Semi-Annual Bulletin Spring 2014

Semi-annual Bulletin from Information and Technology Services (ITS)

Welcome to the first semi-annual bulletin from Information and Technology Services. I am Vice President for Technology and Chief Information Officer Ed Clark and I hope you will spend a few minutes to learn about the exciting progress that Minnesota State University, Mankato has made to improve the campus experience for student, faculty, and staff by connecting them to new technology and by supporting their ongoing technology needs.

To begin, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your participation in making the StarID conversion an exceptional success. This conversion is unique in that it required the full participation of every person on our campus, and Minnesota State University rose to the occasion with more than 49,000 accounts being converted by the time StarID went live. This means that 95% of accounts converted prior to the deadline. To give a sense of the scope of StarID conversion, here are a few interesting statistics: This was the largest StarID conversion in Minnesota State history. Over 100 different services rely on User ID and of those, and almost half of these services needed to be modified for the StarID conversion The number of incidents reported to ITS as a result of StarID conversion was 1.3% of the total accounts converted. While we would love to have absolutely no problems, this percentage is by any measure an amazing success story.

Another milestone for ITS was establishing an ITS strategic plan with a five point framework that drives our priorities. This plan has been presented to campus groups who provided input and approved the final goals. If you are interested in reading the strategic plan you can find a link on the main webpage of technology services. For those who may want a bird’s-eye-view of the strategic plan, I encourage you to scan the five elements of our strategic plan as these elements represent the core of our vision.

I would like to give you an example of how the five elements drive ITS priorities. The first element is faculty and student success. In order to incorporate this element ITS implemented listening sessions to solicit feedback from faculty and staff, resulting in a prioritization of service improvements. One direct result of this interaction is that ITS recently upgraded our wireless network at strategic locations on campus, stabilizing wireless services, and improving teaching and learning experiences. As you can see, each of the five elements of our plan support these improvements. This is only possible because of our involved, active campus with members who are willing to donate their time to provide beneficial feedback.

Students, we have some exciting news for you. ITS will soon have MavPrint mobile up and ready for your use. Last year students printed nearly 4 million pages of materials, and we anticipate MavPrint making this endeavor easier. MavPrint is a way of sending your documents from any mobile device to various print locations. This means you will not need your laptop or USB drive to get those documents where you need them, at a campus print location. Just as a reminder, these locations are listed on our webpage.

If you haven’t already had the opportunity to view MavTUBE on our webpage, you may want to take a few minutes to check it out. Campus events such as commencement, athletic games and theatre performances are filmed and made public on MavTUBE. Coming up during Spring term we are working with the Theatre department to livestream the campus production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It and cultural events such as Hmong New Year celebration.

Thank you for your time. You can look forward to hearing more ITS news this summer.