William Ingram is the new chief information officer at Belmont, but he is in no way new to technology.
“I have been interested in technology since I was a kid. I always had robots, I had Lego Mindstorms, and I had one of the first home computers,” said Ingram.
Ingram has since parted with his TRS-80, but his passion for computers persisted.
Before coming to Belmont, Ingram worked as an IT manager at the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas San Antonio for eight years. Before this, he worked at multiple startup companies – including Yahoo in Atlanta.
Ingram said he will miss Texas, but he already sees room for improvement on Belmont’s campus.
“I think that there are a lot of opportunities for improvement. The two main areas we’re looking at are instructional technology, so classroom based technology, and information security,” he said.
The new position was created because Belmont saw a need for someone to look strategically at information technology, said Ingram.
In the Johnson Center alone, according to the Belmont University News and the Nashville Post, Belmont added $3.6 million in technology resources and specialized equipment to serve students majoring in entertainment industry studies, music business and audio engineering technology.
Ingram was very impressed with what is available for Belmont students today. He even compared Belmont’s technology to that at his previous institutions — the University of Texas San Antonio.
“There is just so much technology available, so that when students leave here they are ready to work in the field. You guys are doing things that UT system schools do,” he said.“I think it’s amazing. Even as an undergraduate a lot of the things that we didn’t think were possible or even imagined exist now.”
For students, knowing how to research is important, and according to Ingram, with the influx of information today, knowing how to sift through information is even more vital.
“Today there is so much more. Before, you could go to Encyclopedia Britannica, and you knew it was a reliable source,” Ingram said. “If you do a Google search now, thousands and thousands of sources will come up. How do you rank the reliability of these sources?”
Along with helping students to research more reliably, as the chief information officer, Ingram will be in charge of an IT team managing Wi-Fi upkeep, website support and library assistance. Currently, Ingram and his team are completing assessments to better evaluate Belmont.
“You can’t get directions unless you know where you are, where you’re starting from,” he said.
Although Ingram did not want to release premature information, he did say he is more than excited to begin his work at Belmont.
“I am really excited to work with the people,” said Ingram. “Meeting all the people here, that’s what made me excited about Belmont.”
This article was written by Taylor Berghoff.