• Vision and Passion
• Mission
• Strategic Plan
• Annual Goals
• Annual Report
• Message from the CIO
• UTS Leadership
• Core Competencies

Our Vision and Passion

We Make IT Possible

Our Mission

University Technology Services provides technically current, adequate, responsive, reliable and service-oriented information technology resources to the students, faculty, and staff who rely on, trust and use those resources.  University Technology Services implements solutions that are innovative, integrative and supportive to evolving university goals, demands and expectations. We provide information technology resources to enhance, support and foster teaching, learning, research, administration, service, communications, and outreach.

We accomplish our mission by:

• Seeking input from all constituents and advisory groups through an inclusive governance structure.
• Providing state-of-the-art, accessible, high-performance networks, systems and applications that are evolving to next-generation solutions.
• Providing expertise in the requirements development, selection, adoption and use of information technology resources, systems, architectures and standards.
• Building and maintaining a technical infrastructure that emphasizes innovation, agility, technical currency, best practices, adequate capacity, and appropriate tools and techniques.
• Maintaining a trustworthy environment by emphasizing security, recovery, availability, reliability,  and risk management.
• Preparing for the future by emphasizing scalable and flexible systems and networks.
• Seeking efficiency and sound financial stewardship through consolidation, virtualization, cloud resources, right-sourcing, and life-cycle planning.
• Creating and maintaining partnerships for the implementation of new and enhanced technologies and services.
• Maintaining a high-quality, technically skilled, trustworthy, client-focused, enthusiastic, flexible and diverse information technology organization and culture that provides professional fulfillment, development and growth for its employees and opportunities for student employees.
• Supporting Oakland University values, goals, strategic initiatives, policies, and procedures and demonstrating a strong awareness of the community and organization.
  

Strategic Plan

The Strategic Plan for University Technology Services for the period July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2013:

1. Provide a high-performance network characterized by:
   1. Support from the Senate Academic Computing Committee linking network quality of service with educational and research missions.
   2. Ubiquitous network access, with redundant core, distribution and outside plant for reliability.
   3. A data network migration path to 10/100/1000 (Gigabit network).
   4. Implementation of convergence for voice, data, video and specialty networks, tracking to a long-term goal of replacing the legacy voice network with an IP-PBX.
   5. Reliability, resourcefulness, relevance, readiness, and responsibility.
2. Support robust learning communities, environments and systems by promoting, implementing and maintaining systems that are or include: 
   1. Highly functional, web-based, accessible, mobile and secure environments.
   2. Course management, learning management, and other educational systems.
   3. Library and information literacy support systems.
   4. Collaborative learning environments, file storage, and other related systems.
   5. Communication and community information environments.
   6. Content systems (text, images, music, art, video etc.) for use in teaching and learning.
   7. Portal environment connections to online services (SAIL, Moodle, OakShare, etc.).
   8. Virtual environments (virtual labs for student research, learning, and other educational needs).
   9. Comprehensive and consistent experiences for all university locations.
   10. Comprehensive content delivery with attention to synchronous and asynchronous methods (web conferencing, simulations, content capture, etc.).
   11. Appropriate use of social networking.
       
