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| Jack Suess, VP of IT and CIO |
• The launch of the Student Administration (SA) project;
• Updating our infrastructure for email and storage;
• Deployment of our new High Performance Computing (HPC) research cluster; and
• Supporting academic continuity in preparation for concerns over the H1N1 virus.
While success is never final, all four initiatives are now in place as a foundation to build upon. We continue to work with the functional offices and Michael Busges on advancing SA to meet the needs of the campus. We updated our email and storage infrastructure and had no major events this past year, but continue to struggle with spam caused by successful “phishing” attacks that trick users into giving up their account passwords. The new HPC research cluster, initially delayed due to issues with cooling, was finally launched in the spring giving us a ten-fold improvement in HPC; and the lessons learned in supporting H1N1 were tested during the snow events this past February and are being integrated into training we provide faculty.
In addition, we began work on four additional priorities designed to improve your experience in using technology at UMBC:
• Upgrading Blackboard to version 9;
• Supporting iStrategy for financial reporting;
• Migrating to Google Apps for Education; and
• Launching myUMBC 3.0.
Blackboard 9 is the first offering since Blackboard and WebCT merged in 2006, and will serve as the basis for new innovations, including our own. UMBC has been reworking the integration with SA for course enrollments, but we are also looking at new services, such as ways to integrate the Bb grade book back into SA and improve reporting of how students, faculty and staff use Bb.
The iStrategy initiative is a partnership with Financial Services that will greatly improve financial reporting. While this will be a multi-year effort, we expect to see Financial Services release the first phase of this in the early fall by providing new tools for tracking state-support budgets. Future phases will work on integrating other fund sources such as grants and projects.
Over the summer we successfully completed a contract with Google and have migrated all new students over to Google Apps for Education. Starting this Fall, all other students will be eligible to begin moving their mail over. The switch to Google covers much more than email and we expect students to appreciate the collaborative capability of Google Documents.
The launch of myUMBC 3.0 is intended to tie all these initiatives together and provide a framework for supporting the community. We have streamlined the interface, revamped the topic pages, and built a new group interface into myUMBC that allows groups to have a shared calendar, spotlights, documents, and other resources necessary for collaboration.
For the next few years a key focus of DoIT will be responding to the IT Restructuring Report recommendations (see back cover). I’m very excited about the opportunities for collaboration this affords DoIT in working with other units and look forward to working with our Faculty Senate Computer Policy Committee and IT Steering Committee on plans and recommendations.
Lastly, let me thank the DoIT staff members who so ably did their jobs this past year. DoIT staff members are nationally recognized for their work and I’m honored to have the opportunity to lead this Division.