I&IT newsletter

Winter, 2007 Volume 4, Issue 2

Welcome to the Winter, 2007, Quarter. I&IT’s staff has been very busy with major projects and initiatives. Here is our quarterly update.

PEOPLE FIRST – Every organization’s most important asset is its people. I&IT is no exception. Our people news this quarter is significant because we have added positions to strengthen our delivery of services. We have augmented our Leadership team by hiring our first, full-time Information Security Officer (ISO). Al Arboleda joins us in late January, 2007. Al was ISO at Cal State Northridge and he also is chair of the CSU-wide ISO committee. We are in the finalist phase for the search for a permanent Director of I&IT Web Development. For details, see Web. And we are moving forward with interviews for a permanent Director of I&IT Systems. We also added a new position of Data Warehouse Administrator (DWA). Diane Carter, formerly of the College of Science, is our new DWA. Diane will coordinate the university’s data warehousing efforts, working with users throughout campus. In our Applications department, we picked up Glen Shiery as an additional Data Base Administrator (DBA). Glen was a long-time DBA for Cal State Fullerton. Our Systems department hired Heath Caldwell as a Unix OS administrator. Heath’s hiring is a “coming home,” since he worked for us in Web Development while he was a student here. Our Operations department added Heather Fannin to its staff. Heather, who joins us from our telecommunications vendor, will be Classroom Technology Support Technician. Bertha Vera, our budget coordinator, retired. Her duties have been assumed by Rita Haerr. And we made a couple of shifts in administrative support. Loretta Villanueva, who supported our Applications and Systems departments, moves to the DWA unit, where she will support the Data Warehouse Administrator and three BroncoData committees. Sara Ayers moves from the vice president’s staff to support Applications and Systems.

INTRANET REPLACEMENT – Certainly at the top of our list of major projects is the Intranet replacement. In simple terms, the campus Intranet combines email, file storage, web service, identity management, authentication and authorization and supporting services. I&IT’s Intranet Replacement Project team, headed by Susan Reese, interim Director of Systems, is hard at work finalizing requirements and moving forward on several fronts. One of the first areas of new hardware is replacing the backup hardware and software. The Windows applications will get new backup hardware and software initially, followed later by new technology that will back up our Unix-driven data. Another phase of the Intranet replacement project involves replacing the mail gateways so we can fight off the spam and speed up email delivery. Speaking of email, we have assembled tips for how to manage your email. See new email management. The entire Intranet project will continue over the next 12-18 months. For more, see Intranet Replacement.

OUR TECHNOLOGY IS LEARNING CENTERED – Another important project involves upgrading technology throughout campus. We have delivered more than 600 laptops to full-time faculty members, and are currently developing a refresh cycle for the Learning Centered Technology Laptop Project. On the classroom/lab side, during the last two years our Operations department has installed instructional technology equipment in 55 classrooms and labs as part of the Learning Centered Technology Classroom project. Eventually, more than 200 classrooms, labs and studios will be equipped with the latest instructional technology gear. For details, see LCT.

PRIORITIZATION AND RECOVERY – Our P&R team, which includes leadership and staff members, has been quite active. It is this group that evaluates new position requests, including those noted above, and funding for major projects. The P&R team also has been evaluating all of I&IT’s services, classifying them into categories that include reduce cost, improve quality and discontinue, and designing assessment methods for each of our services. Representatives from this group work with the university-wide P&R team, sharing ideas and recommendations.

DOLCE MAKES AN IMPACT ON LEARNING – I&IT Learning and four faculty teams have completed the first round of the Designing Online Learning-Centered Environments (DOLCE) project that has the goal of increasing the number of online and “blended” courses. Teshia Roby, instructional designer and lead for the project, reports that her team is currently assessing the results. The group includes 14 faculty members, who started with a crash course in online teaching at a summer elearning academy. Then, in the fall, the four teams launched the blended classes. Although “blended” is defined as part traditional class attendance and part online, one economics class met live only 4 times for exams, with several online forums. Although the assessment from fall classes is incomplete, one interesting finding has emerged: in one of the experimental classes, DOLCE students received significantly higher grades overall than students who attended the same class with the same faculty member teaching in traditional format.

