Kent State University Information Services Quarterly Staff Newsletter

TRAIN YOUR

BRAIN:Tech Training’s Newest

Expansion is Now Open.

Inside:

Banner x86 MigrationKSU Site Search Upgrade

Meet Octavian Maianu

February / March 2015

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Letter from the Vice President

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COVER: Train Your Brain:Tech Training’s Newest ExpansionNow Open

Tech Upgrades Enables Fast &Effective Crisis Communication

Banner x86 Migration:Paving Our Way to the Cloud

KSU Site Search UpgradesUnderway

1000+ New APs Expand CampusWireless Coverage in Student Spaces

IS Kicks Off Fourth Round of Diversity Listening Project

Ed Mahon Vice President and Chief Information Officer

Instructor Thomas Mahon trains a group of students in the new dedicated training space in room 152 at the library

Cover Photo:

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• Application Services: Chris O’Daniel, eight years; Altai Otgonyin, nine years

• Business Intelligence: Becky Benya, seven years; Bethany DiLullo, seven years; Brenda Gordon, five years; David Saunier, 28 years

• Classroom Technology:  Bob Minno, 31 years

• Client Infrastructure:  Mark Meszar, three years; Ryan Miles, nine years

• Course Management:  MD Amiruzzaman, two years; Mayank Ladoia, three years; David Ranucci, two years

• Educational Technology & Service Management:  Cathy Mahrle, 22 years

• Enterprise Support & Application Services:  Linda Lewis, seven years

• Federated Desktop Support:  Gautum Gupta, six years; Jonathan Pursel, one year

• Helpdesk:  Ruth Ruggles, 21 years

• IS Communications:  Octavian Maianu, three years

• IS Operations:  Paul Sciara, 36 years

Contents Staff NewsAnniversaries

Congratulations to the following Information Services employees who mark a service anniversary at Kent State in August, September, October and November:

• IS Server Support:  Carrie Shaffer, three years

• IT Infrastructure Services & Support:  David Veits, three years; Jason Wearley, four years

• Network Services:  Brad Shaffer, three years

• Project Management:  Stacy Lease, three years; Barbara McClintick, one year; Jonathan Prenosil, four years

• Security Access Management: Eric Bollinger, 16 years; Ali Kapucu, three years; Brendan Walsh, seven years

• Telecommunications: Andy Molls, two years; Matthew Nameth, two years; Jon Wagner, three years

• VP IS: Tim Pagliari, four years; Lisa Thomas, five years

• Web Presence:   Tom Burdick, two years; Tristan Cuevas, three years

Other Notable Mentions

Congratulations to our newest staff members: • Octavian Maianu, Director IS Communications; • Cyndi Patton, Accountant; • Ward Souders, Sr IT User Support Analyst;

Congratulations Jona Burton, Manager Information Technology; Ron Dear, Sr Applications Support Analyst; Jackie Jimison, Marketing Coordinator; Tom Mahon, Manager Information Technology and Jim Raber, Team Leader IS on their recent promotions.

Insights page 3

Starting earlier and with an expansive new course list, Train Your Brain is kicking off Spring with a bang. Following the whirlwind Fall program, the Spring schedule features a number of added features catering to faculty and students alike.

Train Your Brain:Tech Training’s Newest Expansion Now Open

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New for FacultyPartnerships with campus groups have ensured that faculty offerings continue to hone in on faculty needs. The Train Your Brain team has collaborated with the Blackboard Learn, Center for Teaching and Learning (formerly known as the Faculty and Professional Development Center), and Qualtrics groups to include an additional 10 topics to the Spring schedule. The Spring also marks the first time training is offered in the first week of the semester. “We’ve added several faculty courses covering the utilization of classroom tools like Blackboard Learn and Qualtrics, and many of the faculty members we spoke with indicated that these skills are needed early on as opposed to mid- or late-semester,” explains Tom Mahon, Manager of Training and Outreach, “It just made sense to move the timetable up a few weeks.”

New for StudentsLast semester’s addition of dedicated training space opened up a lot of options for tweaking the components of the training program. “We’re establishing Library 152 as Information Services’ central location for distribution of tech training and knowledge,“ explains Jay Frye, Director of Service Management, “but we don’t want that to be a static exchange. What better way to engage attendees in their own training than to supplement our workshops with walk-in tech help?”

One of the Spring’s most substantial modifications is the implementation of Walk-In Wednesdays, a full day each week devoted to 1-on-1 assistance with any tech question that may arise. Initially introduced during Fall finals week, the pilot assisted over 47 people within a seven day period.

Insights page 5

Train Your Brain: “Students really seemed to appreciate that they were able to come to one place for help with both a cracked laptop screen and Microsoft Office,” describes Ron Dear, Senior Applications Support Analyst, “We were able to get them in, troubleshoot their question, and quickly get them back to their studies without causing any additional hassle or stress during finals.”

