IT Outcomes 2023
Raymond Lefebvre
Vice Chancellor and CIO
Welcome!
Reflecting on the five enriching years chronicled in IT Outcomes, it becomes abundantly clear that UMass Boston’s IT Department has always been more than just a responsive unit addressing immediate challenges. Its vision extends far beyond the problems of today. The stories featured in this edition not only reminisce about past endeavors but illuminate how those initiatives continue to yield positive results, shaping the present and future of UMass Boston.
This unique capability—to not just address but to anticipate, innovate, and create lasting impact—can be described as the IT department’s specialty in shepherding new services into the future. It is akin to a gardener who does not just plant a seed but nurtures it, ensuring it grows into a robust tree that provides shade and fruit for generations to come.
For instance, consider the IT Department’s response to the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, described further on pages 12 and 16. While the immediate reaction was to ensure continuity and address emergent needs, their strategy was not just about survival; it was about thriving in an unfamiliar environment. The evolution and growth in online and hybrid learning, as well as technological enhancements to the teaching experience, were not just solutions for a pandemic-era problem. They are lasting innovations that have enhanced the educational journey at UMass Boston and will continue to do so.
Similarly, the Cyber Resilience initiative described on page 9 highlights how the department does not merely react to threats. It takes a proactive stance, seeking out potential vulnerabilities and addressing them before they can become issues. This forward-looking approach ensures that UMass Boston’s cyber-infrastructure is not just robust for today but is poised to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
Moreover, the focus on IT staff well-being, as evidenced by the introduction of the Wellbeats platform on page 23, underscores a recognition that the future of the IT Department—and indeed, UMass Boston as a whole— rests on the well-being of its people. Such initiatives are a testament to the department’s understanding that sustainable success requires a holistic approach.
In essence, stories from the past are not just tales of bygone days. They are living testimonies to the IT Department’s forward-looking ethos. As we celebrate these past successes, it is clear the real triumph is in how these efforts continue to resonate, benefiting UMass Boston today and promising even brighter outcomes in the future.
The UMass Boston IT Department does not just solve problems; it crafts enduring legacies. And in this 5-year retrospective edition, we are reminded that the best legacies are those that continue to flourish, inspire, and serve long after their inception.
Raymond Lefebvre Vice Chancellor and CIO
The quote above about Artificial Intelligence describes a fact revealed by the past year of rapid and unexpected developments that are sure to greatly impact our working lives in the near future. To illustrate the truth in that quote, we would like to reveal that the welcome letter above was not written by Ray Lefebvre, and was in fact written completely by ChatGPT 4.0 with only a few minor edits! We fed in all the articles of this publication and asked it to “create” an inspiring welcome letter to introduce the theme of this year’s magazine. Did you suspect anything when reading it? Rest assured, the rest of this magazine was written by a real person, Managing Editor Peter Stilla.
Enriching Student Learning
Technovation–Still Successfully “Failing” Forward
It would be impossible to name the single most impressive service that UMass Boston IT has introduced the past few years, but Zack Ronald’s Technovation office must be among the top contenders. “We’ve sort of established ourselves as a way that students, faculty, staff, and researchers can come to us for innovative tools for teaching/learning, and the thing that Ray (Chief Information Officer Raymond Lefebvre) likes to emphasize about Technovation is low cost, scalable and fail forward,” Ronald said in commenting on the impact Technovation has had in its brief history at the university.
Disruptive Technologies–Artificial Intelligence Coming to Higher Ed
Usually, when IT is doing its typical creating and innovating for UMass Boston, what’s being worked on isn’t something that’s received national media attention or is well known among the general population. However, what we’re calling Disruptive Technologies is entirely different, as we’ll let Associate Chief Information Officer Apurva Mehta explain.
Spashtop–A Deep Dive Into Remote Learning
IT is always seeking new ways to enhance the learning and teaching experience at UMass Boston, and when the Fall 2022 semester began both students and faculty discovered that IT had done it yet again. Making a big splash on this occasion was a new remote learning service called Remote Labs from Splashtop, which allows students to use software programs they may need in some of their classes but don’t have access to on their personal devices. Splashtop also allows faculty to teach remotely in a computer lab by giving them the access they need to that lab.
Bridging the Digital Divide–Connecting Minority Students Grant
UMass Boston has always been strongly committed to serving and supporting a student body that’s as diverse as the community surrounding it, so Ray Lefebvre, Chief Information Officer, was elated when he learned that UMass Boston had been awarded a Connecting Minority Communities Grant from the US Department of Commerce in the amount of $2.97 million dollars over two years. The grant, part of a larger federal initiative called Internet for All, is designed to give universities in mostly urban areas the means to provide or broaden digital access to historically underserved communities.
IT Briefs
IT Briefs
In this section:
AV Upgrades: Newer, Better, More
Network Upgrade Nearing Completion
Self Service Password Reset
Increasing Efficiencies
Tech Recycling Days
When it comes to making the most efficient use of our resources, UMass Boston IT doesn’t just talk the talk. IT walks the walk. So, when UMass Boston’s IT Services Division assumed responsibility for “Computer Lifecycle Management” of university-owned computers on July 1, 2023, it had to create an entirely new and much more efficient computer lifecycle process.
Cyber Resilience–New Motto, Same Outstanding Results
Given the UMass Boston Information Security Office (ISO) track record of outstanding performance, it would be understandable if one year it just decided to relax a bit and rest on its laurels. If someone else oversaw the ISO besides Wil Khouri, Chief Information Security Officer, perhaps they would think that UMass Boston’s information security infrastructure has already proven itself invulnerable to hacks or breaches, so there doesn’t need to be an unrelenting effort to strengthen our cybersecurity posture every year.
