Stanford’s Academic Technology Specialists work in alignment with the University’s commitment to excellence in education and its general vision to improve teaching, learning, and research by implementing and developing new technologies. Academic Technology Specialists collaborate with faculty and staff in departments or programs and provide leadership in innovative uses of information technology for education and research.

Academic Technology Specialists are placed within schools, programs or departments based not simply on technical expertise, but on their respective discipline-specific backgrounds. They participate in the departmental culture and share academic interests with the faculty. As members of both the academic and the IT community, Academic Technology Specialists are uniquely positioned to bridge different cultures and to facilitate a creative and mutual exchange.

The ATS Program has the mission to be innovative and creative in making technology accessible, understandable, and appealing to an academic audience and to provide leadership and resourcefulness in identifying and integrating technological solutions to pedagogical and research needs.

Organization

The ATS Program is unique in its structure. It is organized to maximize the potential for collaboration and sharing within a system that is by nature highly decentralized. Instead of a traditional “top-down” or “tree-based” organization, the ATS Program is modeled as orbital scheme. It recognizes and reflects the reality that each ATS is a satellite of Academic Computing Services, working most of the time independently in their respective departments or programs and away from an immediate administrative center. The ATS Program Management Team forms part of the ATS Team and sees it as one of its major responsibilities to foster collaboration as a means for the program to excel in its mission.

The collaborative nature of the ATS Program is reflected in both the Hive and the Commons.