Faculty

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TO: Boulder Campus Teaching Faculty, Deans, Directors, Dept Chairs

FROM: Office of Information Technology

SENDER: Deborah Keyek-Franssen, Ph.D., Director of Academic Technology

DATE: August 12, 2011

SUBJECT: i>clicker Technology Updated; Pick up Your New Base Station

The Office of Information Technology (formerly ITS) recently updated i>clicker technology in Boulder campus classrooms to provide the latest i>clicker technology and avoid the registration issues that were experienced at the beginning of the spring 2011 semester.

University, government laboratory and industry users of high performance computing (HPC) will gather at the Colorado School of Mines, September 23-24, to discuss HPC education and connecting institutions and users who rely on HPC.

OIT is conducting emergency maintenance tonight to restore uninterruptible power to the data center in the Computing Center on the east campus. The Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) device that serves the data center requires emergency maintenance. The data center houses the equipment powering many services for the campus. We will bring these services down tonight, Friday, August 26 at 8 p.m. and are anticipated to be restored 8:00 a.m., Saturday morning, August 27.

A little over a year ago our campus created a new position to provide leadership and coordination for research computing activities in support of CU-Boulder becoming a national leader in the area of research computing.  As the new school year begins, our campus has a fully engaged research computing group led by Director of Research Computing, Thomas Hauser.

Migrations from CULink to the all-new campus Microsoft Exchange service have been progressing steadily and now approximately one-third of all faculty, staff and retiree accounts are on Exchange. Exchange is provided to all Boulder campus faculty, staff and retirees (and student employees upon request) as a common-good service, meaning there is no direct cost to you or your department.

With the advent of our new learning management system, Desire2Learn (D2L), University of Colorado Boulder faculty have options for their fall semester online learning environment. CULearn is still available through myCUinfo; however, an enthusiastic transition to our new online learning environment, Desire2Learn, continues.

CULearn remains the default selection for this semester; however, both systems are available for use. Since faculty can choose which system to use, students may see courses in either or both systems.

Resources are available:

On August 1, the Procurement Service Center (PSC) rolled out the new system-wide online shopping, purchasing and payment portal. The CU Marketplace will simplify and streamline how departments procure everything from office supplies and scientific equipment, to computers and peripherals. More information about the CU Marketplace is available in the July 25 edition of the PSC newsletter located at https://www.cu.edu/psc/newsletter/psc_com2011_07-25-11.pdf.

Apple’s newest operating system, Mac OS 10.7 (Lion), is now available for download at no cost via the campus’s Apple Education Licensing Program (AELP) at http://oit.colorado.edu/aelp/lion; however, users are cautioned against upgrading due to incompatibilities with a number of critical campus services. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) recommends waiting to upgrade until commonly used applications are supported and compatible. In the meantime Lion has been made available with the intent to allow for testing and development work related to Lion.

OIT is currently testing the newly released Macintosh operating system, OS 10.7 (Lion), with the goal of making the OS available at no cost as soon as possible via the campus Apple Education Licensing Program. At this time we don’t recommend upgrading to Macintosh OS 10.7 until software compatibility issues are understood. Our goal is to complete testing and make Macintosh OS 10.7 available by late next week so that those people who wish to upgrade can do so with the understanding of the support issues.

The campus has been targeted by a malicious e-mail that appears to be an attempt to gain usernames and passwords. Individuals who received an e-mail with the subject line "CULink Centre Request-Internet Support Verify Information (KMM1H4H85FD657L0KMM)" should simply delete the message.