Key points:
- Funky techs are advocates and translators who know how to use data
- The state of data in higher education
- What higher ed can do about getting research into the K-12 classroom
- For more news on faculty functions, visit eCN’s Campus Leadership hub
You don’t see ‘funky tech’ in scholarly literature. But if you’ve spent time at higher-ed tech conferences, you’ve heard it. Someone introduces themselves during a networking break: “I’m a funky tech over in Academic Advising.” The term is informal, but the role it describes is increasingly important to how campuses actually operate.
A bridge between two worlds
A funky tech is someone who understands the daily work deeply. They know what advisors actually do, where the bottlenecks are, and what students are running into. They also speak the language of technology. Not as a full IT person. They have real skills: They can configure systems, pull data, and troubleshoot workflows. But they’re not infrastructure-level. They don’t live in the CIO’s office.
Functional staff (advisors, directors, and operations people) see a problem and know what would fix it, but struggle to explain it to IT in a way that makes sense. IT leadership understands systems architecture and security and technical debt, but struggles to understand why a particular request matters when the obvious workaround already exists. Funky techs translate between the two groups. They exist in a third space. They often report through the functional side of campus, but they’re credible on the technical side. They know enough to ask good questions. They know enough to recognize when something that sounds hard could be straightforward, and when something that sounds simple is going to be a technical nightmare.
Advocacy and translation
Funky techs are advocates and translators. They take a feature request from an advisor and make sure IT understands why it matters, backing it up with data: “Here’s our turnaround time, here’s what it costs us operationally when people work around the system, here’s the retention impact.” When an advising team asks for “searchable notes across the system,” they understand what that means operationally and can rephrase it for IT: “Here’s the actual problem, here’s the volume of data, here’s why it matters for our operations, and here’s what we’re planning to do with old records.” Advocacy and translation aren’t separate things. It’s about grounding requests in evidence and making sure both sides actually understand each other.
They also broker knowledge. They help functional teams understand what’s actually possible and what the realistic tradeoffs are. They help IT understand the operational context that shapes requests. They spot opportunities for process improvement that wouldn’t occur to either side alone, and they can distinguish between a request that needs a technical solution versus one that’s about changing how people work.
A structural gap
Most campuses have a built-in gap. Functional staff report up through the Academic or Student Affairs. IT reports to the CIO. There’s no structural reason these groups should deeply understand each other. Requests come through ticketing systems. IT roadmaps get set without enough functional input. Funky techs don’t fix this by changing the structure. They fix it by being in the gap, making it their job to understand both sides and help them understand each other. This is part of what makes the role effective. It exists outside the formal hierarchy, so it can move faster and doesn’t get tangled up in reporting structures and approval chains. But it also makes the role precarious. When someone like this leaves, institutions often don’t realize what they’ve lost.
There’s another layer to it, too. Funky techs usually work at the edge of their formal authority. They’re advocating for technical work they can’t implement themselves, proposing process changes that require IT buy-in. They succeed by credibility and persuasion, not by mandate. That makes the work both intellectually interesting and emotionally demanding.
Formalizing the role
The question isn’t whether funky techs exist on campus. They do. The question is whether the role is formalized or left to chance. At the University of South Carolina, two positions exemplify what happens when institutions do this intentionally: the Student Success Systems and Technology Manager and the Senior Program Manager for Advising Technology Innovation & Assessment. Both positions explicitly name the bridging work. Both include “manage technology status communications,” “serve on technology committees,” “determine needs of academic units and functionality of systems,” and “manage enhancement requests.” The first focuses on day-to-day support and access management for around 200 advisors. The second takes a broader view, overseeing implementation and expansion across the entire campus, assessing effectiveness, and identifying opportunities for process improvement. Both are structured with dedicated time and institutional standing. Both report to leadership that understands the advising operation deeply.
Name the work explicitly in position descriptions. Include translation and advocacy as core competencies, not miscellaneous duties. Reference it in performance reviews. Make it a recognized category of work.
Build structural support. Funky techs shouldn’t operate in the margins of their actual job. Give them dedicated time for bridging work. Create regular channels where they can bring cross-functional problems to IT leadership. Make sure those conversations have weight.
Invest in their development. They need technical training (SQL, API integration, system architecture) and functional business training (user research, change management, data ethics).
Why this moment
Higher ed is in the middle of significant technology transformation right now. CRM implementations are happening everywhere. AI integration is moving from “maybe” to “how.” Data privacy regulations keep changing. Cloud migrations are getting more common. These changes are complex, risky, and often urgent. They require that functional teams and IT collaborate, not just coordinate. They require real translation. They require people who understand both sides deeply enough to help the institution make good decisions about tradeoffs.
Funky techs are one critical part of how that happens. They are not the only part (good governance and clear decision-making authority matter, too), but they are the connective tissue that makes everything else possible.
The next time you hear someone introduce themselves as a funky tech, you’ll know what you’re looking at: someone who chose to live in the third space between two worlds, and who’s probably holding a lot of institutional understanding together.
Mike Dial is Senior Program Manager for Advising Technology Innovation and Assessment at the University of South Carolina, where he leads campus-wide strategy for advising technology, data governance, and student-facing systems across USC’s 11 colleges and schools. He works at the intersection of advising practice, institutional policy, and technology implementation, partnering across student services and IT to translate complex workflows into systems that serve students and staff well.
A practitioner-scholar, Dial is the author and editor of two books on student success: Academic Advising Administration: Essential Knowledge & Skills for the 21st Century, 2nd Edition (co-edited, Taylor & Francis), and Academic Recovery: Supporting Students on Academic Probation (edited, Stylus Publishing). His writing appears in refereed journals and practitioner-focused outlets where he explores digital literacy, organizational design for advising, and intervention models. His national conference presentations include the Annual Conference on The First-Year Experience, NACADA, and NASPA, along with pre-conference workshops on early alert systems and intervention program design.
Across his work, Dial’s focus remains consistent: build systems that scale without sacrificing the human element, align process with purpose, and ensure the right support reaches students at the right time.