News

St. Olaf College Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Tarshia Stanley has announced the appointment of James Shuttlesworth as the college’s new chief information officer (CIO). He will assume the role on January 1.

Shuttlesworth comes to St. Olaf from Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, where he currently serves as the senior director of information technology and risk management. He has 30 years of higher education technology experience at the small liberal arts college, including governing a merged library and information technology department.

He has expertise in enterprise systems strategy, institutional risk, and AI-driven data governance, with a record of building and sustaining faculty governance structures for IT and library policy. Shuttlesworth also has deep knowledge of Oracle, the technology platform that drives St. Olaf’s Ole Information System, and experience implementing it in higher education. He is known for rebuilding processes to fit an institution’s real economic and resource constraints.

“James brings a wealth of experience that will be instrumental in helping St. Olaf navigate how we adapt to the new technology frontier,” Stanley says. “Not only has he worked for decades at a liberal arts college very similar to our own, but he also comes from a campus that uses the same enterprise management system we do. He is also familiar with managing a combined library and IT team, and understands the important role that libraries play on a campus like ours. I am eager to welcome him to St. Olaf, and to learn from and with him.”

Shuttlesworth earned his bachelor’s degree from Ursinus College, where he majored in economics and business administration and history. He steadily advanced in his IT career, growing from early roles as a network engineer and manager to become the deputy CIO, chief information security officer, and head of information technology management.

“St. Olaf feels like home already. I’m thrilled to join a college that cares so deeply about learning, and to lead a team that supports how this community learns, works, researches, and lives every day,” Shuttlesworth says.

As the CIO at St. Olaf, Shuttlesworth will oversee both enterprise IT strategy and academic library leadership, supported by a team of 55 staff members spanning the two areas. The combined division encompasses the library, archives and special collections, instructional and classroom technology, enterprise systems and infrastructure, cybersecurity, and user support services.

The national search firm Brettschneider Executive Search facilitated the recruitment and hiring process.