STC 2024 Conference Schedule

Bringing SUNY Technology Professionals Together. The Computing Officer’s Association (COA) is comprised of technology professionals within the State University of New York. The representative areas include those who implement, support, and manage the technology systems on the 64 campuses as well as administrative and support organizations throughout SUNY.

COA’s purpose is to promote professional development and collaboration of all members. COA does this by facilitating the sharing of information between its members. COA also coordinates statewide as well as regional conferences and forums that provide information and training to the membership.

All SUNY attendees are welcome to this meeting.

Plated lunch, served at your table. Let your server know if you have food allergies or require a non-chicken option.

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Directions to Golden Arrow

With how successful it was in 2023 – I’m hoping to run STC Game Night again. As with last year, we would need a room large enough to accommodate the attendees along enough tables for people to play the various games. Note: the room in Golden Arrow last year was perfect.

We will be having a board game night for all STC attendees interested in joining us. Come and relax, have fun, and get to you know your fellow SUNY folks in one of the quieter settings of the week. No experience with the games is necessary. The host will provide games, however feel free to bring some of your favorites!

What kinds of games: anything that you won’t get in trouble with HR for playing. Some examples of the games include: Apples to Apples, Sushi Go, King of Tokyo, Munchkin, Pandemic, and more!

In this Birds of a Feather session the scope of discussion will be Microsoft’s AI offerings, focusing on Microsoft Copilot and M365 Copilot.

Leveraging Microsoft’s powerful automation tool to streamline staff workflows within higher education. This presentation will provide an overview of how MS Power Automate can be employed to automate repetitive tasks, manage data efficiently, and enhance collaboration among staff.

You’re walking down the hall, and your campus president crosses your path. She asks, “How’s our IT organization doing?” What will your response be? “Good”? “Meh”? “I don’t know”? Learn how you and anyone in your IT organization can answer that question in a way that builds confidence in your team’s efforts to meet campus strategic goals.

Building on ITEC’s culture for security, standards, and procedures, ITEC is using a process to help define our priority objectives, measurable goals, and projects we are working on to meet those goals. We use this to convey our plans, the justification for those plans, and the state of projects to internal and external audiences.

We will describe the processes and tools we use as well as some challenges and success stories we have experienced to date.

Building effective teams is critical to the success of any organization, particularly in higher education institutions where collaboration and innovation are essential. This presentation will explore the key elements required to build effective teams (especially across departments and disciplines and with varied abilities and skill sets) that can work towards a common purpose. Specifically, we will examine how empowerment, trust, and a common purpose are crucial to the success of an IT team and how having strong bonds can help overcome challenges and lead to positive outcomes.

Representatives from SUNY Oneonta will be joined remotely by Michael Geiss from SUNY Cortland to discuss transitioning 911 calls to an off-campus PSAP. We’ll discuss why we made this change, the challenges we encountered during the process, and the lessons we learned along the way.

This session explores classroom accessibility from policy (SUNY & ADA) to practical solutions. We’ll discuss legal vs. ethical considerations, technology’s role, and upcoming trends in accessible learning environments.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of technology, continuous learning and knowledge sharing have become pivotal for personal and professional growth. The new COA mentoring program is designed to foster an environment between SUNY campuses where experience meets innovation, and wisdom is transferred seamlessly between individuals.

Why Be a Mentor? Being a mentor is not just about imparting knowledge; it’s about shaping the future of SUNY’s campuses and technical professionals. The COA mentoring program is not just for those in leadership positions, we are looking to foster peer-to-peer mentoring between campus professionals as well.

Why Be a Mentee? Embarking on the journey as a mentee opens a world of possibilities such as accelerating your learning curve by tapping into the wealth of your mentor’s experience and building a robust professional network through others at SUNY.

Come find out how you can be part of the inaugural COA Mentoring Program in 2024 and discover the opportunity to connect with other SUNY professionals and develop skills together with our COA members that will help you succeed in your career. Don’t miss out on this chance to invest in your future!

Attend this session for an overview of the current University-wide Technology Agreements and an update on current contract activity and procurement initiatives.