ITRP, ROUND 2 – The Chancellor’s Infrastructure Terminal Resources Project (ITRP) is moving into the second round. The first round saw our campus get more than $6 million worth of new data and phone wiring and new network routers and switches. The round has three phases: border firewalls and a new virtual private network (used to connect from off campus); added file servers and intrusion protection systems; and firewalls for user-created local networks. This entire round is scheduled for calendar 2007.

VISTA ON THE HORIZON – Microsoft has rolled out the first versions of Vista, its new operating system aimed to replace XP, and Office 2007. I&IT is currently evaluating all campus applications against the new OS. This project is headed by Marcy Wright, who has been working with some of the campus technicians and other I&IT staff. Vista and Office ’07 are both major changes. The “look and feel” is quite different from XP and Office 2003. Marcy is developing a full report that she will deliver this quarter. I&IT is also meeting with Academic Affairs and Organizational Development and Training with the goal of recommending a full faculty and staff training program for the new software.

GOVERNING IT – The IT Governance Committee, headed by President J. Michael Ortiz, with Dr. Debra A. Brum, I&IT Vice President, as vice chair, has been active on many fronts. One of the key projects is making web pages accessible to all so the university complies with all relevant laws. The Standards and Support sub-committee is developing password standards, while Administrative Computing is guiding the intranet replacement and PeopleSoft upgrade projects, and Web Guidance is leading the effort to ensure that Cal Poly Pomona’s web pages are accessible. The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Committee has quite a list of tasks in process: assessing the learning-centered classroom and laptop programs; assessing the success of DOLCE; and working with Academic Affairs to develop practices to ensure timely access to instructional materials for students with disabilities.

BLACKBOARD BECOMING OUR SINGLE LMS – As previously announced, WebCT, our first Learning Management System (LMS), is being phased out at the end of Spring, 2007, quarter. Blackboard will be our single LMS. For the Winter Quarter, more than 540 courses are utilizing Blackboard, by 250 teachers. This compares to only 30 WebCT courses used by 20 faculty members. In preparation for our move to Blackboard as our single LMS, I&IT is upgrading the Blackboard infrastructure and moving to version 7. The new version of Blackboard will be available for faculty to use in the spring quarter. All courses will be migrated to Blackboard 7 by the fall 2007 quarter. To request a Blackboard class, go to request.

GET THE 411 - Our Web Development department continues to make enhancements to the Bronco411 application. This new service provides information for the campus phone book, and for the People Search, which lets you find university students, faculty and staff. Employees can update their own information. For details, see Bronco411.

PEOPLESOFT UPGRADE – I&IT Applications continues to work on the PeopleSoft HCM upgrade. The upgraded system will change the look and feel of PeopleSoft and BroncoDirect as well as provide new functionality. I&IT is working with other divisions on testing data conversion, campus customization and online help tutorials. The upgrade is scheduled to be completed on March 1, 2007. I&IT developers are working hard at upgrading the nearly 180 custom programs while developers outside of I&IT are working diligently on upgrading the almost 2,000 custom queries that have been created in the five+ years since Cal Poly Pomona has been live on PeopleSoft. This is the second upgrade to the HRSA system the campus has undertaken. The first was completed in Fall 2003 when the Human Resource application was upgraded, after which the Student Administration implementation began and was completed in Fall 2004. Stay tuned for more information.

OUR STUDENT ASSISTANTS GET GOOD JOBS – I&IT augments its current 80-person permanent staff with more than 50 student assistants. Apparently their experience helps when they graduate. Just in the Help Desk area, former student assistants have landed excellent first jobs upon graduation. Maria Sanjarovskaia is an IT auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Helmut Garcia is auditing at a downtown Los Angeles insurance company. Darren Ross is an auditor for Ernst & Young. Daniel Kim is a Systems Administrator for Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co. (PAAMCO).

I&IT Leadership

Debra Brum Vice President, I&IT	dabrum@csupomona.edu 909 979-6300
Stephanie Doda Associate Vice President, I&IT	sndoda@csupomona.edu 909 979-6322
Albert Arboleda Information Security Officer	aarboleda@csupomona.edu 909 979-6449
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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This page was last updated on January 15, 2007.