Michael Sink, an 18-year technology veteran, has been selected to be the associate vice president and IT chief operating officer for the University of Central Florida’s new shared services technology enterprise, UCF IT.
Sink will start his new position on Feb. 6 after serving as the assistant vice president for Infrastructure and Operations at the University of South Florida, including its Tampa, USF Health, St. Petersburg and Sarasota campuses. While there, he helped lead an organizational restructuring and centralization of USF’s information technology division.
That experience will serve him well at UCF, which is in the process of implementing its own shared services information technology operation with a new organization called UCF IT, part of a larger university-wide IT 2020 initiative.
The new structure will replace UCF’s current Computer Services & Telecommunications and merge it with individual college and division information technology departments. Together, these resources will provide a stronger base to serve students, faculty and staff across the institution.
“My vision has always been to create a more agile and focused IT team that is committed to serving the institution,” Sink said. “I’m so pleased to join UCF and its talented professionals, and to help us move forward with a shared services initiative that will better meet the needs of everyone at the university.”
Sink was selected from a national pool of more than 200 candidates because of his experience leading large, complex, higher education IT enterprises, said Joel Hartman, vice president for Information Technologies and Resources and UCF’s chief information officer.
“Michael is a recognized facilitator and a visionary in technology services,” Hartman said. “He has a strong background in working on large-scale projects, and we are fortunate to have his expertise and leadership at this important point in the transformation of UCF IT.”
Before working at USF for six years, Sink was the director of Technology and Infrastructure and an assistant security officer at RGH Enterprises, a medical supplies company in Ohio. He has also worked as an information technology director and senior network administrator for private and financial institutions in Ohio.
Sink holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Cleveland State University.
UCF IT recently created its own Support Center and is working to increase adoption across campus of a new university-wide IT service management tool, ServiceNow. Earlier this year, a UCF IT Transition Team was created with representation across an initial six colleges and divisions to help develop the process of migrating to a new enterprise IT structure.
With the hiring of Sink, Computer Services & Telecommunications will complete its merger into UCF IT, along with participating colleges and divisions.
For more information on UCF IT, visit https://www.itr.ucf.edu/.