Retrospective
UMass Boston IT Outcomes–5 Years & Counting
Information Technology at UMass Boston has grown and evolved over the past five years, and IT Outcomes has been with it every step of the way to chronicle its journey. As this is the fifth annual edition of IT Outcomes, we thought we would celebrate this milestone by looking back at some of the people, places, and events that have made the recent history of IT at UMass Boston so remarkable.
Our Star Performers
Student employees have always played a vital role in helping UMass Boston IT perform to the level of excellence it always has, and the skills and experience these students gain while working for IT have helped many of them launch successful careers after graduation. In our 2023 IT Outcomes we’d like to highlight three of our more recent Star Performers and share their remarkable success stories with you.
From Out of the Shutdown
Undoubtedly, the pandemic of 2020 was the greatest public health challenge the nation and entire world has faced in the 21st century. It disrupted the normal course of American life in every way imaginable, and higher education was especially impacted. Universities were forced to adapt in ways they couldn’t have foreseen or prepared for, and not all of them endured the crisis in the same way.
The Story of MakerSpace
Any IT Outcomes retrospective must include the story of UMass Boston’s MakerSpace. Its arrival in 2016 and how it became as essential as it still is today is yet another example of IT turning inspiration and ingenuity into reality. Even more impressively, it did not come from an IT administrative directive or with any funding initially.
How UMass Boston Got So Remote
Looking back on Spring 2020 over three years later, it is not easy to recall the severity of the crisis UMass Boston experienced as the pandemic first began taking its toll. But one thing we do know is that the university and the entire nation suddenly found itself in an unprecedented situation. Fortunately, it is not an overstatement to say that the response of Learning Design Services, Classroom AV/Tech, and the entire IT team was nothing short of heroic.
Chromebook Loaner Program
In this fifth annual edition of IT Outcomes we are celebrating a program that is almost as old as IT Outcomes itself. It was Spring 2020, during the darkest days of the pandemic, when IT launched the Chromebook loaner program for UMass Boston students in need. The program was created as part of IT’s pandemic response when the campus shut down unexpectedly and classes could only be held remotely. UMass Boston administrators quickly realized that many students lacked the technology to access their remote classes, and IT quickly sprang into action.
Rescue Teams–Microsoft Teams Comes Through
One staff work tool that has been a part of UMass Boston IT about as long as IT Outcomes itself is Microsoft Teams. As a part of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity tools Microsoft Teams has been available for university staff to use for many years, but in 2020 when the pandemic shut down campus Microsoft Teams came into greater use, especially among IT staff.
One IT
Our One IT Story
Since Raymond Lefebvre began his tenure at UMass Boston as Chief Information Officer, he has identified an annual theme or goal that IT will aspire to in the upcoming calendar year. In 2021, IT pursued “unITy” by bringing the UMass Boston community together again on campus after the disruptions caused by the 2020 pandemic. In 2022, the focus was on “simplicITy,” as the department sought to streamline and simplify the ways in which the university uses IT, and so benefit from IT even more.
Campus Safety–Always Safe, Now Even Safer
A series of individual initiatives undertaken at UMass Boston over the past couple of years have collectively resulted in a significantly upgraded campus safety infrastructure and a much safer campus. The IT Project Management Office and Division of Network Services, in partnership with Campus Safety, have worked tirelessly during this time to implement police communications improvements and new emergency management systems to create a state-of-the-art public safety system rivaling that of any university in the nation.
IT Cares
When you go to the IT page on the new UMass Boston website, you’ll see a phrase under the banner that states “Addressing the IT Needs of the UMass Boston Community.” But thanks to a program called IT CARES, IT staff are now addressing needs beyond IT and even beyond UMass Boston itself. Through IT CARES, IT employees are encouraged to volunteer their time to the charity or community group of their choice, and of course there has been an enthusiastic response.
Chief Information Officer Raymond Lefebvre first created IT CARES at Bridgewater State University but the COVID pandemic prevented its launch at UMass Boston until 2022. That’s when it was introduced through a department e-mail and the creation of an IT CARES channel on the IT Teams site. The staff were invited to post news and pictures of their volunteer activities on the Teams channel, and a scroll through it reveals just how much IT CARES. Many IT staff members have given themselves and their time to causes most meaningful to them, and their communities have benefitted greatly as a result. Much more good can be expected to come to these and other communities in the future just because UMass Boston IT CARES.
U-ACCESS–For Students in Need
Student Affairs has seen the various non-academic challenges our students encounter daily, which led to the establishment of the Office of Urban and Off-Campus Support Services, otherwise known as U-ACCESS. The U-ACCESS program envisions a campus where students are empowered to effectively engage in the fight against the systems of poverty, pursue economic security, and successfully achieve their academic goals at UMass Boston. And this is where IT comes in.
IT Wellbeing–The Wellness Beat Goes On
Apriority for IT Chief Information Officer Raymond Lefebvre since joining UMass Boston has always been the wellbeing of IT staff. In the spring of 2022 Lefebvre introduced a fitness, nutrition, and mindfulness platform called Wellbeats to all IT employees geared towards improving everyone’s wellbeing. The platform contains numerous instructional and informational videos for IT staff to enhance their physical and mental wellbeing both at home and at work.
Life In UMass Boston IT
This past August 2023 UMass Boston IT held its annual Summer Social, an event that gives IT staff a break from their usual work schedules to enjoy some time outside in the summer sun. This year the event included a barbeque, lawn games, and cold beverages as it always has, but there was also special recognition of every IT staff member based on their years of service to the university.
