UNC-Chapel Hill Information Technology Services has announced the names of the two people who will join the senior leadership team.
Sandra Germenis will join ITS on September 1 as Assistant Vice Chancellor for User Support & Engagement. She’s coming to Carolina after more than a decade at the University of Texas at Austin. Germenis will replace Priscilla Alden, who retired in January after 9 ½ years as AVC and after 15 years overall with UNC-Chapel Hill.
Dennis Schmidt will join ITS as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Infrastructure & Operations on September 8. He has worked at Carolina’s School of Medicine for nearly 18 years. Schmidt will replace Stan Waddell, who left in April to serve as Chief Information Officer at the University of New Hampshire.
In Germenis’ most recent role, she served as Director of IT Customer Support Services at UT Austin. She was responsible for overall operations of the University’s central IT Help Desk, which handles more than 111,000 in-bound customer contacts per year. She previously served as the Associate Director for Networking and Telecommunications, where she was responsible for five functional units of ITS Networking and Telecommunications – Telecom Services, DAS, Assignment Office, Multimedia, Building Security Operations and the ITS Warehouse.
“Sandra’s diverse IT and management background will be a great addition to the ITS senior management team,” said ITS CIO Chris Kielt. “I’m confident that she will provide strong leadership as the User Support & Engagement group builds upon its recent growth and successes.”
Schmidt, meanwhile, has been a “valued and respected member of the UNC-Chapel Hill community for nearly two decades,” Kielt said.
“Dennis has a proven track record of strong leadership and cross-organizational collaboration,” Kielt added. “He has been a key partner for ITS on many projects and initiatives during his time at the University.”
In his role at the School of Medicine, Schmidt was directly responsible for customer support, system administrations, classroom services, applications development, Web development and more. Most recently, Schmidt has focused on IT security, including the migration of the School of Medicine network behind a hardware firewall – a complex multi-year project that is nearly completed.