Meet longtime Larner College of Medicine staff member, Chief Information Officer Steve Goldman, M.S., who joined the Larner Technology Services team in 2009.
In the following blog post, Margie Brenner writes about Goldman’s background, his role at Larner, and what he enjoys doing outside of work.
“Technology helps enable solutions to serve the mission … and what I love about our department is that we’ve always been about finding the answers to how do we help students learn, help teachers teach, and help researchers find answers to big questions.”
Meet the Chief Information Officer
In the Larner College of Medicine Technology Services department, or COMTS, 30 professionals work behind the scenes to provide tools and training to support the mission of the college. They are committed to building and maintaining a stable technology environment that fosters educational and professional excellence, research, and collaboration at the medical school, in addition to acting as the liaison for users and partners on UVM main campus and at the UVM Health Network.
Leading COMTS since 2023 is Chief Information Officer Steve Goldman, M.S. After graduating from college with a master’s in IT in the nation’s capital, he began his career as a project manager and analyst consultant with child welfare agencies. He was then hired by a larger firm to help build a centralized system for a Department of Health and Human Services child support enforcement program, reducing the amount of paperwork needed while ensuring that the program achieved its goals.
Although Goldman stepped into the CIO role just a couple of years ago, he had been working with the college on their engineering and application programming as an offsite IT consultant since 1997. “At that time, the technology staff on-site were mainly help desk associates,” said Goldman. In 2009, the director of the department hired him to run the application/database environment, followed by various internal roles for about 14 years. Goldman recalls the migration of the college curriculum to an online learning system during his early years working at Larner. “Before 2003, there wasn’t really any online learning technology in use. With the Class of 2007, everything went online, and the Vermont Integrated Curriculum (VIC) came along, and all the exams were accessed through a virtual learning environment called COMET, where students would log in to retrieve their course content,” he explained.
The COMTS department is structured to meet the tech needs of the medical community where it’s housed. While Chief Technology Officer Gordon White and David Towle-Hilt, director of enterprise services and information security, are focused on “good, solid” technology infrastructure, Goldman works alongside Laurie Gelles, Ph.D., M.A., director of technology innovation and integration on how to use tech to serve the mission of the college, including the delivery of tools for education and research and how to make it as easy as possible to integrate with the UVM Health Network. In fact, a data enclave project is under way towards this goal. The data enclave—described in a recent article—is an initiative that marks a pivotal step in bridging academic research and sensitive, real-world data in Vermont, laying the foundation for evidence-based policymaking and research-informed health care delivery while safeguarding patient privacy and integrity. Goldman offers a simplified explanation. “This is … a structured solution to long-standing challenges in data sharing between clinical and academic entities.”
An Ear for Music
Before his working years, with the unwavering support of his parents, Goldman started playing piano at age 5, studying the instrument for several years. In grade school, he played in the jazz band, sang in the chorus, and recalled a few singing lessons with his junior high choral teacher until learning music theory, which was as far as he got in terms of formal training in music. From that point forward, Goldman became self-taught—he picked up the guitar, violin, and bass “after two lessons,” he said, with humility in his voice. He sometimes held lead roles in his high school plays, including the Pirates of Penzance, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Tom Jones.
During his college years in D.C., Goldman always played music on the side with a “mostly blues” band. When he started work at UVM, he “met a guy who played blues music,” and the rest is history. “My wife strongly encouraged me to have something outside of work and parenting our twin boys, so we ended up doing an open mic together, met another guy who played bass, and we ended up forming a band with him.” Nineteen years later, Goldman has been the upright bass player with Red Hot Juba—covering swing jam and Americana tunes—along with two guitarists, and a drummer who also plays trumpet. For the past 10 years, he’s also played with a few other bands including acoustic guitar with the Brevity Thing, and electric bass with the Faerie God Brothers.
“There’s an incredible amount of talent in Vermont in music. We’re a small state and it’s easy to know. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to play with dozens of incredible musicians around the state at one time or another.”
Goldman appreciates the Vermont culture of people “working to live,” versus living to work. “Everyone should have something besides work to define themselves by. I’m lucky to have music as a thing that I get to do. I’m also lucky that I have a hobby that supports itself.” He adds, “Everyone has a frustrating day where they don’t know if they can do more. But two songs into a gig—I completely forget about the day. I think everybody needs that.”