3. Maintain strong enterprise systems characterized by:
   1. Providing and maintaining SunGard Banner and other systems used to support and manage the university enterprise, maintaining our Banner commitment through 2015.
   2. Support enrollment services with a comprehensive and high-quality technology experience.
   3. Supporting efficient, accurate data entry and maintenance, and well-defined data retrieval.
   4. Designing, documenting and implementing reliable and efficient processes.
   5. Creating and maintaining technically current and secure integration and interfaces.
   6. Supporting edge-client computing tools, systems and technologies.
4. Facilitate university research by:
   1. Supporting increased reliance on high-throughput computing.
   2. Supporting increased reliance on high-bandwidth capability.
   3. Providing high-quality datacenter space.
   4. Achieving security standards mandated by granting agencies.
   5. Providing expertise in the development, requirements evaluation, selection, adoption and use of information technology resources, systems, architectures, software and standards.
   6. Providing strong support for the use and security of edge devices.
   7. Assisting with systems and solutions that provide research administrative support. 
   8. Providing and maintaining systems for data storage and collaborative authoring.
   9. Supporting secure data exchanges.
5. Establish a level of security, risk management and compliance that protects university information technology assets by:
   1. Implementing solutions that maintain university compliance with laws, regulations and other agency requirements.
   2. Emphasizing federation, privacy and trust.  
   3. Early identification of unusual or anomalous activity, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and threats.
   4. Promptly implementing appropriate response and mitigation measures.
   5. Supporting desktop and mobile technologies through awareness and security initiatives.
   6. Understanding the variety of devices that are connecting to the network.
   7. Maintaining a flexible but managed perimeter.
   8. Knowing who is connecting to the network through strong identity management.
   9. Engaging in ongoing security & risk assessment.
   10. Providing security awareness messaging and programs.
   11. Providing nimble, agile and documented incident response.
   12. Implementing appropriate security tools.
   13. Encrypting confidential data at rest and in motion.
6. Manage the datacenter environment with emphasis on:
   1. Minimizing energy costs and maximizing efficient practices to manage electrical power and cooling.
   2. Enforcing strong change management practices.
   3. Using space management practices with planned space design and consolidation.
   4. Controlling operations that support daily university functions and operations.
   5. Facility readiness and plans for facility disaster recovery.
   6. Strong software, telecom and asset management services.
7. Support the governance, organization and communication of University Technology Services by:
   1. Developing, partnering and working closely with advisory groups and developing strong relationships with the university community.
   2. Providing a variety of information technology tools and resources.
   3. Developing and maintaining communication and hosting technologies for the internal and external dissemination of information.
      
   4. Providing expert consultation for information technology projects, software purchases, vendor-provided solutions and any information technology initiative.
   5. Developing and implementing clear policies, standards and guidelines, with informational support programs.
   6. Providing clear and prompt internal and external communications about IT initiatives.
   7. Encouraging the professional growth, skill development and motivation of IT staff, both within UTS and in local support roles.
   8. Developing technology support structures that support university strategic initiatives.
   9. Funding information technology through wise stewardship, consideration of efficiency, vendor management, consolidation, process redesign, planned cyclical replacement, and ongoing evaluation of resources.
   10. Supporting the use of open source software, free technology resources and community sourced technologies.
       
   11. Supporting lean initiatives.

Annual Goals

Our  Annual Goals describing planned projects is available for comment. Please send comments or questions to the Chief Information Officer.

Goal themes for 2011-2012:

1. Identify and align resources to best support the university as it deals with the rapid pace of technical change.  Projects are focused on technology innovation, such as the Banner architecture upgrade and voice over Internet protocol.
2. Provide technology counsel and advice to assist the university community about what infrastructure and services should be provided by the university, purchased by the university, or procured and supplied by individuals on their own.
3. Support and prioritize initiatives related to mobility.  Several critical projects are in development, including a university app, student services online, and general support for mobile devices.  Mobile web development is a key strategy.
4. Support initiatives related to constituent relationship management and enrollment with particular emphasis on graduate education.
   
5. Support initiatives related to online learning, learning management systems and learning content availability.  A critical project is technical architecture redesign to support greater availability for Moodle.   
6. Support systems and networks that support academic initiatives for high impact curricular development, research growth and alternative delivery mechanisms by prioritizing IT projects that directly relate to these goals.  Support for classroom and library projects are key initiatives.
   
7. Provide successful network connectivity for new university locations, including the new Human Health Building, the Mt. Clemens center and the proposed new engineering building.

Annual Report

Please read our Annual Report, describing projects and services for last year.  Your comments and feedback are appreciated.   

Message from the Chief Information Officer

How can information technology resources be best implemented and utilized at our university?  We would like to hear from you; please email Theresa Rowe at rowe@oakland.edu.

Theresa Rowe
Chief Information Officer, University Technology Services

UTS Leadership

Read about the UTS Leadership.

Core Competencies

UTS information technology professionals will have a knowledge mix that is technical, organizational, educational and business in nature. Each individual must have a "technology orientation, a service orientation, a strategic orientation, and a change orientation." (M. J. Earl & P. D. Vivian 1999) Every staff member is expected to accept responsibility for ethical actions, technical quality, customer service, security, system operation, and data integrity. Staff members are expected to create processes and environments that are agile, disciplined, defined, documented, repeatable, measurable, controllable, optimized, fair, and equitable.

July 2011