths for IT staff; developing hardware and software standards; and aggregating software and hardware purchases.

Most recently, Donenfeld was director of information systems and services for Campus Life and co-chair of the Cornell Computing Directors group. Before joining Cornell, he was manager of information systems solutions and strategies at Stanford University.

Donenfeld has a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton and is currently working on a master's degree in business administration at the Johnson Graduate School of Management.

More information about the IT Managers Council can be found at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/oit/dds.html. The IT workforce planning report was endorsed by the university in spring 2004 and can be found at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/oit/Reports/2004/.