Vice President for Information Technology Status and Activity Report for July 2022 Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT) 1. Key Items for Faculty and Staff Meetings •
$2 million from UGA central administration to support GACRC improvements, new faculty research: The university administration has pledged $2 million over the next fiscal year to upgrade and expand the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center. Combined with another $350K in FY22 year-end money from the Vice President for Information Technology’s office, the funding will support refreshed equipment and new nodes for the Sapelo2 cluster to support researchers using high performance computing resources. The funds will also allow the GACRC to deploy resources supporting new faculty hired through the Presidential Interdisciplinary Faculty Hiring Initiative in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. For more information about the GACRC, contact Dr. Guy Cormier at gcormier@uga.edu.
•
Prepare for fall network maintenance: EITS plans to conduct a network maintenance Sunday, October 23. This maintenance is being conducted on a Sunday to accommodate our extended campuses who hold classes on Saturdays. Network maintenances are necessary to continue to support the network, allowing EITS to provide ample bandwidth and Internet capacity to the University in the future. We typically conduct large network maintenances twice a year, during which campus Internet and campus information systems are usually inaccessible. For questions, contact Rayid Tartir at rayid@uga.edu.
2. Services for Students •
Turnitin Feedback Studio now available in Google Docs: Effective June 28, UGA students, faculty and staff now have access to Turnitin Feedback Studio and Similarity within Google Docs. Turnitin Feedback Studio provides automated grammar, citations and formatting suggestions for draft papers, while Similarity aids instructors and students in maintaining and promoting academic integrity. You can access these tools by google.uga.edu and logging in with your UGA MyID. Once you have opened or created a Google Doc, access Turnitin features by clicking the Add-ons menu and selecting “Turnitin Draft Coach”. At this time, Turnitin features are only available for Google Docs, and cannot be used on Microsoft Word or other document formats imported into Google Drive. For more information, contact Dave Crouch at dave@uga.edu.
•
Work under way on more than $1M in campus wireless upgrades: Work is under way on more wireless upgrades in buildings across the Athens, Buckhead and Griffin campuses. These upgrades are part of EITS’s work to continuously improve wifi connectivity and coverage to support teaching, learning and student life. The $1.2 million project, funded by Student Technology Fees, includes wireless refreshes and redesigns in many buildings. Work has been completed on access point replacements in the STEM 2, Black-DialloMiller Hall, Pharmacy South, and Hoke Smith. More access point replacements are also planned for Lamar Dodd, Pharmacy North and Life Sciences. Technicians are also working on more improvements to outdoor wireless spaces north of Meigs Hall, along Herty Drive, and the greenspace on the north side of Grady College. Work is expected to be completed by the end of July 2022. For more information, contact Chris Fleming at cfleming@uga.edu.
VPIT Status and Activity Report for July 2022
Page 1 of 4