Episode 5: Tiana's Tech Talk: A Journey in Tech and Higher Education

Tiana Iruoje is the Director of Student Engagement and Success and Adjunct Lecturer at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. She has over 20 years of experience in higher education affairs and administration. She earned her Master of Science in Higher Education Student Affairs Administration at Indiana University in 2002 and is currently working towards her doctoral degree in Instructional Systems Technology. You can know more about our guest here.

The Center of Excellence for Women & Tech is a welcoming community on Indiana University’s campus that strives to empower women students, faculty, and alumni to expand their leadership skills, build confidence about technology, and foster community and collaboration between all fields of study and industry. The Center’s Instagram handle is @IUwomenandtech. Please follow us there!

Tiana also publishes publications about student success factors in higher education. You can read some of Tiana’s work here.

In addition, find more about career resources for Luddy students here.

Big thanks to Rebecca Ramsey at IU's Center for Language Technology whose work makes this podcast possible! Since 1959, CeLT has overseen the language and computer labs in Ballantine Hall, with the mission of providing the highest quality services to support language teaching, learning, and research at Indiana University. Find out more about their services and resources here.

Jeannette Lehr: 

Hello and welcome to the Women of IU podcast. The show that highlights and celebrates the important work women do every day at IU and hopes to inspire future women leaders. This podcast is brought to you by the Center of Excellence for Women and Technology. I'm Jeanette Lehr. You can find out more about our center and what we do for women at IU and how you can get involved at womenandtech.indiana.edu. Today's episode is hosted by the Centers Black Women and Tech alliance team. The wonderful Sarah Ali from Black women in Tech will be interviewing Tiana Iruoje. Tiana Iruoje has over 20 years of higher education experience and earned both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Indiana University Bloomington. Currently, she is the director of Student Engagement and success in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, and is completing her last semester of her doctoral coursework in instructional systems technology. Tiana is committed to creating opportunities for every student she encounters. Before we dive into this conversation, though, please rate and review our show on Apple Podcasts and follow the Center on Instagram at @iuwomenintech. You can find out more about today's guest in the show notes and at womenintech.indiana.edu. Now let’s hand things over to Sarah Ali from Black women in Tech and her conversation with Tiana Iruoje.

Sarah Ali: 

Hello, Tiana. 

Tiana Iruoje: 

Hello, Sarah. 

Sarah: 

I guess my first question for you is a current working question. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work or research at IU. 

Tiana: 

OK, so my name is Tiana Iruoje and my full time job at IU is the Director of student engagement and success in The Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. With that, because that's the title, but with that, what that means is I'm pretty much in charge of from when students enroll, orientation through graduation and I work with alum. So, really working with orienting students into the Luddy school. I engage. Engagement to me is focusing on all the high impact practices, which is another word of saying all the engaging activities. So, the student organizations international experiences, the living learning community, tutoring and all things that is going to keep a student in school and help them matriculate.

Sarah: 

Wow, that's a lot that you do. What you find is the most interesting, significant thing about your work. 

Tiana: 

The most interesting thing about my work is I get to see students when they first enroll and see the growth happen in person. Like this was my coming back to IU since 2006 and I never thought I'd be at an institution where I get to see people graduate and I've seen it multiple times now. When they are freshmen, it's been great to me to see, like freshmen come in when they act very shy and I am in a tech school. Sometimes I have students. They come to my office. They may not even look up at me, but through our interactions, conversations, helping them develop and grow. I mean, I think of one of my students now that I am thinking about. I remember when they came to my office, they were like looking down at their hands, and I was like, what are you looking at? Like you, who are you talking to? They'll look and smile. Got all shy. That same student now is giving presentations not only at Luddy, but across the country at conferences and everything else. So those are some of the things that are rewarding to me to see the growth of students throughout their term.

Sarah: 

Yeah, and I bet it's really fulfilling. Can you describe a day in life at your work? 

Tiana: 

So, no days are the same. So, when I come in, first, I walk down the halls and I go and talk to every single one of my colleagues with their doors open. We have a Community Center in the Luddy school, so I go over to the Community Center and typically there's some students there having coffee or having some snacks or getting ready to prepare their oatmeal. So, I'll talk to students, greet them, and then it's off to meetings. I mean, most of my day consists of meeting with some of my colleagues, but then also I have to plan things like we're working on our field day or I'm working with the student organization, preparing their presentation for the CEWIT Conference, or we're preparing for a trip like we have some tech tours that are happening or I'm working on an international proposal. I'm planning to take some students to Ghana or planning another proposal to create these opportunities for students. So, my day is very busy. None of them are the same, because then I may get a call in for a crisis or something that happened in a living learning community. So, I have to address that. So, no days the same, but they're all fun and in between all of that, students are stopping by my office to say hello and they will. I don't want to say, disrupt my work, but I get a lot of interruptions, which are fun because that's why I do what I do. So, I'm available to students. Even if they see it on the door, it says like in a meeting they're going to tap on the door and come in because they know I'm gonna help them and whatever. I'll just pause and help them. So those are the fun. That's the fun of my job, though. It's like no day is the same and I get students to come by quite frequently.

