ReWorkflow

2026 Texas Slate Conference|Baylor University|October 7, 2026

The Rise of Slate Stewards

Jon Rowand

A quick show of hands

Who's in the room?

  • Admissions
  • Student Success
  • Advancement
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One more show of hands

How do you use Slate?

A hand-drawn straw hat with First-Timers written in white on a green ribbon. A hand-drawn straw hat with Front-Liners written in white on a green ribbon. A hand-drawn straw hat with Slate Captains written in white on a green ribbon. A hand-drawn straw hat with Leaders written in white on a green ribbon.

A story you may know

Into the Weeds

  • The Hero Trap
  • The Knowledge Gap
  • The Urgency Emergency
A hand-drawn dandelion with one budding flower, one open yellow flower, one white puffball and seeds floating away.

Where the word comes from

Stewardship origins

stīweard

stighousehold or dwelling

+

weardguardian or keeper

also spelled stigweard

Old English · circa 951–955

A household officer entrusted with another person’s affairs.

Sources: Bosworth-Toller, “stig-weard” · King Eadred’s will, S 1515

Where the word comes from

A long tradition of care

Caring for something on behalf of others.

1275Estate stewardship described
1988Data stewardship in EPA guidance
AdvancementCare for donor relationships
Slate todayStewardship in Practice

Sources: estate steward text, c. 1275 · EPA guidance, 1988 · Technolutions, Database Stewardship

Stewardship today

Technolutions’ Guides for Slate Stewards

60+ practices across three Knowledge Base guides

  • Learn the resources
  • Build the team
  • Govern decisions
  • Document and train
  • Shape the data model
  • Keep data clean
  • Secure access
  • Tune automations
  • Govern communications
  • Steward reader and release
  • Report and improve
  • Control change

Source: Technolutions Slate Knowledge Base
Slate Captain One-Sheet · Cycle Prep and Good Slate Stewardship · Admissions Operations and Systems Guide

Stewardship today

What stewardship adds

Drawn from ReWorkflow’s stewardship research and our work with Slate schools.

Judgment

  • Triage every request
  • Map the instance
  • Name the debt

Resilience

  • Learn from incidents
  • Assign integration owners
  • Review access regularly

Responsibility

  • Set retention rules
  • Design for every applicant
  • Protect the inbox

Habit Building

Ask three questions?

  1. Does this query really need to be saved?Probably not
  2. What can be deleted or archived?Probably a lot
  3. What needs a note?Probably everything
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Habit Building

Choose a place to start

First-Timers

Ask "why" before you configure.

Front-Liners

Share one thing that is confusing or a pain.

Slate Captains

Document one thing you'd rather not have to explain twice.

Leaders

Celebrate maintenance and protect time for upkeep.

Let's Grow Together

This Room Is Full of Slate Stewards.

Continuously improving to make systems gardening easier to share and sustain.

Seven distinct evergreen species of varied heights whose roots meet below ground and flow into a shared circuit board.

Let's Grow Together

The Words We Choose Shape Systems

The words we use do more than describe our work. They carry models of expertise, relationships, responsibility, and how work gets done. Repeated over time, those models can influence how we think, behave, and build systems together.

Keep growing

The Rise of Slate Stewards

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