Dr. Jerome (Jerry) DeSanto

Dr. Jerome P. DeSanto Ed.D. has served in higher education for over 40 years in senior roles such as Vice-President for Planning and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the University of Scranton and as Executive Vice President for John Carroll University. In both of these roles Jerry had broad responsibilities for numerous University functions including Information Technology (IT), Facilities, Planning, Institutional Research, Accreditation, Legal Affairs, Human Resources, Library, Registrar, and Governance/Board Relations.

In more recent years Jerry has specialized in IT consulting for institutions, public and private, large and small. This consulting work mostly focuses on CIO leadership mentoring and organizational development. In addition, Jerry has taken on several Interim CIO roles with each spanning 8-15 months for EDUCAUSE, Illinois Wesleyan University, and the Nebraska State College System. These roles had specific strategic and tactical goals associated with each including conducting IT assessments, developing IT organizational/resource plans, and creating a road-map for the IT function that aligns with the institutional strategic plan. At each interim engagement the final goal was to lead efforts to recruit a permanent CIO.

Jerry has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Management for the University of Scranton’s Kania School of Management specializing in teaching the capstone course in Strategic Management in the on-line MBA program. Jerry has also taught the graduate project and change management course in the Scranton/Geisinger MBA program and graduate courses in Management and Management Information Systems.

Jerry has published articles on the topics of succession planning in higher education, the role of the interim CIO, and the dearth of females in the higher education CIO role. These articles follow Jerry’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania on the topic of the rapidly changing role of the higher education CIO (2012).