Dear University Community:
Greetings colleague! Welcome to the March 2019 edition of our Information Services Newsletter. Since our last newsletter in November 2018, your Information Services team has been busy working on initiatives to improve or enable services for the institution. Additionally, we're excited to pursue and make progress on our strategic goals.
First and foremost, I want to highlight our University Technology and Information Plan. A key component of this effort is IT Governance. Your Information Services team, working with our initial governance design group consisting of staff and faculty, have created a structure and are diligently working on the process as well as the logistics for IT governance. We have been and will be continuing to work closely with Faculty Senate to ensure representation and engagement.
In an effort to better protect our data and information in the digital era we launched two-factor authentication through a product called Duo. We continue to upgrade classrooms and conference rooms with Solstice Pods. What is a Solstice Pod? I am so glad you asked. A Solstice Pod is a device that allows multiple participants to share and control meeting content from their laptops and/or mobile devices on the in-room display. No need for wires. However, if you still want to connect with cables you can.
We began our engagement with TeamDynamix to launch a new effort for improving how we provide and support services, track our assets, and manage our project portfolio. This initiative will initially focus on project management, incident management, and asset management. Once these are completed we will set our sites on service management to include a service catalog. This will provide you the ability to identify and access all business and IT related services that can be performed at the University of Richmond.
In an effort to provide better service for our community we have started pop-up tables around campus. Basically we are bringing our services to you. While we can’t be everywhere always, this is an opportunity to bring our services to nearby locations where you can ask questions and we can provide assistance. We have had over 100 people stop by the tables for assistance so far.
Lastly, we are proud to share that our weekly discussion group on race and racism, now called "Intersections" has been opened to the University community. We invite you to join us in conversations about all identities. These conversations help us learn more about our personal biases while educating us about the structural biases that exist in our society. We meet every Wednesday, from noon to 1 pm in the Whitehurst Living Room. Bring your lunch and join us for robust conversations. We hope to see you there!
Thank you for taking time to reading our newsletter to learn what we are doing in support of you.
Keith W. "Mac" McIntosh, MBA
Vice President and Chief Information Officer
