Acknowledgements and Methodology



Acknowledgements

The Top 10 is grounded first and foremost in the expertise and insights of our panelists, who lend a great deal of their time to Top 10 working sessions, interviews, issue drafting, and report review. Panelists also help facilitate interviews with senior institutional leaders who provide important big-picture context for all the Top 10 work that takes place throughout the year. Thank you to all the panelists and senior leaders who made this year's report possible!

2027 Top 10 Panelists and Institutional Leaders

Panelists

  • Todd Barber, Executive Director, Enterprise Applications and Data Services, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center

  • Sarah Bearbower, Director, Instructional and Information Technology, Viterbo University

  • Rachel Bence, Chief Information Officer, Queen Mary University London

  • Melody Buckner, Associate Vice Provost of Digital Learning, The University of Arizona

  • Josh Callahan, Chief Information Security Officer, California State University 

  • Allan Chen, Vice President for Institute Technology, California Institute of the Arts

  • Mia de Wilde, Director ICTS, Infrastructure & Facilities, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Belgium

  • Megan Fitch, Chief Information Officer, Haverford College

  • Paul Greenway, Solution Analyst, Asiera, Ireland, and Board member/ Vice-President of EUNIS

  • Joseph Gridley, Chief Data Privacy Officer, University of Maryland

  • Terri Gustafson, Director of Academic Affairs and Academic Technology, Northwestern Michigan College

  • Corey Hobbs, Chief Information Security Officer, Framingham State University

  • George Kriss, CIO, VP of Institutional Services & Technology, Kaskaskia College

  • Zareh Marselian, CIO, California Lutheran University

  • Maryam Mirza, Assistant Vice President, Enterprise Applications & Integrations, Stony Brook University

  • Hector Molina, Chief Operating Officer, Fayetteville State University

  • Jonathan Neff, Chief Information Security Officer, University of Montana

  • Jodie Penrod, Chief Information Officer, Marshall University

  • Krish Pilicudale, Chief Information Officer, University of Huddersfield

  • Deborah Saks, Deputy Chief Information Technology Officer and ISO, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

  • Stan Waddell, Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Carnegie Mellon University

  • Christopher Wessells, Acting Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, San Jose State University

  • Kait Wilcox, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Grinnell College

  • Heather Woods, Chief Information Officer, Smith College

  • Lizbeth Johnson, formerly of North Carolina A&T State University (panelist, January 2026–April 2026)

Institutional Leaders

  • Angela Blanton, CFO, Carnegie Mellon University

  • Robert Chambers, Chief of Staff and Assistant to President, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

  • David DeSwert, Executive Vice President, Smith College

  • George Evans, President, Kaskaskia College

  • Junius Gonzales, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, California State University

  • Anne Harris, President, Grinnell College

  • Adrea Lawrence, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Montana

  • Carl Lejuez, Executive Vice President and Provost, Stony Brook University

  • Sofie Mols, Director of Innovation and International Policy, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences

  • Nick Nissley, President, Northwestern Michigan College

  • Nancy Niemi, President, Framingham State University

  • John Nunes, President, California Lutheran University

  • Patty Prelock, Provost and Chief Academic Officer, University of Arizona 

  • Ravi Rajan, President, California Institute of the Arts

  • Alastair Robertson, Interim Director of the Queen Mary Academy, Queen Mary, University of London

  • Virginia Teachey, Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance, North Carolina A&T State University

  • Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President, San Jose State University

  • Professor Tim Thornton, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Huddersfield

  • Amy Schmidt, Vice President and CFO, Finance and Administration, Viterbo University

  • Brad Smith, President, Marshall University

  • Kenny Spayd, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and CFO, Fayetteville State University

  • Helen White, Provost and The William H. and Johanna A. Harris Professor in Environmental Studies and Chemistry, Haverford College

Methodology

Our work on the EDCUAUSE Top 10 begins with a series of interviews with senior institutional leaders nominated by a Top 10 panelist from their institution. These interviews set the stage for everything that follows, offering an early view of the trends, challenges, and opportunities that are most important to higher education right now. In each interview, we ask leaders to think about where they'd like their institution to be in the next few years, what they hope to accomplish, and the position they'd like their institution to be in. We then ask them to consider the following questions:

  • What are the biggest strategic opportunities that get you the most excited about your institution's future?

  • What are the biggest barriers or challenges that worry you the most about your institution's future?

  • What role will technology need to play in the coming years, in helping your institution both seize opportunities and address its challenges?

  • Zooming out to look at the larger higher education landscape, how do you see higher education overall transforming over the next few years, and where might your institution fit within that transforming landscape?

Following these interviews, we provide Top 10 panelists with a summary of the key ideas leaders identified, from which the panelists draft a list of issue statements. These issue statements go through several rounds of panelist reviews and EDUCAUSE staff synthesis before EDUCAUSE members vote on them.

For issue voting, we disseminated a survey to the EDUCAUSE general membership through an email campaign from May 15 to June 1, 2026. The survey asked respondents to rate the importance of each issue statement on a scale from one (not at all important) to ten (extremely important). This survey yielded 882 complete responses, which we used to determine our final ranking of the Top 10 issues in this report.

Once we finalized the Top 10 list, we conducted a series of interviews with each Top 10 panelist to elicit additional insights on the importance and implications of each issue for higher education institutions. In each of these interviews, we asked panelists the following questions:

  • Is your institution successfully navigating this issue right now? (And why or why not?)

  • In concrete terms, what are the next steps for your institution in this area over the coming months? Describe the upcoming work to be done and why it's important.

  • If you could give your higher education peers one piece of advice for effectively tackling this issue, what would it be and why?

2027 Top 10 Survey Respondent Demographics

Carnegie/Sector

Sector % of Respondents
Associate's

14%
Bachelor's

9%
Private Master's

9%
Public Master's

11%
Private Doctoral

19%
Public Doctoral

39%

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Students

Size % of Respondents
Less than 2,000

12%
2,000–3,999

15%
4,000–7,999

16%
8,000–14,999

17%
15,000+

41%

Professional Role

Role % of Respondents
Professional/Staff

35%
Manager

10%
Director

26%
Executive/VP/SVP

14%
C-level

11%
Other

4%

Primary Department or Area of Responsibility

Department/Area % of Respondents
IT

52%
Teaching and Learning

48%