Terence (Terry) Houser is the Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, Data Services and Solution Architecture at the University of Virginia. In his 27 year career beginning as a student, he has witnessed, influenced and continues to lead the transformation of Information Technology and Information Systems across the Higher Education landscape. He values collaboration with colleagues in industry and higher educational institutions the world over, and within the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) as evidenced by his career progression.
Career Highlights:
Terry began his career at the University of Michigan in 1989 where he supported mainframe administrative systems as a programmer analyst. In 1995, Terry installed and began maintaining the University's first PeopleSoft system, Financials version 5. Since then, Terry has become a nationally recognized expert of PeopleSoft application upgrades and has been the Technical Upgrade Manager for several of the University’s PeopleSoft upgrades including: Financials 5 to 6, 6 to 7.5, 7.5 to 8.8, Campus Solutions (Student Administration and Human Resources) 6 to 7, 7 to 7.5, 7.5 to 7.6, 7.6 to 8 and most recently, Campus Solutions 8 to 9.0. In the capacity of Technical Upgrade Manager for all of these projects, Terry and his team were responsible for technical infrastructure upgrade planning and execution as well as execution of the upgrades themselves. He developed deep expertise with PeopleTools, Application Servers and all other PeopleSoft infrastructure components.
In 2000, Terry became Manager of the Application Infrastructure Group where he was responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining the technical infrastructures for the the University’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. His team of high-performing administrators transformed the infrastructures used by faculty, students and staff to conduct business across U-M’s campus.
In 2010, Terry became the Assistant Director of Core Infrastructure in U-M’s Information and Technology Services (ITS) division. With that, Terry’s scope of control and influence expanded significantly to include technical direction for not only ERP systems, but Teaching and Learning (Sakai), Identity and Access Management, enterprise email and many others. Under Terry’s direction, his teams led projects to refactor infrastructures for these systems to ensure their long-term sustainability and maintainability.
In 2013, Terry became the Program Director of Infrastructure Projects at the University of Michigan. He was responsible for program direction of all enterprise technical infrastructure projects at the University. These strategic projects spanned a wide variety of infrastructure layers and components including storage, databases, application infrastructures (including PeopleSoft/Oracle), virtualization infrastructures as well as on and off- premise cloud infrastructure offerings. He reported directly to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the University of Michigan.
In late 2016, Terry assumed a new position at the University of Virginia as the Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, Data Services and Solution Architecture. In that role, Terry is responsible for Enterprise Application infrastructures including but not limited to Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft Campus Solutions and Identity and Access Management. As the University of Virginia makes it's move to the cloud, Terry will be responsible for determining the integration strategy for on and off-premise application infrastructures.
HEUG/TAG Highlights:
Terry was elected to the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) in 2008 and is currently completing his second term. During his tenure he served as TAG chair for two years running, authored an HEUG Technical Advisory Group Whitepaper in 2007 offering tactical knowledge on the implementation of PeopleTools 8.48 and shift to Oracle Application Server. He has presented numerous times at HEUG and Oracle OpenWorld conferences on a wide variety of technical subjects - all of which were highly rated and well received. Most recently, Terry has served as the TAG’s Security Area of Focus Lead for the past two years and is a member of Oracle’s newly formed Security Customer Advisory Council (SCAC). The SCAC is a partnership between Oracle, HEUG, REN-ISAC, HEISC and Educause.
Terry is the current Vice President for Technology of the HEUG and has served in that role since 2014. Terry has collaborated effectively with the TAG to guide their Areas of Focus and has forged new ground with regard to new concepts member institutions must consider when moving to the cloud, including integration strategy.
Terry lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife Kelly and two daughters. He enjoys spending time with his family, running, fishing, hiking and biking.