As director of IT, Schilling will be in charge of all academic and administrative computing on campus and will preside over IT's four sub-departments: Curricular Computing Services; Database Services; Desktop Computing Services; and Systems, Networks and Telecommunications.
A College search committee investigated and reviewed a number of candidates for the position. According to Dean of the Faculty Greg Call, the College was looking for someone with expertise and resources. The committee also wanted to be sure to find someone who would take full advantage of the IT department at the College.
Call said that Schilling's background has prepared him to work at a liberal arts college. Call said that he and President Anthony Marx, who together made the final decision to hire Schilling, were impressed with Schilling's vision for what IT can do to aid students and faculty.
Schilling has a number of ideas that will improve the College's IT capabilities, one of which is to further develop and improve the College Web site. Schilling said he is more comfortable using open-source software, which allows users to edit the software script to suit their needs, than he is with the currently-used proprietary type, which cannot be edited by users.
He would also like to remodel the College Web site using customized software. In addition, Schilling would like the site to host blogs and wikis, which allow open editing by users. He has held meetings with those involved in Amherst's IT community to discuss the possibility of implementing these tools.
"The presence of a new perspective will certainly bring greater insight and creativity to IT at Amherst," said Kyla Kitamura '08. "I look forward to seeing the changes he initiates."
Schilling will also be responsible for filling the position of director of the Curricular Computing Services division of IT. The former director, Mary McMahon, is leaving Amherst for a job at Pomona College.
As for the future, Schilling plans to meet with students, faculty and staff to see what he can do to allow the IT department to best meet the needs of the College community.
This will be Schilling's third IT-related position at a liberal arts school in the Northeast. Before coming to Amherst, Schilling was the director of information technology at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y. Prior to that, he was the head of Academic Computing (the equivalent of Amherst's Curricular Computing) at Bowdoin College. At Bowdoin, Schilling created an IT center that was involved in creating software and Web applications to aid teaching.
Schilling's prior academic and career experience champion a liberal arts education. He has a Ph.D. in English and has written on the connection between writing and religion. He first became involved with information technology when a public interest law firm for which he worked during his undergraduate years at Georgetown University trained him to work on their nuclear energy litigation databases.
Later, while a graduate student at Columbia University, Schilling converted a print version of an encyclopedia into a database for an encyclopedia company. After his graduate studies, he worked in educational publishing. He helped develop Prentice Hall's first Web site and helped publish the College Board's Web site.
Schilling also has some teaching experience. He taught English survey and writing courses as a graduate student at Columbia and an English course about magical realism while working at Bowdoin.
Schilling replaced interim IT director Tom Warger, who had a great deal of experience with IT at institutes of higher education. Warger served for a year while the College search committee sought to replace long-term director Phil Fitz, who served from 1998–04.