CIO · VP · Educator
Dr. Mark A. Staples
Currently Account Executive at Ellucian · Retired University CIO
“In order for technology to be transformative, it must change behavior. If technology isn’t transformative, it’s in the way.”
“In order for technology to be transformative, it must change behavior. If technology isn’t transformative, it’s in the way.”
Dr. Mark A. Staples is a higher-education technology executive with more than three decades of IT leadership experience across seven universities (two of which were academic medical centers with level-1 trauma hospitals). He currently serves as an Account Executive at Ellucian.
Most recently, Mark served as Sr. Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at the College of Charleston, retiring in 2025. As part of the President’s Cabinet, he was responsible for technologies across the institution, including teaching and learning, digital marketing, and physical security. He led the process for establishing a fresh IT Mission and Strategy — “Transforming the College into a digital workplace leading to a digitally literate campus.”
Prior to his appointment at the College of Charleston, he spent four years at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, as the Vice President and Chief Information Officer, reporting directly to the president and serving as a member of the President’s Cabinet. He was responsible for IT Strategy, infrastructure services, administrative systems, and technologies and practices influencing teaching and learning. Mark also provided leadership in the areas of digital marketing, student recruitment and retention, institutional analytics, alumni affairs, and institutional advancement. In 2015 and 2016, he served as the founder and co-chair of the Education Roundtable for the Boston chapter of the Society of Information Management. In 2015 he was nominated for Boston CIO of the Year in the non-profit sector and in 2016 he finished as a finalist among 70 other CIOs.
Prior to his appointment at Wentworth, Mark was Director of Academic and Research Technologies across all nine colleges for Northeastern University, where he was responsible for the delivery and support of all teaching, learning, and research technologies on all campuses. Mark was awarded the Excellence/Innovation Award by his peers in 2012. Before his time at Northeastern, Mark served as Chief Information Security Officer at Georgia Health Sciences University, Director of Infrastructure Services and Client Support at Medical University of Ohio, and was part of various IT organizations at the University of Toledo and Indiana University for over 10 years. Between 2009 and 2012, Mark also served as co-chair of a biomedical consortium that included Harvard Medical, UMass, Tufts University, MIT, and several biomedical labs throughout the commonwealth.
Mark’s previous service included leadership in a consortium of research universities in the University System of Georgia, and a collaborative to support disaster recovery and business continuity between the five research universities in the system. He has influenced new software licensing strategies with major vendors, the use of collaboration and crowdsourcing tools, and has been involved in cybersecurity initiatives with the Higher Education Information Security Council (HEISC).
He has been an adjunct faculty member in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University, teaching both in the classroom for the undergraduate MIS program and online for the executive MBA program. He was voted Favorite Professor in 2012.
More than just a technology leader, Mark is a thought leader in the business of higher education. His ability to converge technology into the business of higher education creates a transformative impact on both revenue and operational efficiencies. He has established a reputation for bridging the gap between technology and the rest of the institution, fostering a culture in which technology is thoroughly integrated with every aspect of the institutional mission, reinforcing rather than complicating institutional objectives.
Mark’s contributions to the field through publications and presentations span a broad range of topics including IT culture and leadership, the impact of social media on knowledge management and communities of practice, organizational change and design, mobile technology, effective budgeting in higher education, and the digital revolution’s impact on teaching and learning. His doctoral research investigated the sustainability of higher education given the rapidly changing technological landscape, identifying the cultural and fiscal steps required for a transformative use of technology in an educational context — becoming a digital university.
Away from work, Mark has been a radio personality, the producer of a weekly syndicated television program, and has owned and operated a recording studio, producing and engineering music and voiceover production. He has also been a concert and music festival promoter and spent several years as a college and high school sports official for football, basketball, baseball, and volleyball.
Remote · Charleston, South Carolina
Member of the President’s Cabinet; added the CISO role in 2023.
Organizational Leadership and Communications in Higher Education
Organizational Leadership (MIS Minor)
Human Relations (Business Management Minor)
Trustee · July 2013 – July 2015
Member
Member · January 2009 – August 2012
Member · April 2009 – 2016
Sr. Vice President, Chief Information Officer & Chief Information Security Officer (member of the President’s Cabinet).
Vice President of Technology Services and Chief Information Officer. Reporting to the President and a member of the President’s Advisory Council (Cabinet). Responsible for strategic planning, implementation, and support of all technologies throughout the institution.
Director, Academic Technology Services — the principal IS partner with the academic community.
Director of Research & Instructional Technology Support and Chief Information Security Officer.
Director, Computer & Network Services.
If technology is not transformative, it’s in the way.
You will never make up in tactics what you lack in strategy.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
It’s not my job to have all the answers, but it is my job to ask lots of penetrating, disturbing, and occasionally almost offensive questions as part of the analytic process that leads to insight and refinement.
If we are afraid to fail, then we’ll be afraid to try. If we don’t try, we can never know success.
Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.
People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done.
Dissent and debate are the only way to improve and drive innovation. If we surround ourselves with people that agree with us, the result is stagnation.
You can never plan the future by the past.
“If technology is not transformative, it’s in the way.” A few years ago, I was thinking about how many of our technology users have complained that technology is just a necessary evil…
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