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In this session ITEC will describe the current and future security initiatives for both the “Internal Security” and “External Security” service. We will explain how ITEC is undergoing a SOC 2 Type gap analysis and deploying Cloudflare ZTNA for Banner access. You will also learn how ITEC has been able to translate our security program into something you can use on your campus. We’re able to assist with important campus needs, ranging from using tools like Purple Knight to assess and mitigate IOE’s in Active Directory and Entra ID, to discussing policy-level requirements from GLBA and SUNY.

Wonder how your IT leader ended up in their role? What combination of skills, experience, connections, or timing paved their way? IT fields vary, paths to leadership differ, and higher education technology staffing needs more diversity. Join your SUNY colleagues as they delve into their career paths, sharing pivotal moments and offering invaluable advice to guide you on your own professional journey. Additionally, you’ll have the chance to connect with outstanding colleagues who can expand and enrich your professional network.

Ensure you’re equipped to secure the job you desire! This session is your chance to gain valuable insights and forge meaningful connections.

Effective collaboration is critical in higher education today more than ever. Traditional network shares, once the mainstay of file sharing and collaboration, are challenged by the rise of cloud storage solutions. This “birds of a feather” session will explore using Microsoft 365’s cloud storage tools (SharePoint Online, Teams, M365 Groups, and OneDrive) for file sharing and teamwork instead of traditional network shares.

Join us as we navigate the skies of cloud collaboration, sharing insights, best practices, identified risks, and learned lessons. Through this interactive session, we aim to foster a vibrant discussion around:

• Potential benefits of embracing cloud storage
• Implementation challenges
• Suitability of cloud storage for institution’s unique needs
• Migration and adoption strategies
• Governance and compliance considerations

Together, we’ll explore the potential of cloud collaboration to enhance how students, faculty, and staff work together, regardless of location or device.

This session will discuss AV support for classrooms at Binghamton University, including phone support, web resources, and media.

How do you support classroom audio visual emergencies?

What digital resources do you have at your school to support classrooms?

What kind of online database do you have for classrooms?

Come with your questions and answers. We will be discussing classroom support at all of your schools.

Bill Grau, Executive Director of the SICAS Center, will give an update on the SICAS program including work done, work in progress and how we can help you Empower Education Through Technology.

You must have an Information Security Policy. Nobody wants to write it. Nobody wants to publish it. Nobody wants to follow it. Nobody wants to maintain it. Nobody wants anything to do with it. Maybe a consultant can write it and then we can never look at it again.

It can often seem like there are better ways to spend our limited amount of time. I have been writing and trying to publish security policies for three years. To be honest it’s as popular as a dentist office scheduling root canals.

In this presentation I will talk about how an information security policy establishes a security program, and benefits both technical and non-technical managers. Cybersecurity tools alone can make the organizational security problem worse. Why? Because who can understand them? Tools are the domain of specialists far beyond management and governance. They whirl away in the shadows where nobody can see them.

Policies are often the most visible parts of institutional information security. They are what managers must engage with. It’s what staffing and budgets should be based on. Far from a waste of time, for many organizations it’s the critical missing piece. The fight to create and publish real security policies, when done right, should be a cultural journey for the organization.

Please join me as a I walk through the anatomy of an information security policy and hopefully demonstrate why they are real and critical for having effective information security in an organization.

Roundtable discussion on revolutionizing campus connectivity and entertainment experiences. Learn about initiatives to enhance Wi-Fi infrastructure at SUNY campuses, including offering successes at Binghamton, Farmingdale, and Geneseo. Discover how partnerships with entertainment providers like Swank are bringing cutting-edge streaming services to campuses, along with the development of gaming suites. Explore the impact of these advancements on students and staff.

A more detailed look at remote AV support, focusing on network-based tools and concepts. Beginners will get food for thought on areas of focus, while more intermediate technicians will gain knowledge of some advanced Crestron system techniques and network-related platform-independent soft skills.

As part of a strategic change management process aimed at facilitating the institution’s digital transformation, SUNY Suffolk County Community College’s IT Services has embarked on enhancing its current IT Service Management tool (TDX). In this session, our specific use case will be shared to illustrate our path towards the continuous improvement of our IT services centered on the end users’ digital experience. Join us to explore our journey, its challenges, and goals towards digital transformation.

