Topic Ideas

The following topic ideas have been collected with a large number of interviews with senior IT leaders from many of the colleges and universities who will attend OHECC 2026. The purpose of this summary is to help potential presenters develop attractive ideas for their sessions. No presenter should feel obligated to only these topics, but hopefully they provide seeds for great sessions. Also, please feel free to propose joint sessions with peer institutions and/or tech firms supporting your topic.

OHECC 2026 Theme: “From Digital Innovation to the Next Frontier: Ubiquitous AI”

This document is organized by major topics in the agenda (bold headers) followed by subtopics.

Artificial IntelligenceAI Business Case and Adoption

Overall AI Issues

Evaluating MS Copilot - value proposition
Impact on organization and metrics/KPI’s, Cost/benefit – ROI
AI Adoption Metrics
Buy or build or partner AI initiatives
Case studies – success/failures, pitfalls and lessons learned
Business and AI Strategic objectives/Prioritization/Governance
AI hype – bubble
Large models – sustainability issues? Small/specific models – SLM’s and Quants.

AI Technology

Data and infrastructure quality and readiness
Comparing models – LLM’s, SLM’s or quant models
Development platform experiences
AI Dev/Ops and AI technology management/methodology
Agentic AI Development and Orchestration
Server technical trends – CPU/GPU/NPU HPC and OS
Data Center infrastructure trends – power/HVAC/engineering issues.
Emerging technologies foundations and trends – hype curve
Key AI firms and comparison.
AI Technology performance and hallucinations

AI Security and Compliance

Privacy and Security with AI technology.
Legal, regulatory and compliance around AI.
Risk models including third parties using AI.
Responsible AI and Ethics

Key AI Applications in Higher Education

AI in curriculum – what is it? Where is it?
AI as a tool in the classroom to teach – BoTs and Avatars.
Digital Twin AI simulators.
AI in Athletics
AI for Enrollment
AI Applied in the Back Office
AI in the Legal team
AI Maturity in Ohio colleges and universities
Universities as an AI knowledge source and business relationship.
AI Academies and skill development (survey)

Enterprise Systems

ERP Implementation Experiences

Workday experiences and Workday panel - senior leader views.
Oracle Peoplesoft experiences and Oracle panel – senior leader views.
Ellucian implementation experiences and Ellucian senior leader panel.
Academic ERP market, Roadmaps and Challenger ERP’s.
Budgets, benefits and ongoing TCO.
Decision triggers to move to change ERP.
Impact on IT groups and business roles/skills.
Impact on specialty third party academic technologies.

ERP Technology Platforms

Workday roadmap and recent trends.
Oracle roadmap and recent trends.
Ellucian roadmap and recent trends.
ERP market comparative technologies and trends.
Financial/business systems with SIS and AI.
Agentic ERP
DevOps platforms, Low code – no code in ERP and citizen developers
AI embedded into ERP systems and implementation experiences.
Does AI change the ERP make of buy strategy?
Can AI be used to reduce errors in enterprise systems?
ERP Cloud, Hybrid or on-Prem and SaaS – experiences.
Integration best of breed systems or monolithic, ERP in higher ed – directions.
Specialty apps against monolithic ERP.
Data Lakes and Data Management.
Data governance and quality methods.
Cryptocurrency or tokenization applied to financial systems.

Specialty Third-Party Academic Technologies

CRM – enterprise wide and local.
LMS and Learning systems.
AMC’s and medical education platforms.
Academic content and Games for teaching.
Parking Systems – internal and outsourced.
Campus Safety - door access and cameras.
Institutional Research platforms.
On-line systems.
AMC's and College of Med applications.
Advising systems and student success – AI used?

Research Technology

Experience with current platforms.
ERP relationship with Research admin systems
New federal requirements re cybersecurity.
Research Collaboration and Cybersecurity
High-capacity data storage for researchers.
AI Tools as a Research Enabler.
TCO of maintaining tech and R1 status vs R2.
Research in Ohio on technology platforms.
OSC role and capabilities with roadmap.

Cybersecurity and Regulations

Identity and Access Management platforms (IUC RFP).
Cybersecurity platform roadmaps, hype cycles and roadmap options.
Third party risk and supply chain, AI as a defense enabler.
AI as an attack enabler and defender.
Security technology components and strategic options.
Best SecOps practices.
Competing in the cyber arms race with low budget.
Zero Trust architecture.
Cloud security - what is unique?
Password less strategies.
Alignment with stakeholders and business leader risk profile.
End-users want more or less security?,
Regulatory Compliance trends - tighter?
Attack surface trends and defense.
End-user risks and cyber training – does it improve hygiene?
Cost optimization and TCO of security
Keeping up with security staff skills - talent management.
Operational resilience and incident response,
Risk Models/Management.
Forensics investigations best practices.
Ransomware incident response planning.
Ransomware negotiators vs in-house.
End-user admin rights and options
ID Verification - faux personas and identity loss.
MFA/biometrics and external access,
IAM and technology and facility access control.
Does the business want function over security function?
OAR-NET cybersecurity roadmap.
Ohio DAS/IT and other agency tech support examples.
Regulatory fabric - GLBA, FERPA. ADA,eyc.

Technical Infrastructure

AI impact on the data center - power, HVAC, network, infrastructure.
Cloud vs Hybrid vs On-Prem infrastructure.
Perpetual vs Subscription Assets.
AI impact on the network including utilization of AI.
Identity and Access Management for technology resources.
How is AI impacting infrastructure staffing – numbers and skills.
Collaboration and shared service – infrastructure.
Energy market trends and impact for infrastructure.
Asset and License management best practices.
Measuring the real-time user experience.
Asset management, tracking, refresh planning and technical debt.
Strategic integration platforms – trends and implementations.
Google vs Microsoft experience.
Centralized vs distributed client support – recent experiences.
Six-Sigma utilization and tech infrastructure management.
Wired and Wireless Network vendor war – recent experience.
Hype cycle in Higher Ed and tech trends.
Quantum computing and direction.
HPC deployments and experiences.
Blockchain initiatives and experiences.
Data center virtualization in AI world.
AI Hardware and direction – players/chip architectures and capabilities.
BYOD strategies – phones/pads/computers and gizmos.
IoT experiences, issues and solutions.
Voice and data network implementations.
Residence Hall network issues and strategies.
Network implementation with AI.
OAR-NET network strategy/roadmap and examples.
OSC support and viability as a hyperscaler,
Hyper scaler landscape and direction

Technology Organization and Operation

Becoming the CIO - today and the future.
IT Skills and impact of AI on technology teams.
Reskilling IT with and around AI.
The future tech organization in the land of AI – impact and changes.
Evolving relationship between IT and business.
Impact of AI on IT costs – such as who is paying the electric bill?
How will IT suppliers be impacted by AI.
Real world examples of AI impacting IT organizations.
Technology Cost management and containment.
Technical debt and risks.
Staff development and training.
Student employees and development.
International student workers and staff – new challenges.
Metrics and benchmarking.
IT and corporate partnering/relationships.
Leadership priorities in higher ed.
IT Budget and Charge Models.
IT Centralization – where/Issues/challenges and solutions.
Technology Selection and Governance.
Managing IT with AI and systems.
PMO and project control methods/systems.
Service Now AI and other service systems – benefits/costs – do they work?
Tech fees and associated cost capture – real world experiences.
Governance and prioritization – challenges and solutions.
Corporate - University Partnerships and IT role.
How does an ERP SaaS impact IT organization? - skills, mix, size, roles?