Mission, Strategy, and Goals

Our role is to make sure the tools you depend on every day (whether in the office, classroom, lab, or online) work when you need them and are as secure and sustainable as we can make them.

We balance two responsibilities: keeping critical systems running smoothly today and preparing Middlebury for tomorrow by thoughtfully introducing new capabilities.

Our Mission Target

The ITS Mission Target is one of the key ways we prioritize our work. It helps us focus our people, processes, and technology on the services that are most critical to the operation of the institution, while still supporting the broader ecosystem of tools our community uses.

How We Prioritize Our Efforts

As you move from the center of the Mission Target to the outer rings, two things change:

1. Criticality decrease.
   Foundational and life/safety services receive the highest priority. Enterprise systems are next, followed by departmental, auxiliary, and individual technologies.
2. Primary responsibility shifts.
   • For the inner rings (Foundational, Life/Safety & Operational, Enterprise), ITS is frequently the primary owner, accountable for reliability, security, and long-term planning.
   • For the outer rings (Departmental, Auxiliary, Individual), ITS increasingly becomes more of a partner and advisor, while service owners take on increasing responsibility for decisions, funding, and day-to-day use.

This framework helps us be transparent about why we respond the way we do, where we invest our limited resources, and one of the key ways we weigh new requests against existing commitments.

Our Strategy and Goals

Grounded in the Mission Target, our strategy focuses on three core outcomes: safe, reliable, and effective technology services.

Safe

• Protect institutional and personal data through strong security practices, risk management, and compliance with laws, policies, and regulations.
• Design and operate systems with security in mind from the start, rather than as an afterthought.
• Help our community make informed, responsible choices about the tools and data they use.

Reliable

• Maintain resilient network and infrastructure so that critical services are available when and where they’re needed.
• Standardize and improve our processes (change management, incident response, disaster recovery) to reduce avoidable outages and shorten recovery times.
• Use the Mission Target to guide investment in capacity, redundancy, and lifecycle planning.

Effective

• Make technology easier to use so that faculty, staff, and students can focus on teaching, learning, research, creativity, and service, not on troubleshooting.
• Align our work with institutional priorities and partner needs through ongoing, structured dialogue with academic and administrative units.
• Use data, reporting, and analytics to understand how services are performing and where improvements will make the most impact.

Looking Ahead: Emerging Technologies

Advanced and emerging technologies, like High Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence, are rapidly changing the way we work, learn, and collaborate. ITS plays a key role in helping Middlebury explore these tools thoughtfully and responsibly.

We aim to:

• Pilot and evaluate emerging technologies in targeted, low-risk ways that help us learn what works and what doesn’t for our community.
• Align AI, HPC, and other innovations with Middlebury’s mission and values, focusing on tools that enhance human creativity, learning, and community rather than replacing them.
• Ensure that new capabilities remain safe, reliable, and effective, with appropriate security, privacy, accessibility, and governance.
• Partner with the community to build literacy, share best practices, and design solutions that address real institutional need.