Sarah: 

So, take us back. How did you get started in your field of study?

Tiana: 

Great question. So, as you probably will hear from a lot of people that go into higher education student affairs. So, it's like a field that you didn't know about. So, in undergrad, I was very involved. I became an RA. I lived in first. Let me back up a little bit. I lived in. It's not here anymore. Kind of ages me a little bit, but it was called the Foster International Living Learning community that was in Foster, and that whole building had students from all different countries I chose to live in that space because I wanted to meet people who are different than me and to open up my mind even more. So, you have to apply to go to live in the community. Then they had a class, A class that you took with your peers, and it was just like an introductory class to IU. You took that class. I became like a teacher of that class. The next year I applied to be an RA, got involved as an RA, worked the center desk, student government. Then we had Black student governments, like in the in the residence halls. They had their own student governments back then. So, it's not just this big one that they have now and so I got involved in that. Well, one day, as I'm getting ready to graduate, my then residence manager was like, you know, you can do this for a living. I said do what. She said what you're doing, and I said I had no clue because at the time when I entered IU, they had gradpack. If you didn't graduate in four years, then IU needed to pay you money. So, my parents are like, look, you're gonna be done in four years. I didn't tell you the part that when I first started out majoring in chemistry, chemistry education. At one time, I wanted to be a nurse. Then I decided, you know what, I need to graduate in these four years because that's what my parents were guaranteeing 4 years. So, I went talked to my advisor. I was like, what do I need to do to graduate cause mind you, I wanted to be all these different majors and didn't want to do any of it. She said you can graduate on time. Just do general studies with sociology minor and like a math concentration or something. Cause I took all those chemistry, science, all those classes, the fun classes that I was really thought I was going to pursue. So, then that spring I applied to be in the Masters program in higher education and IU has one of the top programs in the country. I had no clue at the time, and we were a cohort of 30 people and that's how I found my way into student affairs. Since then, everything I learned in the classroom, I started working in housing, So I was a graduate supervisor in the residence halls. So, I was able to apply all the knowledge I was learning in the classroom because that's just how I operate when I'm learning something, I like to apply it. So that's and here I am still in higher education student affairs.

Sarah: 

What was it like for you being a woman in this industry?

Tiana: 

So being a woman in higher education is interesting. I mean starting out. It's a lot of women that work in higher education. I mean, you start thinking about how many women come to college. There's a lot of us versus men. Well, as you start moving up in the field, there's fewer fewer of you in higher leadership position. So, you quite you find yourself honestly. and if I'm being honest, a lot of times you're at the director level, there's a lot of women, but then when you move up higher up, there's men. So, I found myself in every position that I've been in, that a male is my supervisor at some point. Even now, we have an assistant Dean who's a female, which I'm excited about, and our Dean is a female, which is really cool. But in between there, there's still a male that's your leader, and that's what I find in the tech field. That's why we we even in the Ludy school, one thing we focus on is recruiting more women because that's important to diversify the conversation. It's important. So that's how.

Sarah: 

What advice do you have for underrepresented students earlier in their careers?

Tiana: 

What I would tell underrepresented students is to work hard and know that you belong where you're at because a lot of times that whole imposter syndrome it sits in all the time, and you feel like you're not good enough. Oh, I shouldn't be here. No, your voice matters. So, if you get a seat at the table or foot in the room, anything. Let your voice be heard. Because it's not only you're speaking for yourself, but for others too. I mean, I didn't get in this field for just myself. I got in the field to leave this world a better place than what I found it. That's what I tell students and I tell my kids and everyone else I come in contact with because if you have a voice, you're speaking for others just like you and those who don't look like you because the impact that you make, you just don't know. I you're invited, speak up because you're helping someone else along the way.

Sarah: 

Are there resources or communities you recommend for support and guidance?

