Danny Tang

I am currently the Associate Vice President for Technology and Chief Information Officer at Furman University. In this role, I am responsible for all IT services at the university and seeks to ensure that Furman has and continues to have the technology it needs to be successful.

I have extensive experience in leading IT transformations and providing IT services in support of the academic mission across multiple higher education institutions, including the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign, University of Iowa, the Missouri University of Science and Technology and now at Furman.

My journey through higher ed IT, especially as a higher education CIO has convinced me that management competencies are a critical and unfortunately woefully underappreciated skillset within today’s universities.  Higher education is undergoing sustained and dramatic disruptions.  All colleges and universities spend much time, effort, and money to formulate strategic plans to navigate the challenges of in our industry.  However, only a few truly succeed.  I believe what ultimately separates the thriving institutions from the rest is in execution.  The best strategic plans will fail, if the institution doesn’t have a strong base of capable managers, who can own their own time, coach, and drive high performance from staff, set expectations, hold people to account and ultimately deliver results. 

It is because of this belief, that I have remained committed to this program, regardless of where my career in higher education takes me.  There is no other program I know of that better addresses this need in developing capable managers for higher education than MGRdev.