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Campus IT ReviewUniversity of Wisconsin-River Falls Information Technology DepartmentIT Staffing & OrganizationInformation technology support services on the UW-River Falls campus are currently organized into two primary groups. The Information Technology Services (ITS) department provides IT support for the main campus while the Student Services IT group/FredNet group provides IT support for the Student Services administrative offices and the residence hall students. Beyond these two primary support areas, several administrative and academic departments have staff within their areas that provide exclusive support for their area. These include: Application Integration, Library Automation, Career Services, Facilities Management and Educational Technology. The ITS department is directed by the campus’ Chief Information Officer/Director of Information Technology Services. Currently, there are 25 full-time technical staff within ITS and 1.5 FTE of Program Assistants. The CIO reports to the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance. Both ITS and Student Services IT/FredNet substantially utilize student workers to augment their workforce. Network EnvironmentThe campus network is Ethernet based utilizing single-mode and multi-mode fiber optic cabling between all central campus buildings enabling LAN speeds of up to 1-Gigabit of bandwidth. All offices and classrooms have hard-wired network connections. Residence hall rooms are all hard-wired with a “port per pillow” deployment in the nine double loaded corridor buildings. In the newly constructed South Fork Suites, there are approximately three ports per pillow when you combine the two ports per bedroom, one port in the living room, and one in the kitchen. In addition, there are floor lounges, etc. with access capability. Currently, wireless access technology is just beginning to be pilot tested on campus with an aggressive roll-out over the next several years being anticipated. The network backbone equipment is primarily based upon Cisco switches with a Cisco 6509 Core. Internet connectivity is currently obtained via a membership to the WiscNet consortium through a connection capable of OC3 speeds. It is anticipated that the campus will also be required to connect to the in-process-of-being-developed BadgerNet Converged Network that is being constructed by the Wisconsin Department of Administration and SBC (primarily). Desktop EnvironmentAll faculty and those staff considered knowledge workers have desktop computers assigned to them that are replaced on a 5-year cycle. Within Student Services and Programs, there is a four year replacement cycle. There are approximately 1100 desktop computers in use by employees and student employees. Seventy-five percent of these are Windows based and 25% are Macintosh based. All have high-speed network access. Computer Lab EnvironmentThe campus sports 40 computer labs containing 649 computers for general student use and classroom instruction. Additionally, we have 51 technology enhanced classrooms with computers, projects, network access, document cameras, etc. available to faculty for instructional purposes. Applications EnvironmentThe primary application supported by the central ITS department is the eSIS student information system based on Oracle/PeopleSoft ERP software. The eSIS application is resident on the UW-River Falls campus. Additionally, the UW System provides access to a centralized financials ERP based on PeopleSoft and located in Madison with plans to implement a centralized HR/Payroll ERP based on Lawson ERP software which will also be located in Madison. ITS also supports the underlying applications that the University relies upon
daily, including: file and print services (for staff and student storage and
management of documents), Web (internal and external publication of information),
Directory (LDAP) account management and phone book, Email and Calendar, Database
(includes a host of databases which are used for helpdesk management, parking,
a variety of student information databases for Admissions, Alumni and others,
etc. Refer to the comprehensive list from Appendix A of “The State of
Information Technology Services 2005.” STUDENT SERVICES & PROGRAMS - Information TechnologyStudent Services IT/FredNet is supervised by a manager and contains 5 technical staff, (including the manager), and one program assistant. The Student Services IT Manager reports to the Executive Director of Student Services and Programs, who, in turn, reports to the Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance. The division of Student Services & Programs encompasses the auxiliary services of student life programming, dining services, residential living, conference services, involvement center, student life facilities, budgets, contracts, day care, intramurals, field house and ice arena. There is also additional support of contractors such as the bookstore, food service operations, vending, laundry and the Kansas City Chiefs summer camp. The Information Technology department within Student Services & Programs is responsible for supporting all of the technology needs of these areas. This is accomplished with resources that are allocated to supporting the administration as well as the end customer who may be a student living on campus, a student living off campus, faculty or staff. The direction of this department is to have a tight control over the needs and services provided to the division; it is intently focused on empowering the division to do their jobs in the most effective manner at a reasonable cost to the operation. A majority of the funding for this IT operation comes from user fees and revenue generated within the dining, housing and student center operations. The Student Services & Programs – Information Technology (SS&P-IT) department is split into two distinct areas and several blended areas. The FredNet Services sub-department supports the campus ResNet and the technological support of the administrative components of the division. The Information Systems sub-department supports the software development and maintenance needs of the division in all areas. Both areas are supervised by the Student Services & Programs Information Technology Manager. FredNet ServicesFredNet Services (a morph of the mascot Freddy Falcon and ResNet) is based out of the basement of the East Hathorn Residence Hall and is