It gives me great pleasure to announce that JR Schulden has accepted the position as director of Application Services (AS) for Information Services and Technology (IST) effective November 1, 2008. For the last year, JR served as interim director for Application Services, a unit responsible for the development and production support of more than 250 campus application systems. During JR's tenure as interim director, Application Services completed a departmental salary and non-salary costing realignment and achieved budget reductions with minimum impact to operations and campus customers; AS formed an architecture team, a release management team, and a Kuali Student technical development team to meet IT strategic needs; and AS staff were trained to meet the unit's need for a Quality Assurance group. Also under JR's leadership, the Application Services Management Team completed a five-year enterprise system plan and staff development plan which, along with other projects, resulted in an initiative to move all campus application systems off of the UC Berkeley mainframe.
JR came to UC Berkeley in 1999 to be the director of Student Information Systems (SIS). During her nine years at Berkeley, she has been a strong advocate for student systems. As SIS director, she and her team partnered with ETS on Learning Management Systems, developed the Systems 2012 roadmap, and took the lead in UC Berkeley's participation in Kuali, an international open source student systems initiative. After the 2006 IST reorganization, she served as manager of the AS Mainframe Systems and Application Services Architecture groups.
JR has an MBA from Cornell University and an MS in Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. She has extensive experience in application development and management of large, complex enterprise systems — including financial, student, and learning systems — for major higher education institutions such as UC Berkeley, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins. JR served as project manager of the 95-person PeopleSoft effort at Cornell, and was technical lead for the development and implementation of a statewide budget system for the State of Florida. As Cornell's IT auditor, she evaluated campus operations and business processes, offering business re-engineering suggestions to improve controls and efficiency at the main campus and the medical school, and was the lead for a campuswide IT risk assessment and mitigation plan.
As we enter a period of many challenges, the campus is fortunate to have JR as a critical member of the IST management team. She brings extensive experience and deep understanding of the campus's challenges, and through her technical leadership will further the University's commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and public service. I look forward to her contributions to the strategic vision, technology analysis, operational excellence, and IST customer service, and invite you to join me in congratulating JR on her appointment.