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 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
Our proposed new Strategic Plan for Information Technology at Oakland University, for the period July 1, 2013 - June 30, 2016, is now posted and available for comment. Please send comments to the CIO, Theresa Rowe, at rowe@oakland.edu.
The Strategic Plan for University
Technology Services for the period July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2013:
- Provide a high-performance network characterized
by:
- Support
from the Senate Academic Computing Committee linking network quality of
service with educational and research missions.
- Ubiquitous network access, with redundant core,
distribution and outside plant for reliability.
- A data network migration path to 10/100/1000
(Gigabit network).
- 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.
- Reliability,
resourcefulness, relevance, readiness, and responsibility.
- Provide ideas, approaches, and innovation in support of robust learning communities by promoting, implementing, and maintaining
solutions and systems that are or include:
- Highly functional, web-based, accessible,
mobile and secure environments.
- Course management, learning management, and other educational
systems.
- Library and
information literacy support systems.
- Collaborative learning environments, file storage, and other
related systems.
- Communication
and community information environments.
- Content systems (text, images, music, art, video
etc.) for use in teaching and learning.
- Portal environment connections to online
services (SAIL, Moodle, OakShare, etc.).
- Virtual environments (virtual labs for student research,
learning, and other educational needs).
- Comprehensive and consistent experiences for all university
locations.
- Comprehensive content
delivery with attention to synchronous and asynchronous methods (web
conferencing, simulations, content capture, etc.).
- Appropriate use of social networking.
- Maintain strong enterprise systems characterized
by:
- Providing
and maintaining Banner and other systems used to support and
manage the university enterprise, maintaining our Banner commitment
through 2015.
- Support
enrollment services with a comprehensive and high-quality technology
experience.
- Supporting
efficient, accurate data entry and maintenance, and well-defined data
retrieval.
- Designing,
documenting and implementing reliable and efficient processes.
- Creating and maintaining technically current and
secure integration and interfaces.
- Supporting edge-client computing tools, systems and
technologies.
- Facilitate
university research by:
- Supporting increased reliance on high-throughput
computing.
- Supporting
increased reliance on high-bandwidth capability.
- Providing high-quality datacenter space.
- Achieving security standards mandated by
granting agencies.
- Providing
expertise in the development, requirements evaluation, selection,
adoption and use of information technology resources, systems,
architectures, software and standards.
- Providing strong support for the use and security of edge
devices.
- Assisting with
systems and solutions that provide research administrative support.
- Providing and maintaining systems for data
storage and collaborative authoring.
- Supporting secure data exchanges.
- Establish a level of security, risk management
and compliance that protects university information technology assets
by:
- Implementing
solutions that maintain university compliance with laws, regulations
and other agency requirements.
- Emphasizing federation, privacy and trust.
- Early identification of unusual or anomalous
activity, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and threats.
- Promptly implementing appropriate response and
mitigation measures.
- Supporting
desktop and mobile technologies through awareness and security
initiatives.
- Understanding
the variety of devices that are connecting to the network.
- Maintaining a flexible but managed perimeter.
- Knowing who is connecting to the network through
strong identity management.
- Engaging in ongoing security & risk assessment.
- Providing security awareness messaging and
programs.
- Providing nimble,
agile and documented incident response.
- Implementing appropriate security tools.
- Encrypting confidential data at rest and in
motion.
- Manage the
datacenter environment with emphasis on:
- Minimizing energy costs and
maximizing efficient practices to manage electrical power and cooling.
- Enforcing strong change management practices.
- Using space management practices with planned
space design and consolidation.
- Controlling operations that support daily university functions
and operations.
- Facility
readiness and plans for facility disaster recovery.
- Strong software, telecom and asset management
services.
- Support the
governance, organization and communication of University Technology
Services by:
- Developing, partnering and working closely with advisory
groups and developing strong relationships with the university
community.
- Providing a
variety of information technology tools and resources.
- Developing and maintaining communication and
hosting technologies for the internal and external dissemination of information.
- Providing expert
consultation for information technology projects, software purchases,
vendor-provided solutions and any information technology initiative.
- Developing and implementing clear policies,
standards and guidelines, with informational support programs.
- Providing clear and prompt internal and external
communications about IT initiatives.
- Encouraging the professional growth, skill development and
motivation of IT staff, both within UTS and in local support roles.
- Developing technology support structures that
support university strategic initiatives.
- Funding information technology through wise
stewardship, consideration of efficiency, vendor management,
consolidation, process redesign, planned cyclical replacement, and
ongoing evaluation of resources.
- Supporting the use of open source software, free technology
resources and community sourced technologies.
- Supporting lean initiatives.
Annual Goals
Our vision is that We Make IT Possible. Our projects align with the IT strategic plan, and our story is one of adding value to the Oakland University information technology environment. Our Annual Goals describe our planned projects and tell our value-added story. Please send comments or questions to the Chief Information Officer.
Goal themes for 2012-2013:
- Engage in projects that are identified with innovation, technical progress, efficiency, and inspiration.
- Identify and align resources to best support the university as it deals with the rapid pace of technical change.
- Prioritize projects and initiatives related to mobility.
- Provide technology counsel to 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
- Support initiatives related to online learning, learning management systems, high impact curricular development, and learning content availability.
- Maintain a strong cyberinfrastructure environment to support the university educational and research mission.
Annual Report
Theresa Rowe provided an annual update presentation in March 2013. The presentation slides are here: Presentation
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 includes five orientations: technology, service, change, communication, and strategic thinking. This is based on value orientation that leads to success: "technology orientation, a service orientation, a strategic orientation, and a change orientation." (M. J. Earl & P. D. Vivian 1999).
March 2013