primarily tasked to support the 2,450 students living on campus. FredNet Services provides 100 Mb Ethernet service to each student, television service offering 30 channels including a movie channel managed by the department, and telephone services. Students are also able to access the student file server for centralized storage, as well as access to the course directory structure that faculty may provide. FredNet Services also provides technical assistance with computers, telephones and television equipment that is owned by the student through an in-room support arrangement. Troubleshooting, virus disinfection and recovery services are all provided to the student living on campus at no additional charge above and beyond the room rate. For those students that do not have their own computer, FredNet Services provides four to six computers and a printer in each Residence Hall. These computers provide the students with Internet access and access to Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point. Students are also able to access the student file server for centralized storage, as well as access to the course directory structure that faculty may provide. In addition to providing these services above and beyond the campus support structure, FredNet Services assists the students with campus wide applications as well. FredNet Services is the front line support for e-mail, web, student file storage and electronic online course learning through Desire2Learn. FredNet Services works with ITS on behalf of the student to resolve issues that need to be resolved by that department. The vast majority of the support to the on-campus students is done using student employees. The use of student employees is essential in accomplishing all of these tasks. Due to the financial support of the Residential Living budget for FredNet’s operations, the value-added support that FredNet Services provides does not extend to those students living off campus. Students living off campus receive their support from Information Technology Services exclusively. When students move off campus, they continue to request services from FredNet Services; however, their requests must be declined. In addition to supporting the students directly, FredNet Services supports approximately 400 student, paraprofessional, and professional staff members in the division. Desktop computer and telecommunications support is provided to each of these staff members. The core administrative support is the Student Center based staff, with additional support in 13 other buildings campus-wide. Information SystemsThe Information Systems (IS) group is engineered to directly support the software and web development needs of the department. They are responsible not only for developing in-house software to meet our needs, but are essential in integrating third-party applications that are necessary to support the needs of our customers. The IS group is responsible for supporting our enterprise management system, Supermarket. Supermarket encompasses mostly Residential Living and Dining Services; however, it also encompasses bits and pieces of the division to integrate more seamlessly (such as the Card Office and door access). The use of third-party applications is employed when a specific area of expertise is needed and the third party can do it better or less expensively. Currently this is used for our door access, campus card production and point of sale support, as well as in our Child Center management. The Information Systems group works with these various systems to maintain them and provide a high level of functionality and service to the student customers. To be able to accomplish their integration with the campus, the SS&P Information Systems group works closely with the ITS Information Systems group on the eSIS project. Demographic and financial data is interchanged in both directions. Behind the Scenes SupportThe behind the scenes support of all of these areas is essential to the operation. Student Services & Programs – Information Technology works closely with the ITS Network Services team to manage the campus network and server infrastructure. Student Services & Programs attempts to not duplicate services whenever possible by having a financial and working relationship that is very strong. This bond between the staff has benefited both ITS and SS&P-IT in reducing costs and helping to eliminate duplicated systems that may occur on other campuses without this working relationship. An additional area that has cross over is in the telecommunications infrastructure.
Student Services & Programs – Information Technology funds a portion
of the staff component in the ITS Electronic Repair team for the purpose of
assisting in maintaining the telecommunications infrastructure in the SS&P
buildings. SS&P-IT works with ITS Electronic Repair to have phone lines
and equipment maintained, data communications cabling installed and other services
through out the year. This partnership enables SS&P-IT to provide a higher
level of service without duplicating staff that are already supporting this
function on a campus wide basis. Desire 2 Learn (D2L) – www.uwrf.edu/desire2learn/students/welcome.php TLC – www.uwrf.edu/tlc/ LibraryThe Library is a large consumer of and depends heavily on IT services. IT manages the library’s open computer labs on the main floor and in the library instruction lab on the upper level of the library. IT manages the library Voyager servers that run the library system including public catalog and several staff modules. It also assists with managing the proxy server that allows off-campus access to the many library electronic resources. Other Departmental SystemsIn addition to the areas listed above, various other administrative and academic departments have special-purpose information systems that they have acquired or written to support their specific area. These include Career Services, Facilities Management, LDAP (IT Services), Recruitment Plus (Enrollment Services), Donor 2 (Alumni/Foundation), Fundware (Alumni/Foundation), CaseIT Biology custom tool (Mark Bergland), Broker (Ag. Economics), Outreach (PeopleWare), Accounting (Perkins Loan – ECSI), Ad Astra classroom scheduling system (Enrollment Services), PowerPark parking ticket system (Parking), Footprints task management system (ITS/Student Services IT) and Decision Support Systems (CBE).
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