The general course list has been reworked, too. Because of the overwhelming interest in courses focused on the Adobe products - like Photoshop, Indesign, and Illustrator - an entirely new set of Adobe workshops has been developed. This new line of workshops also introduces the idea of BYOT - Bring Your Own Device - to the Train Your Brain series. “Photoshop and Indesign are very popular tools in the campus community; however, the complexity of the programs makes the hands-on components of the training courses essential.” explains Mahon, “Because we currently have a limited number of laptops available in the training center, integrating the concept of BYOT into our curriculum will greatly increase the number of students we can accept into our hands-on workshops.”

The Spring Tech Training series will run from January 12 through April 23. For workshop descriptions, dates, and registration, visit training.kent.edu.

Questions regarding the workshops or walk-in times can be directed to Tom Mahon at tmahon@kent.edu.

The ebola crisis in October 2014 was one of the first opportunities for the campus community to witness Kent State University’s crisis management plan. Designed by Information Services in collaboration with the Kent State Crisis Management team, the plan utilizes quick response call centers to fight misinformation. The call centers provide media, as well as concerned family and community members, a reliable place to receive updated information from a human operator. “The goal was to establish emergency communications swiftly and from anywhere - the ability to assemble a communications center anywhere, on- or off-campus,” explains Andy Molls, Network Design Architect, “and because of the combined efforts of Information Services’ Network and Telecom staff, we were able to achieve that goal with the initial roll out.”

The TechThe new emergency hotlines are a major upgrade from the previous system, all made possible by Information Services’ recently completed Unified Communications project. The features of Unified Communications - a campus-wide system that connects all phone, email, and chat software - enable select campus phones to be activated into a hotline extension in the case of an emergency. With unified communications, setting up a call center hotline is only a matter of minutes, a drastic improvement over the previous method -identifying appropriate phone hardware, locations, and creating a hookup - which could take up to several hours.

The FutureThe swiftness of the crisis response in no way diminished its effectiveness: On the first day of the ebola announcement, the emergency call center fielded more than 400 calls over the course of eight hours.

Tech Upgrades Enables Fast & Effective Crisis Communication

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New for Faculty

With the hardware upgrade, Banner has moved to a server containing compute, storage, and networking all in one consolidated device, as opposed to drawing those components from multiple devices. Additionally, the team migrated several applications supporting Banner to the x86 server, consolidating the Banner environment to one device. “x86 is simply a server configuration that has more horsepower and storage than we’ve previously had access to,” describes Andrea Nunley, Senior Director of Enterprise Application Services, “That means any applications hosted on x86 will be faster and can play nicely with the cloud.”

Because x86 is configured to work well with the cloud, the migration has made Banner more powerful - indefinitely. “The x86 move gave us more storage and computing power to dedicate to Banner immediately, plus we are now able to leverage elements of the cloud that weren’t available to us before,” says Nunley. And that means Information Services can meet growing performance demands with ease.

New for Students

Information Services has big changes in store for Banner in 2015, focusing specifically on the user-interface design. The first phase will focus on various student self-service functions. In March, the team will roll out a module that builds a profile page in Banner for students and faculty. This module will be followed in May by a major upgrade to the Course Registration module providing an improved user-interface for students registering for Summer and Fall 2015 courses. “These new pages will have a more modern look and feel and have been extensively tested for usability improvements,” explains Nunley, “Since all students use these pages to register for classes, we’re very excited to have a new option for them.”

For more information about Banner or the x86 migration, contact Andrea Nunley, Senior Director of Enterprise Application Services, at anunley@kent.edu.

Insights page 7

Tech Upgrades Enables Fast & Effective Crisis Communication

In January, Information Services celebrated the completion of a major project to migrate Banner to the x86 platform. With an investment of more than 3000 hours, the project’s success is a result of the cross-division partnership of the server support, storage, security, network, operations, applications development, database, and business intelligence teams.

Banner, commonly referred to as “the backbone of Kent State”, is a software application that powers many of the various functions of the University, such as course scheduling, financial aid, human resources, etc., and is also the main repository of information on students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Because of the high usage of Banner across the University, reliable and fast performance is a must. In order to ensure a high quality experience for Banner users, the project team recently completed a major migration of Banner from its previous server hardware. Banner is now housed on the x86 platform - the market standard - which provides faster processing speeds and paves the way for future expansion into the cloud.

Banner x86 Migration:Paving Our Way to the Cloud

Navigating a large-scale website, such as the Kent State University site, requires multiple methods of finding relevant information. While a robust site organization and visual design is integral to easing the user experience, an effective search function is a necessity for those users who are unsure of where to start. Information Services has instituted the Google Search Appliance as Kent State University’s principal search engine since 2010. A physical device mounted in our server racks, the Google Search Appliance provides indexing for the Kent State University website, allowing for a “Google aSearch” style interface and experience for users. The Google Search Appliance is also one of the leaders in the field of Enterprise Search, topping Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant report for Enterprise Search. The simplicity of the installation and maintenance of the appliance, as well as its functionality, have long made Google a major contender in the field and the first choice for Kent State.

