• VPACT Home
• IT on Campus - overview
• Campus IT Facts
• IT Planning & Initiatives
• Campus IT Policies
• IT Decision Making

Academic technology support, which focuses on the teaching and learning initiatives of the campus, encompasses teaching initiatives in collaboration with faculty as well as infrastructure needs. Use of technology in learning spaces such as classrooms, computing labs, and information commons will continue to grow as faculty use of technology grows. A Spring 2008 campus-wide needs assessment will help us tailor academic technologies and services to faculty teaching needs.

Architecture and security initiatives maintain a strong focus on planning for and the implementation of campus-wide information technologies that support the data needs of the campus in a secure manner. In tandem with these initiatives, the IT Security Office will continue to proactively provide security tools and awareness programs, including:

• Identification of sensitive stores of data (SSN and credit cards) and working with units to appropriately secure this data.
• IT security training and awareness programs including the award-winning Security Awareness program which focuses on a wide range of pertinent topics.
• Tool selection to support campus security efforts. Tools include antivirus software, anti-spyware software, and data encryption tools especially for mobile devices.
• Continued publication of best practices.
• Deployment of network security strategies that secure the campus network while balancing the need to support cutting edge research.

Communication technologies, such as email, are at the core of effective collaboration for our campus community. Future directions potentially include the support of blogs, wikis, collaborative software, etc. Key in this decision process is the effectiveness of any proposed technology in fostering, enabling and supporting academic reliance upon these teaching and learning support tools.

Historically, the campus has provided only limited centralized support for academic research. However, this is changing as the need for centralized cyber infrastructure has become more commonplace and encompasses basic infrastructure (networking, data center services, computing cycles, etc.) in addition to specialized support for research.

Over the past several years the campus has developed sophisticated web-based portals to host many campus services. This has led to a growing demand to host most services, enabling the campus commerce spectrum of identity, security, and effective workflow.