Presenting on how SUNY Online Support Services works with the office of System Administration, SUNY Campuses and vendors to give holistic support of the SUNY DLE (Digital Learning Environment) and Brightspace.

SUNY Online Support Services coordinates between working with D2L (Brightspace), all the SUNY Campuses in the DLE , other offices of the System Administration and Third Party Vendors to fully support the DLE.

We will show how we track tickets, workflow processes with the other Offices of System Administration, and build out the SUNY Online Knowledge base for Brightspace.

SUNY Campuses are faced with an increasing demand for consistent, accurate, effective, and efficient data integration between internal and external applications that facilitate seamless systems integrations. This session will demonstrate an API-led data integration using the SUNY High-speed Data Rail (MuleSoft) and the leading admissions and recruiting application, Slate. We will take a closer look at the platform’s capabilities specific to data transformation, routing, validation, re-usability, and monitoring.

IT software and hardware assessment and asset management are continually changing, complicated aspects of IT that involve many critical elements, perspectives, and policies. Members of SUNY Buffalo State University’s IT department will share their success story of centralized IT deliberately evolving to meet the challenging and shifting demands of internal and external factors related to software and hardware assessments and asset management.

Since 2017, with a foundation of ITIL and the implementation of ITSM software, Team Dynamix (TDX), the Buffalo State IT assessment team built a process based on a common methodology to fill a critical role in working toward compliance, transparency, efficiencies, and cost savings. This session will focus on the development and challenges of the process and how it relates to roles and responsibilities, compliance, leveraging expertise, asset management, and reporting. In fiscally challenging times, this framework has been an essential structure to support data-driven decision-making and streamlining a collaborative effort to ensure all aspects of new and ongoing technology are reviewed, stakeholders are involved prior to contract execution and to also provide the foundation for IT PMO project implementations.

The Software Assessment Team at Buffalo State is truly a collaborative team that is highly consultative, transparent and supports informed decision-making through this mature and improving process. From department-specific to campus-wide software agreements and contracts, the process addresses it all and continues to evolve to meet new challenges.

Moving your Telephone/UC system into the Cloud, or at least considering it? Stony Brook University has recently walked this path with its migration to Cisco Webex Calling. There are additional details to consider, including Ray Baum, Carrier porting, and existing equipment. This is an excellent opportunity to discuss expectations and possible pitfalls.

As a functional team within DoIT (Division of Information Technology) at Stony Brook University, we are a four year school that heavily relies on our student employees to help maintain our technical equipment for over 200 registrar controlled classrooms across 3 campuses.

In my presentation I will introduce how we manage, expect and give back to our student employees while they are working for us. The idea of employment with us, for them, is being able to learn a new skill/trade as a second option of employment after graduation.

This presentation with have a panel of IT Leaders that have been involved with the process of implementing an IT Strategic Plan for their campus. This presentation will use the Rutgers, Center for Organizational Development and Leadership, Strategic Planning in Higher Education: A Guide for Leaders as the basis for questions the panelists address. The following questions: How did you involve the buy in of campus leadership? What tools did you use to communicate the progress of your work? Who collaborated with your organization to complete the assessment? How did you do your environmental scan? Did the goals of the assessment come after or before initiating the process? What was the process for creating strategies and action plans after the assessment? How was the strategic plan shared with the campus?

Come learn how ITEC has been able to augment several SUNY IT teams with our Campus IT Services. We’ll discuss highlights from the past year, including a full campus wireless access replacement, file sharing migrations, datacenter consolidation efforts, etc.

We’ll tell the story of how responding to a campus security incident led to opportunities for both the campus and ITEC to understand and provide a more valuable IT service to the community.

We’ll also discuss additional capabilities and services ITEC is hoping to provide SUNY.

The ITEC Project Management Office has been working on its second iteration. In this session, we will talk about the history of our PMO, its decentralization, our overhaul, and what lies ahead. We will look at the PMO’s role and its philosophy, as well as talk about some of the newer features we implemented: project intake, project slack, project change, and resource allocation.

In the diverse ecosystem of Information Technology found in higher education, SUNY Plattsburgh leverages TeamDynamix iPaaS to bridge operational silos through integration and automation. This presentation outlines our strategic use of TeamDynamix, specifically creating connectors, to enhance efficiency across campus.

