Ravi Blogs about IT Topics

The Post Office and the Cardinal Technology Store moved to Usdan Center in mid-August. The frosh arrived on Aug 28 and the classes began approximately a week ago. We rolled out Cisco Clean Access that checks the student computers for network compliance (correct level of OS, virus free, no other vulnerabilities). The first pre-registration and drop/add after the PeopleSoft upgrade was run. And things such as these that used to stress us out big time a couple of years ago are being handled routinely because of excellent planning and collaboration…. It indeed was a great start… and let us hope that this continues through the semester.

I want to Thank all of ITS for working hard to make all of these possible.

We also worked with president Roth and Justin’s group to roll out his blog in record time. Coincidentally, during the same week we had scheduled the discussion of amending our usage policies with additional ones to cover the new Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis. The Senior Staff discussion on this went on for 30 minutes instead of the scheduled 15 minutes and I came out even more appreciative of president Roth and his grasp of some the new technologies and issues surrounding them.

As I was preparing the presentation to president Roth in late August, it became apparent as to how much we do and how well we do. We should really be proud… I wish someone comes up with a measure that captures the impact that ITS makes on the lives of our faculty, staff and students that goes beyond the traditional “numbers” – how many computers do we support, how well did we manage the PeopleSoft upgrade financially etc. Whereas these are important, they do not capture the quality of service that we offer. We will come out way ahead of several of our peers in this measure.

I attended the senior administrative staff meeting yesterday morning, the faculty meeting and a social for new faculty and administrators in the evening. I heard a lot of good things from the faculty about the things we have done for them and what we are currently engaged in. Interestingly, Michael Roth mentioned how “the performance review in Electronic Portfolio will start blowing smoke” (in reference to how Michael Whaley is filling in two positions, one reporting to the other, so he will be writing his own performance review).

We are beginning discussions on the new financial system. This is going to be a really major undertaking for us during the next few years and we are going to have to seriously start planning resource allocations. This will require some restructuring of what our administrative systems staff do. Nate Peters, Ed Below, and Steve will lead the planning efforts and our initial plan is to look at PeopleSoft, Banner and Kuali as the contenders for the new financial system. We begin the initial phase with a long meeting with Oracle this morning…

This Friday, we will begin reviewing the applications for the Director of Academic Computing position and begin the process of shortlisting and scheduling interviews. We also have the position for a Junior Network Specialist position posted (which is a replacement position for Dave Warner’s position, but at a junior level). These searches will keep many of us busy for some time.

And, in the event you have not heard, we will cut over to Exchange server for mail and calendar for all Meeting Maker users during the Oct 13-17 time frame. Things are going really well on that front and I am really proud of all our staff who have been involved in this transition which is a major effort and extremely well executed.

Joanne will be leaving us as of Dec ‘07. This will have a major impact on ITS and I have to start planning for the time after Joanne leaves. When it is clear in my mind how we want to proceed, I will consult with the concerned staff and then share the plan with you all. I intend to do this shortly.

Yes, it has been a tremendously busy summer, followed by a great Fall semester start, but as always, we have many more challenges ahead of us. I am sure that collectively we will take them head on and solve them and move on…