While students are, by and large, home with family, and faculty are finishing up grading, focusing on research, and prepping for winter term, ITS raises the priority level of things that require more time, planning, and sometimes service interruption than is often available during a term. Here are some of the things we did over winter break:
Fifteen rooms saw significant equipment replacements, moving from bulb-based projectors to laser projectors (and for techies: we moved from AMX to Crestron for our control system). We also made a process change to send technical people to check classrooms more frequently.
A new OnBase student vehicle citation system was put into production. Basically, it lets the security officers access information about registered vehicles from wherever they are, such as one of the campus parking lots. This streamlines the communication between Security, students, and the Business Office, removing a number of slow, manual steps.
The Web Services Group teed up seven websites for January launch in WordPress and brought a new employee on board, Matt Buresh (introduced elsewhere in this ITS Update).
Twenty new WiFi access points (APs) were added. Usage data from the wireless system (Aruba AirWave) was used to determine the most effective locations for these APs to improve coverage. We also started upgrading the software that runs the wireless network to the latest version (version 8) as part of our ongoing effort to improve WiFi speeds and eliminate coverage gaps.
The academic technologists participated in various conferences, hosted training sessions, and were involved with a number of the LTC-sponsored sessions, including the Effective and Efficient Feedback Winter Workshop.
24 new VoIP phones were delivered to faculty and staff in the sciences. VoIP stands for “Voice over IP” and uses the computer network for phone and voicemail instead of dedicated phone lines and equipment. This will result in significant cost savings in the Science Complex by running one set of wires instead of two.