Planning and Programs Director Katie Ranes Retires
Planning and Programs Director at ASU Katie Ranes is retiring on April 13, 2018. This is both a happy and sad time all at once. Katie will take with her a vast resource of knowledge and experience that many in the ASU community have relied on over the years, but she will leave with the knowledge and satisfaction of all that she accomplished throughout her years.
Katie has spent over 31 years at Arizona State University, all of that in either the UTO or its predecessors. In those years she has been an integral part of many major milestones, accomplishments, and overall victories for the university. Most recently, Katie has been tasked with managing several programs (Thunderbird, PeopleSoft, Learning Management System, Student Administration) and has played a vital role in the mentorship of many project managers and coordinators within our group. Katie directly supervised over 20 people currently working in UTO. Her work on the Thunderbird transition attests to the breadth of her knowledge of ASU systems including HR, Student Administration, LMS, networks and web applications. She has been closely connected with PeopleSoft since its initial implementation in 2006-07. “It was very satisfying to move ASU to a technology which allowed it to change and grow,” Katie said. “The previous system was an ASU developed system built in the 1980s and it would not have been able to adapt to the dynamic institution ASU has become.” Katie also managed several major version upgrades to both the Campus Solutions and HR systems.
Her past activities are a litany of the history of how computing has evolved along with ASU. Some of her contributions include establishing the EDI standard for Electronic Transcripts, managing the accreditation of ASU West as a separate entity and then later its incorporation back into the University in Many Places, use of the IEF as a code generator and eventual roll-out of the affiliate management system, visionary work in the Student Process Reengineering Project, the first myASU, implementation of Coeus as the enterprise Research Administration System and enterprise implementation of Blackboard.
Katie has volunteered to advance the profession through leadership and service to CUMREC, Educause and HEUG, presenting multiple times at national conferences. She has served as an Obama Scholar mentor and as mentor in the UTO Emerging Leaders program.
Katie got her start in the technology field at a time when programming was just part of a math degree. “At that time, there was not a separate major for computer science or languages, so I was exposed to programming as part of my degree program,” she said. As she worked with the new emerging technology, Katie said she was most surprised at the rapid growth of wireless networks and smartphone computing power. She looks forward to the growth of data science and captured interaction so student learning can be better understood and guided.
Katie will certainly be missed by many, but it is a joyous time for her. There will be festivities planned prior to her official departure, but before then, please thank her for the years of service and dedication and congratulating her for the same!
“I have had the opportunity to work on a variety of efforts with many talented and dedicated people,” she said. “This variety of work and the community of dedicated public servants have given me much satisfaction.”