State of ITS
Jan. 26, 2009 by ravishan
Many of us have heard from both Michael and John about the current state of University budget and I sure hope any questions that you all had have been answered through the opportunities we had to ask questions. Bottom line – we have problems like every one else, but the senior administration (in consultation with faculty, staff and students) is on top of things and we will all be called to make some sacrifices along the way. In the end, we should be good institutional citizens to help Wesleyan continue to be one of the premiere liberal arts institutions.
I am sure you are seeing how bad things are in the IT world – Microsoft laid off 1400 last week with plans to layoff another 3600 in a year; Intel laying off 5000; IBM 16000 and Google just 100 to name a few. In its short history, Microsoft has never done this before. In addition, I am sure you are hearing about the loss of several thousands of jobs in CT and possibly over $900 million budget shortfall in the state. These are astronomical numbers. Though a few states are not planning to trim their Higher Education budget by large numbers, some have no choice. Nevada Governor, for example, has proposed a 36% budget cut for the state’s university system!
I shared with you last week many of the budget reductions that ITS will experience in the coming years. It will be extremely hard for us to be able to do many of the things that we have always been able to do. However, we need to look at this relative to what is happening around us and use our creativity to operate at a level that benefits the institution.
I want to take this time to point out that we should be proud of the various projects that we recently completed or are continuing to work on as a way to keep our morale up and continue the hard work and creativity that we bring to the table. I have only picked a few to illustrate the point and if I have left other things, please add them through comments.
- We migrated all student email to GMail on Jan 19. With the exception of a few issues, this was planned and executed so well in such a short time.
- We completed one of the best semesters in terms of classroom support with fewest complaints.
- In collaboration with University Communications, we are producing a large number of multimedia content for the web, the most recent one is the Presidential Inauguration video.
- Wesleyan Financial System implementation is going according to schedule, which is a collaborative effort between ITS and the Finance and Administration.
- We will begin rolling out thin clients to the McNair lab and several administrative staff during Feb.
- Cardinal Technology Center will soon announce a program for home computing support (for a fee!) very similar to the Geek Squad.
- Our training program was resurrected and we had a very successful initial offering in January
- Academic Computing Services is planning Tech Teas and Google Apps Demo as a way to pro actively reach out to faculty and staff and talk about how some of these technologies can be used in teaching and learning or in other ways to introduce administrative efficiencies.
Despite the doom and gloom around us, we are continuing to do a lot of things and constantly coming up with ideas to support our users in creative ways. I want to thank you all for all the hard work you put in to make sure that we deliver excellent services to our clients.