Starting with the canned connectors, we realized the need to go beyond their initial capabilities to meet our unique operational needs. We extended these connectors with custom functionality, showcasing the adaptability of TeamDynamix iPaaS. From there we ventured into developing custom connectors, tailored to SUNY Plattsburgh’s specific requirements. Whether they be talking to specific REST APIs, or running commands remotely on actual hosts. This process highlighted the platform’s flexibility and our innovative approach to solving integration challenges.

This talk will provide insights into the practicalities of utilizing, modifying, and creating connectors within the TeamDynamix ecosystem. We’ll share our experiences with the canned connectors, the steps taken to extend their functionality, and the journey towards developing fully custom solutions. Attendees will learn from our challenges and successes, gaining actionable strategies for applying similar integration and automation techniques in their institutions.

Join us to discover how SUNY Plattsburgh is achieving a seamlessly integrated and automated campus environment, demonstrating the transformative potential of TeamDynamix iPaaS in higher education.

Updates to the 2020 NYS Fire Code now requires approved in-building radio coverage for Emergency Responders in new buildings. We will talk about some of the requirements and have an open discussion how this may affect your campus.

Join us for an interactive discussion session tailored for professionals in audio-visual services within community colleges. In this session, we’ll gather to tackle the shared challenges we face in meeting technology requirements while operating on limited budgets.

With a focus on collaboration and idea sharing, participants will have the opportunity to engage in open dialogue, sharing insights, strategies, and creative solutions for overcoming obstacles in providing audio-visual services on campus. Whether it’s sourcing affordable equipment, optimizing existing resources, or implementing innovative approaches, this session aims to foster a supportive environment where every voice is valued.

Come prepared to share your experiences, learn from fellow colleagues, and collectively explore actionable strategies to enhance audio-visual services within community college settings. Let’s harness the collective wisdom of our community to navigate the complexities of technology provision, ensuring that our institutions thrive even within resource constraints. Join us as we prove that, indeed, birds of a feather do flock together.

A culture of digital accessibility is vital to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus where all community members feel they belong and can participate. Digital Accessibility becomes part of the culture when it is a natural part of the decision-making process, and individuals view creating access in every class, unit, department, and institution as their responsibility. Over the last decade, SUNY Oswego has utilized the RAMPS model to gradually cultivate this culture of accessibility.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to identify key stakeholders who will be allies and partners, strategize ways to engage the community to integrate accessibility throughout the institution, build a case that digital accessibility is proactive work that saves the organization time and resources; identify responsibilities and actions everyone in the organization can take to role-model digital accessibility practices; and build a focus on progress by identifying small gains that make a difference over time.

The Torus project represents a paradigm shift in the development, delivery, and enhancement of courseware. This presentation aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Torus, its evolution, and its integration into SUNY’s Digital Learning Environment. Attendees will gain insights into the project’s foundations in learning science, its data-driven approach, and the strides made in addressing issues of cost, effectiveness, ease-of-development, and community engagement.

Key Points of Discussion:
SUNY Experience and Progress:
Explore the successful implementation of Torus at SUNY, emphasizing the progress made and lessons learned.
Discuss how Torus aligns with SUNY’s specific needs, contributing to improved learning outcomes and user engagement.

Data-Driven Insights:
Highlight the role of data in Torus, showcasing how the platform leverages insights to enhance adaptive learning.
Share specific examples of data-driven decision-making and its impact on pedagogy and courseware improvement.

Brightspace Integration:
Investigate the integration of Torus with Brightspace, evaluating ease-of-use and benefits for educators and learners.
Address challenges faced during integration and migration from previous learning management systems, emphasizing lessons learned and solutions implemented.

Feedback and Discussion:
Prioritize participant feedback on their experiences with Torus and other adaptive learning platforms.
Encourage open discussion on the role of Torus in meeting the needs of campus technology professionals and strategies for further improvement.

Preview of Plans:
Provide a glimpse into the future plans for Torus, including upcoming features, enhancements, and collaborative initiatives.
Emphasize the continuous commitment to research and development, with a focus on staying ahead of evolving educational technology trends.