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Open Letter to UF OIT Staff
From Dr. Marc Hoit
Changes and Challenges: IT Steps Up
Every way I turn I see another IT opportunity, and I am continually
impressed with all the IT employees and groups that step up and make
things happen on this campus. We have a number of activities within OIT
that are getting attention and demonstrating the benefits of this
collaboration and coordination among so many IT units.
We have launched an emergency information collection form for collecting
location and emergency contact information for students. We rolled this
out in conjunction with student pre-registration that started October
29th. Students are required to submit the information every term before
they are allowed to register. Two major pieces of information being
collected are cell phone numbers and emergency contact information. The
cell phone number is in connection with our new emergency TXT message
service. We can now send a TXT message to all students in case a critical
situation arises where notification could ensure their safety. Faculty
and staff are also encouraged to fill out the same information. It can be
accessed through MyUFL -> My Account -> Update Emergency Contact.
Everyone is automatically signed up to the emergency only TXT warning
list. The emergency notification plan for campus has very clear and
stringent requirements for deciding when to notify and is limited as to
who has the authority to approve a message.
We are researching the idea of adding the use of the UF.EDU domain. UF
has rights for both UFL.EDU and UF.EDU. Consistent with the UF branding
campaign, it would provide a more consistent university presence if we
could advertise
"go to UF.edu"
or "my e-mail is
mhoit@UF.edu."
The expectation
is that both domains would run in parallel. There are also
questions about how complete the change should be. The answer is: that
depends on the required effort, resources and technical considerations.
One possibility is that we accomplish the easy, externally-facing changes
that have the least required effort and resources while providing the most
visible change. Obviously, some of the internal systems may not need to
be changed. I have asked web admin to develop a project document that
shows the required effort, issues and solutions, required resources and
possible timelines. Please help by providing input to develop a document
that will be used to decide how to proceed. See
www.webadmin.ufl.edu/projects/domain-update/
for more information.
The UF Exchange project is speeding along. Migration to the new front end
servers is expected to happen in January. This new front end will replace
the current 2003 federated front end servers and provide the ability to
connect our new unified platform, existing federated mailboxes and new
2007 federated mailboxes. The early adopters will be moving to the new
platform also starting in mid-January. This is an exciting launch and
will offer an option to help unify campus messaging services. See
www.it.ufl.edu/UFExchange
for more information.
The Florida LambdaRail (FLR), of which UF is a board member and part
owner, is Florida's Regional Optical Networking organization (RON). FLR
provides our connection to Internet 2, National LambdaRail (NLR) and our
commodity Internet connections. FLR was recently named as the networking
provider in a partnership in the Big Bend Regional Healthcare Information
Organization as part of the FCC Rural Health Care Initiative grant. $9.6M
was granted for this project. The networking consists of a new 1 Gbps
fiber optic network which will link approximately 9 rural hospitals in 8
counties to the existing Florida LambdaRail backbone, and will extend to
community health centers and clinics through broadband wireless, improving
patient care through disease monitoring and access to specialists, and
enabling access to distance education and other existing networks.
Some good news on the funding front: the legislature has approved a new
technology fee starting in 2009 for all SUS institutions. The fee is 5%
of tuition and is expected to generate about $4M annually. The university
has a high demand for these resources. The following are a few examples
of services we cannot offer due to lack resources: 24/7 Help Desk (only
7:30AM-10PM weekdays currently), maintenance and improvement of classroom
technology (currently no recurring funding), university-wide event
calendar (to improve event notification and searching as well as improved
event security), portfolio and collaboration sites for teaching (wikis,
blogs and other modern tools for student and faculty interactions).
The plan for allocating the tech fee will be through an advisory committee
of faculty, students and technology experts who will make recommendations
on educational technology priorities. The money will be split into
recurring and onetime enhancement projects. Recurring funds could be used
to support the annual costs of existing and new learning technologies such
as ePorfolios, 24/7 Help Desk services, classroom technology support and
others once implemented. Onetime enhancement projects will be used to
develop and implement new and innovative technology to support students
and faculty in the learning environment every year. Examples could
include: new campus-wide event calendar, paperless forms and student
signup, improved IT security and more.
Finally, I have been asked frequently by faculty about getting information
on university processes that they need to do their work. Here are a few
things that will help them report on their efforts:
Did you know that all faculty evaluations are available on the Provost
website in the form needed for T&P?
See
http://www.aa.ufl.edu/aa/dass/tcheval/index.asp
.
Also, the graduate school GIMS system has a full listing of all graduate
students for each faculty member (needed for their annual reports and T&P
packets).
Go to
https://gradschool.rgp.ufl.edu/GIMS1/gatorlink/PreSiteEntry.asp and:
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Login
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Select Graduate Faculty Information
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Enter your UFID or last name
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Click name search
Finally, faculty submit forms (UCC1) to create a new course or new
program. This submission is now online for the graduate school and will
be online for all undergraduate courses soon. Submission and tracking can
be done through the website
http://approval.ufl.edu
. Submitted
requests and their status are visible under reporting.
This has been a challenging year, and I would like to thank all the IT
employees for their excellent work and dedication. Enjoy the holiday
season, and I wish for a happy new year for all.
Marc Hoit
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