No one knew how long operations would be changed when the decision to go remote was made in mid-March. University leadership did know, however, that IT was more than ready to pull out all the stops to provide the necessary technology and tools that students, faculty, and staff would need, for however long it might last.
That work required moving some projects to the back burner as teams pulled together with accountability, adaptability, collaboration, and grit. In a short window of time, they developed new solutions to emerging challenges.
It didn’t go unnoticed. Don Welch, interim vice president for IT and chief information officer, has shared both his appreciation and also that of executive leadership for the work that enabled teaching, research, and service to continue.
Some of those efforts have been highlighted in the impact stories already shared. Below are some of the other individuals and teams who’ve been praised by their leadership for going above and beyond to support the University since March.
Business Operations
Penny Meyer, Mike Mrsa, Tim White, Rob Massung, Susan Taylor, Rhonda Brown, Marc Burns, Larry Kolbe, Eric Rook, Guarav Puri, Will Kerr, Brian Beiswenger, and Shawn Smith
The Software at Penn State Team worked with the Software Engineering Team to support rapid deployment of software titles to students, faculty, and staff, without going through the normal manual and time constrained ordering process. The team collaborated on the specifications for each title, communications to end users, and testing.
Erin Frank, Paula Harpster, Farley Hill, Santina Newlen, Shirley Patton, and Dawn Hoover
The Financial Processing Team adapted to process changes and ensured last-minute requests were handled in a timely fashion, while continuing with daily operations.
John Ake
Prior to the onset of remote activities, he expedited purchases in Enterprise Network & Communication Services (ENCS) due to concerns over potential worldwide networking equipment shortages.
John Ake and Tom Long
They assisted in obtaining 40,000 additional Virtual Private Network (VPN) licenses and eight firewalls donated by Cisco, at a value of $118,000, to provide additional remote connectivity and security until the new VPN solution was deployed.
Paul Anderson, Rob Massung, and Emily Perry
They reviewed software and service contracts for export control technology limitations for international student use.
Sue Gavazzi, Tim White, and Emily Perry
They provided licensing and cost analysis to Penn State Health IT leadership for their use of Office 365 applications, as well as expedited paperwork for Penn State Health to move forward with implementation.
Paul Anderson, Rob Massung, Tim White, and Sue Gavazzi
In support of the WebLabs creation, they reviewed software contracts for 135-plus titles for remote access permissions on the student lab machines.
Enterprise Applications
Jason Morris
He enabled a major change to the Visiting Scholar system to direct in-process applications and update the electronic form. He also provided a new way for the Office of Student Aid to remotely load files securely into its content and business process management system.
Dew Kaiser
She responded quickly to support the payroll electronic document distribution system (PeDDS). In collaboration with the firewall team, she was able to expedite the addition of users into the VPN so they could access the reports they needed so payroll functions were not delayed.
Shawn Smith, Steve Seltzer, Scott Cole, Jason Vinnedge, Craig Benner, Chris Harm, Sherry Tirko, Chris Pike, Nate Bowler, and Ryan Diehl
ROTC instructors were initially unable to use Zoom for remote instruction because of the configuration. The Software Engineering Team added a special affiliation that specified the ROTC instructors to allow accurate identification of them for Zoom, providing them access to the tools they needed to teach remotely.
Mike Zelewski, John Flude, Joe Meyers, Niraja Ramesh, Scott Haas, Chris Harm, and Andy Fisher
This team increased Starfish enhancements to facilitate New Student Orientation and remote advising issues.
Will Kerr, Marc Burns, Larry Kolbe, and Eric Rook
To better support remote teaching, they increased capacity and new applications at software.psu.edu.
University Mass Mail Team
This team was available at all days and hours to manage the University’s urgent communications around remote operations. They made sure that all mass mails were sent out as needed, frequently with little advance notice.
Infrastructure
Tom Bayly
In collaboration with the Service Desk and Operations Center, he created support scripts. He also assisted in creating Knowledge Base articles to help customers as they are migrated to the new VPN client.
Chad Francis
He onboarded the Enterprise Project Management Office, College of Engineering, and other units to the VPN and assisted other team members in the design and implementation of the VPN service.
Mike Giornesto
He architected the new VPN service infrastructure from network deployment to authentication and authorization, and worked with the College of Liberal Arts as a beta customer for testing.
Adam McNeal
He assisted Finance and Business IT with the laptop deployment to customers so they could work remotely. He also helped to deploy the VPN to 100 Finance and Business IT staff in just a few weeks.
Kem Hartley
He enabled Student Affairs IT staff to work remotely using the new VPN client and played a critical role in developing new security features for the new VPN service.
Video & Voice Team
Well before the pandemic, the team worked to ensure Zoom, Jabber, remote call-forwarding, contact centers, and other services at the core of telecommuting and remote collaboration and instruction were best positioned to support users. They also developed streamlined provisioning practices to meet the dramatically increased demand, responding to major incidents practically around the clock (even on Easter Sunday), and collaborated with other groups across IT to improve services and solve problems.
Julia Barton, Ryan Swietzer, John Strapel, Lisa Gilson, and Ricki Sodergren
The inventory group went on campus to retrieve shipments to the Tower Road Data Center every week to guarantee inventory for break/fix.
Brenda Miller
To protect her team, she placed orders for personal protective equipment including gloves and Clorox wipes and retrieved deliveries at the Tower Road Data Center. She also helped with getting MiFi devices to those who needed Internet connectivity.
Bethany Miller and Ryan Byers
They handled many requests to enable Jabber for remote operations.
Eric Taylor and Sean Gurekovich
They helped to facilitate complex changes to enable remote work, including for student workers in IT.
Jim Weaver
He quickly helped a faculty member who requested a change to the appearance of his name in Zoom.
Bob Gurekovich
He worked with the Operations Center to handle a domain name systems issue for the Dean of Admissions.
Outreach and Online Education, Liberal Arts
IT Teams
These two groups volunteered capacity to the Penn State IT Service Desk to help answer incoming calls, emails, and tickets, in the event of overwhelming demand for support from students, faculty, and staff.
Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT)
Marketing & Communications
This team developed/curated content and coordinated executive-level approvals for the remote teaching and learning websites developed with the Instructional Design and IT Learning and Development teams.
Accessibility
This team expedited accessibility review requests for courseware and IT support software purchases, and alternative media requests for course materials with the Tactile Team and Student Disability Resources (SDR). They also partnered with World Campus and SDR to develop a faculty consultation resource and workflow to support the move to remote teaching, as well as an accessibility tip sheet for course liaisons, Tech TAs, and Tech Tutors.
User Success and Office of Information Security (OIS)
Greg Shehan, Nadine O’Leary, Greta Panasiti, and Roger Files
Over the course of multiple hours, they provided extended support to a Dickinson Law adjunct faculty member with what were initially thought to be access issues preventing him from posting recordings to Canvas. The group figured out his account was in proper order and the issues were instead with his devices and browsers. They helped to resolve the problems so he could successfully continue his teaching.
Team Echo
Representatives from OIS; OOE; Office of the Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses; and Penn State IT Infrastructure, Marketing and Communications, TLT, and User Success
This group was charged with addressing limited access to or unavailability of technology for students, faculty, and staff. Efforts resulted in WebLabs, the device loaner program, and maximizing resources for the IT Service Desk.