Tiana: 

So OK, so resources that I would definitely encourage people to do is read, read, read, read. Also, stay in tune with what's going on in the field. Ever since I was in Graduate School and I mean, I'm finishing my doctorate now. I didn't talk about that, but something that's important is If you're gonna go in the field of technology, read what's going on in technology so you can stay tuned and stay ahead of it. That's important. If you're going to go into media, read what's going on in the media. Read what's going on in nursing. Whatever field you go into, read that information so you can stay knowledgeable. I think that's important. Subscribe to the magazines. Reach out to someone in the field that you really look up to or you aspire to be in that position and ask them. Can you maybe interview them? Maybe, can you shadow them? That's what I did as an undergraduate. That's how I found out I didn't want to do any of those jobs. I shadowed teachers. I shadow nurses. I shadowed EMTs. I shadowed engineers to know that that was not what I wanted to do. I think that's important.

Sarah: 

What do you see as the future role of women in your industry?

Tiana: 

Oh, so my doctorate is going to be in instructional systems technology. So, women in technology, women in higher education in the future. I mean, look at look at the the Presidents, the VP's and the Deans and things that we have. I think you can be whatever you want in the industry. In tech, there's more women in higher leadership positions. So, I think the field is just going to continue to grow and it can only thrive with women involved.

Sarah: 

What challenges do you see in your field and how do you think those evolve in the future?

Tiana: 

Some of the challenges I think is having understanding like the work life balance. We talk about it a lot but making sure you're in the industry where it's supported, and I think now we're starting to see a shift where there's so many opportunities for you for childcare. Or nursing moms. Or if you want to take a paternity leave, all those types of things. So, I think the challenges are still going to remain with not a lot of women in the field. So, we have to continue to recruit and encourage women to pursue those opportunities.

Sarah: 

As a follow up question to that, what do you think needs to happen to make these changes?

Tiana: 

I think that we have to be, I think for me, I think there's ways that you can do things that are not like the traditional ways like going out and having conversations, sharing what you're doing, putting it out there, where you're telling women you could do this, too. Sometimes we stick to this script when we're going out recruiting and you some companies just have a check box. I need this many women, this many women, blah blah blah. I don't think that's necessary So one of my mentors used to going if he wanted or needed a female in a position or a person of color in a position, then he let it be known when he's interviewing them. Sometimes people think about the legality of things all the time rather than just having a conversation and building relationships. And I think in order for people to know that this is a job for them, or an area that they can thrive in, they have to hear those stories of people being successful because a lot of times the things that get highlighted are the negative stories. But let other women tell their story. Share your story and how you overcame things or how successful you were in the field. It's important.

Sarah: 

On this show, we speak with many accomplished and inspiring women like yourself. So, we want to know who is the woman that inspires you and why. This could be someone you know personally and or someone who whose work you admire.

Tiana: 

The person that inspires me the most is my mother. My mother is hard working. My mother. What she started working, I don't think she was probably, what, 19 years old. She's been working for 40 something years and now she's a head custodian of Ben Davis High School. When you hear that someone's a head custodian, you wouldn't believe how much clout, how much agency she has in that whole entire township. Because she's a person that looks back, helps other people, every student that come through there, she makes sure that they're successful. If they don't have a job, she's hiring them. If she sees a young woman walking around with a rag on her head as a scarf on her head because she couldn't get her hair done, she's going to take her and get her hair done at a salon. If she sees someone standing waiting for a ride in the rain and can't get where they have to go, she gives them a ride. My mother is someone that I've seen as a child growing up that has taken care of many, many, many people regardless of how hard she has to work for the three of her kids, and my dad is with us too. I'm so inspired by her because she works very hard. She has that grit that I read about, tenacity, everything. So, the person I aspire to be is my mother. I always reach back and help someone along the way.

Sarah: 

We're out of time, but it was lovely to have you here. If folks want to know more about your work, where can they find more information?

Tiana: 

They can send me an e-mail or Google. You could see some of the articles that I published and some more work that I'm publishing as well, but they could definitely send an e-mail to tiwillia@indiana.edu.

Sarah: 

Thank you so much for being here. This is Sarah Ali with Black Women and Technology alliance team. Thank you for listening.

Jeannete Lehr:

Thanks for listening to the women of IU podcast. Please check out the show notes for more information about the Center and Tiana’s work at IU at womenandtech.indiana.edu. Before we go, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and follow the Center on Instagram at @iuwomenintech. This podcast was recorded by the Center for Language Technology here at IU, so we want to give them a big thank you for their support and their work on this podcast. Then stay tuned for the next episode of the Women of IU podcast. I am Jeanette Lehr. Thanks for listening.