BGSU Information Technology Services (ITS) manages a variety of technical and business process projects that support BGSU academic, physical, and digital operations, as well as specific portfolios of strategic objectives defined by Vice Presidents/Provosts and C-level staff across campus. Using Project Management Institute’s (PMI) guide to best practices, this process includes sourcing and aligning project requests to University strategic objectives through various levels of governance, providing project management and resourcing guidance to approved initiatives, delivering appropriate levels of communication throughout the project and technical lifecycles, and providing ongoing support of technical services and digital applications. ITS is built around delivering new, and maintaining existing, technologies in the classroom, in the field and throughout administrative offices by defining objectives and projects, facilitating governance and executive prioritization of initiatives and guiding each approved project to successful completion using industry standard methodologies. 

Information Technology Initiatives

Providing the technology to support the University's Strategic Goals requires a commitment to maintain supporting services and perform upgrades to provide increased functionality, security, and stability. Over the last year, ITS has focused on project work that continues to deliver on these goals, completing 45 supporting projects since October of 2021, including upgrades, security patches, adding application features, and error handling.

Examples of each type of project and its impact on supporting University strategies is detailed below.

This project replaced the existing Cisco wireless solution with a new solution that provides additional functionality at a cost savings. This additional functionality provides enhanced security, performance, and better segmentation of university and guest Internet of Things (IoT) devices, keeping the University network safer while increasing student satisfaction with having more flexibility and better performance with wireless access. Implementing the Aruba solution will have a cost savings of $1,000,000 over a 5-year Total Cost of Ownership.

Benefits:

Increased Security, Cost Savings, Expanded Device Support, Student Satisfaction, Connection Stability

Using OnBase, ITS has created a flexible, customizable framework for programs which use a student-driven prSeveral software and hardware upgrades have been performed over the last year to support and improve on current, expected, levels of value delivered to our University community.  By performing these upgrades, ITS is providing optimal levels of support and issue resolution that can only be realized with vendors when staying in versioning compliance.  These upgrades also provide a more user-friendly experience and an environment that is more error proof.

Benefits:

Version Support, Data Security, Compliance, Reduce Equipment Failure, Continuity in Student Experienceocedure to initiate experiential learning (EL) courses. Program-driven courses will also benefit from an improved data-reporting infrastructure. This is the largest development we have ever done in OnBase, consisting of:

This is not a light achievement and has many direct and indirect benefits for the University.  ITS tackles the challenge of providing accurate, timely, and complete reporting to support decisions that impact all areas of the University. By taking care of the health of reports and the data that supports those reports, users have information readily available to improve funding, donor relations, student financial success, and other business-related outcomes.  Below are some samples of the improvements made to make reporting more user-friendly and visually impactful.

Creating impact with Visual reporting

Provide meaningful data with built in options

ITS has always had a strong focus on security related initiatives to provide our community the confidence that the data and those applications used to deliver meaningful insights, will not be compromised.  To achieve our goal of 100% security, meaning no breaches and no loss of data, we stay up-to-day on security patches on all enterprise applications, implement ERP NDAs and appropriate audits.