Kara Gaulrapp
Sr. Web Accessibility Analyst,
University of Pennsylvania
The Hard Conversation: Burnout in Higher Education Technology Organizations
Thursday, October 30, 2025 | 9:45AM–10:30AM CT | Meeting Room 103, Level 1
Session Type:
Breakout Session
Delivery Format:
Presentation/Panel Session
Higher Education IT has been carrying an invisible weight for years. Staff are asked to do more with less, keep up with relentless change, and manage the emotional strain of supporting students, faculty, staff, and organizations that never truly “power down”. Burnout is not a vague concept here: it’s a lived reality.
This session is designed to move beyond surface-level acknowledgement of the problem. Instead of describing the water to those who are already swimming, we want to create a space where the community can name what burnout feels like, hear their peers say “me too”, and start to imagine what support could look like on their own campuses.
We know this won’t be solved in one session. What we can do is provide the opening: a conversation with eyes and hearts open, structure so the pain of burnout is not minimized but heard, and so participants leave feeling both validated and equipped with language and ideas to take back home.
