Melissa Cresswell
Melissa Cresswell is the Director of Client Engagement and Planning for the Library & Information Technology Services (LITS) department at Bryn Mawr College, where she has worked in a variety of roles for the last eighteen years.  

After several years working in library access services and earning her MS in Library and Information Science, Melissa pivoted into a project and portfolio management role in Bryn Mawr’s merged Library and IT organization. Since 2010 she has managed the organization’s project, service, and budget portfolio and has directed LITS’ outreach and communication efforts.

In 2014-2015 Melissa earned her PMP and ITIL Foundation certifications and has led several change management efforts at Bryn Mawr. She joined the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) Board in 2016 and currently serves on the EDUCAUSE Service Catalog Revision working group and the EDUCAUSE Analytics and Research advisory group.

In her current role at Bryn Mawr, which she has held for just a few months, Melissa continues her portfolio management work while overseeing client engagement, support, and technology procurement and working within the LITS management team to align organizational goals with the College’s mission and strategic objectives. Melissa is devoted to building trust through good communication, continuous improvement, and excellent service.

 

Rebecca Miller Brown, PhD
As Assistant Director of Graduate Student Programming, Rebecca manages the Bok Center’s Pedagogy Fellow program, a group of experienced and creative graduate student teachers who collaborate with faculty, administration, and the Bok Center’s senior staff to enhance teaching in their disciplines and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences more broadly. Additionally, Rebecca collaborates with colleagues to continue developing and integrating all Bok programming for graduate students, including seminars, workshops, consultations, and online resources. She also teaches seminars for new graduate student teachers and will be running a course this spring on the foundations of teaching in the humanities and social sciences.  

Prior to joining the Bok Center in August 2018, Rebecca served as an Instructional Technologist in Academic Technology at Harvard, where she worked with faculty and graduate student teachers on the thoughtful and effective integration of educational technologies into their courses. She was the Product Owner for AnnotationsX, an online collaborative annotation tool integrated with Canvas LMS, and the Hedera Project, an online vocabulary database and readability gauge for language learners, currently only for Latin but with plans to scale up and include multiple languages. Rebecca helped secure funding for this project to bring on external collaborators and continues to serve as a pedagogical consultant.

Before joining Harvard’s staff, Rebecca earned her PhD in Classical Philology at Harvard University, as well as her MA from the University of Oxford and BA from Georgetown University, both in the Classics.

 

Aixa Pomales
Aixa Pomales is the director of Support Services for the Information Technology Services (ITS) department at Swarthmore College. She is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Support Services team, cultivating and nurturing strategic partnerships across her institution. She works within her ITS management team to ensure that the ITS team aligns its support of the College’s strategic objectives and educational mission.

Prior to joining Swarthmore College in 2010, Aixa held various progressive leadership and management positions within IT during 11 years at Temple University, ultimately rising to the assistant director for the help desk and technical support.

Aixa has an M.S. in business with a concentration in human resource management from Lincoln University and received her undergraduate degree in organizational studies from Temple University. She completed the EDUCAUSE Institute Leadership Program in 2016.

Aixa is passionate about her involvement in efforts that support and promote diversity, equity and inclusion such as NERCOMP’s Professional Development Committee, the NERCOMP Program Committee for NERCOMP Annual Conference 2019, serving as chair of the Planning Committee for CLAC 2019 Annual Conference, and as a member of the Educause IT Issues Panel in 2019.

Participating as a panelist in NERCOMP’s People of Color in Higher Ed reinforced Aixa’s commitment to ensuring that IT professionals actively share lessons learned early in their careers as they progress within higher ed IT. This commitment reinforces that career growth is a proactive responsibility to ourselves, the institutions, and higher ed IT industry we serve.

As an engaged member of her campus community, Aixa serves as a co-chair of the Task Force on Student Social Life and Community Standards, and is a member of the Faculty/Staff Development Committee and the Student Employment Committee. She is also an IT representative for new hire orientations and recently served on the working group for Standard VII (Governance, Leadership and Administration) as part of Swarthmore’s Middle States re-accreditation process.

Aixa’s professional and personal growth reinforces her commitment to service and excellence in the workplace for the betterment of our institutions and campus communities.