Vice President for Information Technology Status and Activity Report for June 2022 Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT) 1. Key Items for Faculty and Staff Meetings •
Prepare for fall network maintenance: EITS plans to conduct network maintenance on Sunday, October 23. 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 •
EITS Student Information Services team optimizes Athena for class registration: UGA students began registering for Fall 2022 classes during ticketed registration, April 7-22. During this period, students logged into Athena more than 77,000 times in Athena and added and/or dropped classes close to 120,000 times. Athena is put under the most stress during ticketed registration, as students try to register for their favorite courses during their assigned registration time slots. To ensure an optimal user experience for our students, the EITS Student Information Services team, which supports Athena, conducts a series of pre-registration optimization tasks, including a stress test of Athena. The team also monitors and gathers Athena performance statistics daily during ticketed registration for future analyses and performance enhancements. Students can continue registering for classes for the fall term during open registration, which ends on August 16. For more information, contact Ilir Hasko at ihasko@uga.edu.
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Work begins on more than $1M in campus wireless upgrades: Work is underway 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 Complex Carbohydrates Research Center, Meigs Hall, the Herty Drive green space, and Creswell Hall. More access point replacements are also planned for Black-Diallo-Miller Hall, STEM2, Pharmacy South, Lamar Dodd, and Hoke Smith. 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 June 2022. For more information, contact Chris Fleming at cfleming@uga.edu.
3. Support for Teaching Faculty •
New process accelerates uploading student and course data into eLC: Student and course data should show up faster in eLearning Commons each semester, thanks to a new uploading process. Integration Pack for Student Information Systems, or IPSIS, allows for faster and more frequent updates, keeping student enrollment information closer to real time. While our previous process ran only once per day and took three hours, IPSIS runs updates four times a day, and each update takes less than an hour. IPSIS should eliminate some confusion that often comes at the beginning of a semester when there would be an
VPIT Status and Activity Report for June 2022
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