ITS is excited to welcome its new CIO, Matt Gunkel! Matt will officially join the team on March 10, 2022. Many of us had the chance to hear his vision for ITS during the candidate vision seminars. Now, we’d like to share an opportunity to get to know him on a more personal level. 

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Matt recently sat down with the Communication team to answer questions about his family, hobbies, interests, and more. Here are 10 fun facts about the new CIO:  

#1 Can you tell us about your family (spouse, children, pets)?  

Yeah! I have been married to my wife for 20 years. We met at Purdue in Lafayette, Indiana.  

We have a 19-year-old daughter who is currently in her freshman year studying biochemistry at the University of Missouri System. She is looking to go pre-med. It’s kind of crazy because my wife and I are both in IT—I have no idea where my daughter got all the healthcare interest! She’s a certified EMT and is currently doing research in a lab, so needless to say we’re super proud of her. She’s doing fantastic. Pretty sure she’s related to us, but not sure where it all comes from.  

I also have a greyhound named Arrow. She is an ex-racer from Kansas. The best thing to know about Arrow is that she has buck teeth. She’s absolutely hilarious, and kind of reminds me of The Simpsons’ dog. The Simpsons have a greyhound and Arrow is very similar in terms of looks and silly personality.        

#2 What do you like to do outside of work?  

My big activities are backpacking and camping. We’ve been backpackers for a number of years. Our most recent trip was the Maroon Bells in Colorado. It’s a four-pass hike that’s about 40 miles. My wife and daughter love to go with me. We like to go out, get off the grid, put things down for a minute and really enjoy nature. We also really like to go biking. We have gravel bikes that we use for backroads biking. 

I’m also a big video game fan. I really like to play open RPGs when I have downtime during holidays. It allows me to take a break for a while and it’s a lot of fun. Recently, I was playing the new Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.  

My wife loves to crochet and garden. As an avid gardener, she’s super excited to have citrus trees at our new house in Riverside.   

#3 Where did you grow up? 

I was born in Summit County, Colorado. I lived there for four years. My dad was an Assistant Principal at the local area high school. I did most of my growing up in Bloomington, Indiana, which is a college town. Interestingly, my dad served as the Assistant Principal at the high school I attended. I was big into sports. I swam for 10 years and ended up playing water polo for Purdue. Swimming was pretty much my life.  

After I graduated, I started my education at Ohio Northern. I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I made it through all of the math and physics… and then I decided that I didn’t want to be an engineer.  

So, I transferred to the Purdue School of Technology, where I finished my degree. It was a really interesting program because it was very broad. They offered everything from graphic design and video work to video game programming, so I was doing pathfinding and basic AI work.  

At that point in time, I married my wife. And then, funny enough, we moved to Sunnyvale in Northern California. For about a year, I worked full-time freelance for the Olympus camera company. They have a medical repair facility there and I was doing graphic design work to communicate to doctors the importance of sending endoscopes back to Olympus’ repair facility instead of a third party. So, weirdly enough I learned that you always want to ask where your scopes are repaired because it matters!  

#4 Can you tell us more about your career in IT?  

My wife and I concluded that Sunnyvale just wasn’t right for us at that time. My aunt and uncle live in Mountain View so we had family close by, but ultimately we decided to move back and I took an entry-level helpdesk position at the Indiana University School of Business. I think that’s really where I got things started in my career and tenure.  

I then moved on to several different roles within the IU School of Business. The next role was overseeing networks and labs for customized security deployments in virtual infrastructure. That was the early 2000s, so it was very new conceptually.  

From there, I moved into working with the School of Business’ online master’s program. They had a custom-developed student information system. I was working in dot-net applications and helping them build and develop multimedia content and additional classroom delivery work. It was a whole gamut of projects of everything you might envision needed to support an online program. The online program was unique because they were the only program at IU that runs on quarters instead of semesters, so they had all their own systems that we had to make work.            

I then took on the academic and technology infrastructure for building IU Online, where I moved into the central IT organization that provided for all eight campuses. My role eventually evolved into the Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies for the entire University.  

From IU, I moved into my most recent role, which was at the University of Missouri System. Again, I came in as a hire of one and worked to pull together a team to build what is Missouri Online today. The online program supports about 9,000 students, providing all of the underlying technology infrastructure for the delivery of the courses, building programs, and performing enrollment management marketing.    

#5 What’s your favorite place you’ve traveled to?  

Italy is my favorite. I really love Rome; I’ve been three times. It’s fantastic! I still need to see Northern Italy, as I haven’t been there yet.      

#6 What’s on your bucket list?  

I want to go backpacking in Hawaii. When you live in the Midwest, Europe is actually closer than Hawaii. Now that we’ll be in Southern California, Hawaii is going to be reasonably close. So, we’re really excited that we’ll have an opportunity to go backpacking in Hawaii! 

New Zealand is also on the list. We’d love to do a hybrid trip, backpacking and exploring the city.  

We also haven’t had an opportunity to see much of Asia yet, so I would say Japan is definitely on the list. My daughter is a fairly big anime fan, so we’ve talked about going to Japan and learning more about that culture and seeing the stunning scenery.   

#7 Who is your role model? 

That would be one of my previous bosses, Stacy Marrone. She is currently the Dean at the School of Education at IU. As far as mentors go and people who have a fantastic way of leading, I’ve aspired to follow in her footsteps. She’s done some really cool things in academia and technology to help students and work with faculty in spaces, as well as helping with accessibility and accommodations. She’s someone I really admire.  

#8 Which do you enjoy more: book or movie? 

I’m a movie person. One of my favorite movies is The Usual Suspects. I’m also a big Gladiator fan. Generally speaking, I like Star Wars. However, when I was in 5th grade my friends and I got permission to borrow a VCR cart every day during lunch and sit in a classroom watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. My friend recorded each episode on VHS and had them cataloged in order so that we could follow the series.  

#9 Which do you prefer: Android or iPhone? 

I’m an iPhone user at this point. I gave Android a shot, but at this point I prefer iPhone. Although funny enough, I’m an avid Google fan. 

#10 What are you most looking forward to in terms of living in California?  

I’m really excited about the people at UCR. During the interview process, the folks I met and the conversations I had really kind of sealed the deal. I think the work will be fun, but it was the nature of the people that made me think, “yeah, this will be really exciting.”   

The Communication team would like to thank Matt for the opportunity to share more about him with our ITS staff. If you’d like to know more about Matt, he welcomes folks to reach out on Slack!