USF faced and overcame many obstacles during the COVID-19 pandemic and campus shutdown, especially regarding information systems and technology. At the October 27, 2021, Faculty Senate meeting, Sidney Fernandes, USF Vice President forTechnology and Chief Information Officer, provided a presentation on the activities and system implementations before and during the COVID-19 campus shutdown and responded to faculty questions and feedback about IT operations and services.
Some highlights of this presentation are:
- Consolidation gave USF a head start on the move to virtual work and communication with the implementation of Box and Teams prior to the pandemic
- IT provided a rapid response to the campus shutdown by
- moving 56,000 student email accounts to One USF platform
- implementing digital call centers for academic services
- enabling virtual classrooms on a unified platform
- launched a new VPN for increased cybersecurity oupdated 400 classrooms to support hybrid instruction
- upgraded wireless networks
- There are no plans to replace Box or move cloud storage to another service provider. Space per user is currently unlimited.
- Performance issues with Archivum are being addressed.
- IT is working with colleges on updating remaining Windows 7 PCs.
- IT is working with Innovative Education to build a test classroom to investigate technologies and gather faculty feedback to solve problems.
The slides for the , and
Additionally, faculty can use this tool to provide feedback and up-vote topics: https://easyretro.io/publicboard/DTOeOu2WvOQsUvegMhLjLAB5va92/81a71887-4eb1-4fb4-bee1-197d01713709.