I&IT newsletter

Spring, 2006 Volume 3, Issue 3

In this issue...

Welcome to the Spring Quarter. We in I&IT are hard at work improving, analyzing and expanding our services to the campus. Winter was a busy quarter for us and we’re planning to stay that way through the spring quarter as well. Here’s an update of our activities, projects and plans.

EMAIL REPLACEMENT – After careful analysis, research and discussions by many technical, faculty and administrative campus representatives, IT Governance approved I&IT’s recommendation to replace the aging Intranet email application with an expanded Exchange email service. The Intranet, used by all students and about half the faculty, has reached end of life and has become painfully slow during busy times. Exchange is used by one-half the faculty and staff. The transition is starting with pilots in the colleges of Engineering and Business. Goal is to have the new email system fully functional in July of this year, in time for fall quarter’s annual rush of new students. Debra Brum, I&IT Vice President, emphasized that the Exchange solution will get us through the bumps. “Our goal is to make it easy for everyone with any email application to seamlessly send email messages and attachments,” Dr. Brum commented. To this end, I&IT has begun researching a long-term email solution. Also, the Intranet file storage system, also “long in the tooth,” will be replaced after the new Exchange service is expanded. The result will be more efficient network file storage for faculty and staff. For full details, see email replacement.

NOW WHAT WAS MY NUMBER? – Can’t remember your BroncoNumber when you try to log on to BroncoDirect? Don’t worry; you don’t need to any longer. All of us are now logging into BroncoDirect and other key services, using our BroncoName. This is an important move forward toward a single sign-on capability. The Identity Management Committee, chaired by Dr. Brum with representatives from all divisions, is hard at work in examining how to implement single sign-on for all centralized campus technology services. The BroncoName is the part of a user’s email before the @csupomona.edu. For example, in the fictional email address billybronco@csupomona.edu, the BroncoName is “billybronco.” Billybronco would be the log-on for billy using BroncoDirect, Blackboard and many other services. However, don’t forget (and certainly don’t discard) your BroncoCard. That’s still used to get into athletic events, plays, check out books at the Library and to buy food at cafeteria outlets around campus. For additional information, see bronconame.

TECHNOLOGY MARCHING FORWARD ON TWO FRONTS – The Learning Centered Technology Initiative continues fast forward on two fronts: in the classroom and in the arms of the faculty. Twenty-one classrooms – including a laboratory and a studio classroom - have been upgraded with new technology that includes a PC, Internet connection, a ceiling-mounted data projector, a document camera, DVD and VCR players, speakers and a podium with a control panel. I&IT is working on an additional 30 classrooms that should be upgraded in time for the fall, 2006, quarter. Meanwhile, more than 500 tenured and tenure-track faculty have received either Dell or Apple laptops. I&IT is beta testing the newer Dell and Macintosh models for the new faculty that will receive them in the fall. For details, see LCT.

P&R: MORE THAN A CUTE PHRASE – I&IT’s Prioritization & Recovery Committee has been busy. We have listed more than 100 services that we deliver to the campus and will evaluate all of them periodically for cost and benefit. This process has already been applied to the Interactive Voice Response system, the 24-hours lab and modem pools, which were discontinued after careful analyses. We will be looking at all of our services, categorizing them for continual service as is, a candidate for improvement (with accompanying project plans) and a possible area to eliminate. All decisions to eliminate any services will be carefully communicated to the campus community. For details, see P&R.

CONSISTENT WEB LOOK --- IT Governance recently approved a timeline and implementation of Web templates that will provide accessibility and a consistent university identity. President Mike Ortiz presented the timeline that will give our web page viewers a consistent experience, comply with web accessibility directives, allow a custom look to support different university organizations and allow for simple content editing. Additional details will be announced when they are available. For now, web developers with questions on the new templates should contact Curtis Clark, I&IT’s Director of Web Development (jcclark@csupomona.edu) or 909.979.6371. For a full text of Dr. Ortiz’ communication, see web.

INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS – On the weekend of March 25, 2006, we lost all power to the main Computer Room on campus. This knocked out most key services for more than 12 hours, with a few applications (Blackboard, for example) out for most of the weekend. I&IT and Facilities Management have discussed how to prevent this in the future. Also, I&IT is beefing up its power backup to mitigate any future electrical hits. I&IT’s crew did extraordinary work over the weekend of March 25-26 to assure that faculty, students and staff started the Spring Quarter on March 27, 2006, with all systems “go.” The crew of weekend warriors included Dave Drivdahl, Paul Henson, Gabe Kuri, Luke Lanting, Dave Lyon, Betty Wu, Pauline Salim, April McKettrick, Chris Crudo, Bill Sing and Susan Reese, who managed the recovery. I&IT realizes its mission to provide continuous service, and this incident highlighted the need to continually assess all infrastructure components, including electrical power.

CENTERED ON LEARNING – I&IT’s Learning Centered Task Force continues to work within our division and with Gil Brum’s university-wide LC Task Force on how to involve learning in everything we do. The I&IT group recently discussed how to improve classroom learning, and participated in planning for Gil’s group of what the university-wide unit wants to accomplish by fall, 2006. Also, I&IT representatives delivered presentations on learning at the CSU Teaching Symposium, where our university had the highest number of presentations for any one CSU campus. For details on I&IT’s efforts, see Learning.

AND NOW, NEWS ABOUT PEOPLE – Mauricio Calderon, interim I&IT Applications and CMS Director, has been appointed permanent director. Congratulations to Mauricio, who has performed extraordinarily in molding a key unit and working with campus functional folks on such projects as PeopleSoft and CMS. I&IT also has searches in progress for a permanent director of I&IT Systems and a new management position, Projects and Services Manager…I&IT welcomes two new administrative assistants. Martha Aguilar is the new admin for I&IT Learning. She takes over from Rita Haerr, who moved to the I&IT staff, handling telecommunications billing and cell phone distribution and procurement…Loretta Villanueva is supporting Systems and Applications on the 7th Floor of the CLA building. Both Martha and Loretta have worked for the university for several years in other divisions.

STUDENT ASSISTANT OF THE QUARTER – I&IT would like to congratulate Daniel R. Smith, who has been named our student assistant of the quarter. Daniel worked for us for 2-1/2 out of his 3 years here, first at the Help Desk then at Studio 6. Daniel led a pilot project that will result in producing interactive “help” tutorials in BroncoDirect and ehelp. Daniel graduated in March, 2006, with a degree in Business with a track of Internet programming and security. “I had a great experience at I&IT. I learned a lot about video production, web site development and design working under Karen Brzoska and the other Studio 6 staff members,” Smith says. For the interactive project, Daniel led a team in a senior project taught by Dr. Dan Manson, I&IT’s Information Security Officer. “We didn’t want to produce something that would be forgotten soon after the project ended,” Smith says. “We wanted something that the customers could see as a benefit and update themselves.” That the team did well. The team’s interactive voice and video tutorials will soon be added to BroncoDirect help pages. I&IT hopes to continue the project in ehelp with similar senior projects. As team leader, Smith’s responsibilities were assuring that tasks were completed on time and that timely communications occurred with his team’s customer, Candie McDougall, Help Desk Lead. “We wanted to make sure the customer was happy with the results,” Smith says. That she was. “It’s going to help a lot of people,” Candie says. “It will allow faculty members to see what students see when they enroll and it will let us at the Help Desk direct users to very helpful tutorials that will walk them through the process.” As for Daniel, what does the future hold for the Covina High School and Cal Poly Pomona graduate? “I want to get involved in web programming, Internet security and IT auditing.” We wish him the best and congratulate him.

I&IT Leadership

Debra Brum Interim Vice President, I&IT	dabrum@csupomona.edu 909 979-6300
Stephanie Doda Associate Vice President, I&IT	sndoda@csupomona.edu 909 979-6322
Mauricio Calderon Director, I&IT Applications and CMS Technical Director	macalderon@csupomona.edu 909 979-6388
Curtis Clark Director, I&IT Web Development	jcclark@csupomona.edu 909 979-6371
H’Sundiata Keita Director, I&IT Operations	hkeita@csupomona.edu 909 979-6427
David Levin Director, I&IT Learning	dslevin@csupomona.edu 909 979-6304
Denny Mosier Director, I&IT Support	dbmosier@csupomona.edu 909 979-6334
Susan Reese Interim Director, I&IT Systems	slreese@csupomona.edu 909 979-6344

“I&IT Newsletter” is a publication of the Instructional & Information Technology (I&IT) division of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA.

Send comments to Denny Mosier at (909) 979-6334 or dbmosier@csupomona.edu.

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