Staff Spotlight: Jaymil Patel, MBA, Director of IT Services

How do you keep hundreds of devices up and running so faculty, staff, residents and students can continue teaching, learning, studying, researching, sharing and providing patient care with almost zero SDM systems downtime for more than a decade? It starts with the network servers. It also takes a village—a dedicated team led by SDM Director of Infrastructure and Technology (IT) Services Jaymil Patel, MBA.

Jaymil Patel, MBA, Director of Infrastructure and Technology Services

“IT is constantly changing,” said Patel. “We are always looking at newer applications and processes to improve. In my 14 years here, the most impactful change I’ve been a part of was bringing more than a dozen physical servers from central IT to the SDM server room. This helps both clinical and non-clinical departments because we can manage everything ourselves and avoid unnecessary or excessive downtime. We’ve had no downtime since 2010 for the SDM systems we manage, and I'm most proud of that.”

Originally from India, Patel moved to the United States in 1999 and earned his bachelor’s degree in computer and information sciences with a focus on management. When he first came to the SDM in 2009, he was the third employee in IT and only worked part-time as a temporary hire. The central Office of Information Technology managed IT services for all schools on campus, so minimal support was dedicated to the dental clinics, which often require faster response times than classrooms.

Patel worked his way up to director in just three years. Since then, Patel and his team have made several impactful changes to the school: IT services were brought in-house to ensure full-time coverage during clinic hours; physical servers were moved from central IT to the dental school server room; the team expanded from two to eight full-time employees, plus four student assistants; and a ticketing system was introduced to streamline and prioritize service requests.

The IT team works on anywhere from 30 to 100 projects weekly. “My team and I get to be advocates for our colleagues. We find solutions and ways to improve, and we couldn’t do that without administrative support.”

Some of the IT team gathers on World Smile Day in October 2022. Left to right: Patel, Thi Nguyen, Brendan Joines, Chris Lim, Erik Cantor and Caesar Nguyen.

Patel credits his past business experience for his strong work ethic and leadership mindset. “It has given me the tools to work with my team and our clients.” He previously owned a liquor store in Albany, New York, and a hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana.

“When I moved to Colorado, I was looking for a business, but it was 2008, so it wasn’t a great time.” He learned about the part-time IT job at the SDM through his wife, Pallavi Parashar, DDS (ISP ’07), BDS, who had recently graduated from CU Dental and joined the faculty. She now teaches and has a private practice in Canada.

Patel said he is the first in his family to have a job like this. “My father, grandfather and great-grandfather all owned businesses, and my cousins teased me initially for doing something different, but I enjoy what I do here. I’m always hungry to learn, so I can continue to improve, not only for myself but for my family, my team and the school too.”