Upcoming Events
April 3: All-day Network Outage
The Network Infrastructure team will be working with MOREnet, upgrading the core campus network on Saturday, April 3rd starting at 7:00am. The work is expected to last the entire day. All network services, including Wifi and Ethernet will not be accessible.
These upgrades to the Intercampus Network (ICN) are required and provides I1 and I2 internet access to all UM campuses.
Introducing Interim CIO Brandon Hough
Brandon Hough is the Executive Director of IT Support & Connectivity at MU. He will concurrently serve as the interim S&T CIO until a permanent CIO is in place mid-year. With over 30 years of experience in IT support and information security, he has extensive knowledge of the components necessary to make technology run smoothly. During his tenure, Brandon has created and grown a number of teams and support structures-including IT support for Residence Halls, Computing Site Management, IT Security and Account Management, and Distributed IT Support.
His current teams provide support for faculty, staff, and students ranging from the help desk, account management and hands-on IT support interactions to in-depth research and application support. In addition, Brandon directs teams that provide IT infrastructure including the data center, telecommunications, structured cabling, outside plan and network services.
Service Updates
Email Migration to Microsoft 365 – An email was sent on Tuesday, March 2, to all faculty and staff on every campus within the System to say “thank you” and announce the migration of 40,000 mailboxes to Microsoft 365 is finished. The message also provided a reminder that UM System IT will continue efforts to implement additional measures to ensure email and UM System sensitive information remain safe.
Upgrading to Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (Office) – Recently, 98% of all Windows computers on the S&T Campus had their Windows 10 operating systems updated and had the Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise upgrade applied. Computers that were unable to receive the updates have been removed from the network domain for security reasons. If you have a campus computer that is not working as expected, please contact the Help Desk to schedule a time to get it updated and re-registered on the network.
IT and Higher Education Administration
In an August 2020 roundtable report from The Chronicle of Higher Education titled The Student-Centered College – a CIO Perspective, the S&T IT experience is comparable to the struggles, challenges, and opportunities experienced by the CIOs that participated in the roundtable. During 2020, the S&T IT Department made some significant adjustments to not only compensate for budget reductions, but also to address the rapid changes needed to support our campus during such a challenging time.
A few ways that S&T IT adjusted that were similar to the CIOs and technology teams represented in the article include –
– Loaning out technology equipment that students, faculty and staff needed in order to quickly adjust and be productive in a remote work setting (Kellen, pg 10). The equipment loaning process is something that will continue for the foreseeable future as we want to continue to ensure the success of the S&T campus.
-Improve communication efforts (Kellen & Heath, pg 8) to better inform campus of technology changes, and provide more opportunities to share information with the use of all available platforms – mass email, blog, existing campus communication processes (eConnection, eAddition, and text alerts), continually updating the it.mst.edu website, and by also starting this monthly newsletter.
– Running two virtual private network (VPN) tools in tandem for six months ensured that sufficient VPN capability was provided when any aspect of campus tools and resources were needed in a remote setting while also providing ample time for the IT department to adjust to the more fiscally sound VPN tool for the future (McIntosh, pg 8).
– Continuing to assist and support the UM systemwide focus on email and data security to ensure compliance with Presidential mandates (McIntosh, pg 12).
– Assessing changes made in 2020 while looking for more opportunities to improve will help us to further the idea of “reinvention” into the future (Heath, pg 15).