Upgrading the HardwareWith every license renewal, Information Services receives brand new, state-of-the-art hardware. “Our search function gets upgraded every two years with the latest and greatest server appliance available,” describes Sameer Jaleel, Director of Web Presence, “We replace the old appliance with the new one and upgrade the software to the latest version - all without any service interruption or lag to the end user.”

Smoothing the Search ExperienceWhile Information Services just wrapped up the Google Search Appliance hardware upgrade, a new project is already in the works to bring vast improvements to the search experience on www.kent.edu. One of the major goals of the project is to enable new features on the appliance that will deliver additional search options, allowing users to fine tune their search criteria. “Users will be able to look up places, people, and courses and course road maps right from the www.kent.edu search interface,” explains Jaleel, “We want the Kent site search experience to feel smooth and familiar - users are accustomed to the Google search experience, and that’s what we’re looking to emulate, but with Kent-specific results.”

For more information about Google Search Appliance, contact Sameer Jaleel, Director of Web Presence, at sjaleel1@kent.edu.

KSU Site Search Upgrades Underway

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The UpgradesWith an average of 26,400 wireless devices on the campus network at any one time - in comparison with fewer than 10 devices in a standard single family home - maintaining a high quality internet experience is an ongoing effort. One of the most recently completed upgrades is the replacement of 900 wireless access points in campus residence halls and the addition of over 100 new access points in the Library and Student Center, where students frequently congregate and spend time. These new access points - network devicesthat connect wireless devices to the wired network for internet access - provide faster internet speeds of up to 1.3 Gbps and increase the number of devices that can be supported on the network by more than 15%. “As new technology becomes available, we have more tools at our disposal to address the feedback we get from students,” explains Matthew Williams, IT Manager, “The new APs support the newest wireless networking standard, commonly referred to as “Gigabit WiFi”, and we have more updates in the works.”

In addition to hardware upgrades, Information Services has implemented programs dedicated to increased monitoring, testing, and support of the campus network. For more information on these programs and/or campus network upgrades, contact Andy Molls, Network Design Architect at amolls2@kent.edu. Insights page 9

KSU Site Search Upgrades Underway

Over the past few years, Information Services has implemented several programs to address campus network speeds, focusing especially on after-hours speeds in high-traffic spaces like residence halls, the Student Center, and the Library. “For the duration of the semester, Kent is “home” for our students, and they look for the same high speed internet that they have when they’re on break,” describes Andy Molls, Network Design Architect, “In order to match that experience on campus with the type of traffic we’re seeing on the network, we’re investing in both monitoring and support, and upgrading network hardware whenever we have the chance.”

1000+ New APs Expand Campus Wireless Coverage in Student Spaces

This year, 48 Information Services employees are participating in the Listening Project, more than ever before. Brought to Kent State by Dr. Alfreda Brown, VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Listening Project was implemented by IS in 2012 to help encourage understanding and appreciation between employees with differences.

Nearly everyone in the division has participated in the Listening Project with the start of our 2015 session -a total of 157 employees to date!

How It WorksStaff members from different backgrounds are paired together to explore diversity-related topics and issues generally avoided in the workplace. Dialogues are loosely guided by questions provided by DEI and begin with surface-level issues that gradually become deeper as the program progresses.

“Being involved in the IS Listening Project gave me an opportunity to openly and honestly discuss sensitive issues with my colleagues,” David Veits, Senior Applications Support Analyst, explains. “Our discussions fostered trust and provided a valuable opportunity for personal growth.”

Many Information Services staff also volunteer as coaches for participant groups. They facilitate discussions for quarterly cluster meetings, bring staff together into larger groups to speak about their experiences, and use current events and other media to present differing points of view with one another. In addition, coaches serve as a resource and mentor to group members.

Moving ForwardInformation Services celebrated staff and coach involvement in late 2014 with a closing luncheon hosted by Ed Mahon, CIO and VP of Information Services, and Dr. Alfreda Brown. Dr. Mahon and Dr. Brown spoke about their division’s progress and presented participants with certificates and coaches with gifts to thank them for their involvement. Each group also shared their thoughts and optimism regarding the Listening Project’s future in the KSU community.

Many employees expressed that the experience not only changed how they view differences, but helped them get to know others in Information Services they wouldn’t normally see or work with. Several members have even volunteered to coach after participating last year.

“I am looking forward to my continued participation as a coach,” says Jim Taylor, Lead Support AV Specialist. “Our experiences have been insightful and candid, and our discussions have been meaningful and relevant.”

We’re looking forward to hearing what the new round of participants gained out of their experiences. To find out more about the Listening Project, contact Kathleen Banas at kbanas@kent.edu.

IS Kicks Off Fourth Round of Diversity Listening Project

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