IT May Newsletter - UTPA Blogs - The University of Texas

May 5, 2015
IT Hiring Update
Dr. Jeffrey Graham, CIO, is putting a hiring committee together this
week to start reviewing applications. He plans to start interviewing
for his direct reports next week.
Yolanda Lopez, Administrative Manager, has been tasked in hiring
all IT administrative staff positions that close on May 5th. She has
already started putting a hiring committee together and will start
reviewing applications this week. She plans to complete all
interviews in the next couple of weeks.
The remaining job postings are being finalized and will be posted
soon.
The following positions have posted on the UTRGV Careers website.
Office of the Chief Information Officer
ASSOCIATE CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER - TECHNICAL SERVICES
ASSOCIATE CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER - BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS
Photo Courtesy of Lisa Cardoza
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR END USER SUPPORT
DIRECTOR IT SERVICES
DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR II
Mercedes, UTRGV unveils
new boot
DATA CENTER OPERATIONS SPECIALIST
SENIOR ADMINISTRATIVE ASSOCIATE
OFFICE ASSISTANT III
ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR(2)
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT II(2)
IT Business Relationships
PROGRAMMER ANALYST II
IT End User Support
BUSINESS ANALYST II
COMPUTER USER SERVICES SPECIALIST III
COMPUTER USER SERVICES SPECIALIST I (2)
IT Technical Services
UT-RGV fiber optic ring to
serve as information
backbone
The redundant private network
connection between the
Edinburg, Harlingen, and
Brownsville
campuses provides IT services
across all Valley locations
using the BTOP fiber
infrastructure installed in the
summer 2013.
DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR II
PROGRAM ASSISTANT
ACCOUNTING TECHNICIAN (2)
Records Management (Business Affairs)
DIRECTOR OF RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND OPEN RECORDS OFFICER
RECORDS MANAGER (Closed)
RECORDS SPECIALIST (Closed)
DOCUMENT IMAGING SPECIALIST (Closed)
Center for Online Learning (Academic Affairs)
INSTRUCTIONAL DEVELOPER / DESIGNER II
INSTRUCTIONAL DEVELOPMENT DESIGNER III
See the latest Information Technology staff listing of names and
This link between campuses
allows Information Technology
to provide customers
with multiple services
seamlessly across all future
UTRGV campuses in the Rio
Grande Valley. Services
include eduroam wireless
network access, Banner
student access (student
registration system), student
record access (ImageNow
system), ID card printing, 5digit telephone dialing between
the Edinburg and Brownsville
campuses, VPN access, RDP
access, and more. (Jesús
Ríos)
titles from UTPA and UTB staff hired for UTRGV.
The Data and Network Security
teams have worked
collaboratively to implement
the necessary security
measures on the redundant
private network connection .
The security
measures will ensure
that students, faculty, staff, and
guests only have access to
specific applications and
resources which they are
authorized to have as part of
their business and/or academic
affiliations. (Mauro Scardigno)
Bravo! PAC premiere opens
with packed house, powerful
performances.
Photo Courtesy of Anne Toal
(Left to Right: Havidan Rodriguez, Betty Gonzalez, Anne Toal,
Graham Toal, and Jeffrey Graham)
On April 30th, The University of Texas Pan
American honored eight IT Staff members for their years of
dedication and service. A campus wide celebration was held for all
faculty and staff that chose to retire during the 2015 fiscal year
which included Graham Toal, David Ramirez, John Cooksey,
Antonio Martinez, Anne Toal, Milca Scardigno, Betty Gonzalez,
and Rey Robles.
IT provided the final installation
of some Audio Visual
equipment in the new
Performing Arts Complex prior
to the big Premier concert on
April 23rd. Their contributions
included installing monitors in
the lobbies for viewing of live
program from the Auditorium
and Digital Signage
system. Additionally, the team
coordinated with the AV
contractors to patch the AV
signals to the appropriate
Congratulations and best wishes to all and we hope you have a
happy retirement, take care!
spaces throughout the building.
(Omar Cantu)
Edinburg street to be
named after former UTPA
president Nelsen
Fuel Original Member
Spotlight: Ramon Hermida
The Identity Management Project team sent account activation
letters to 1,536 employees and 42,606 students. The team worked
diligently to ensure that all applicants and existing UTB and UTPA
students had their UTRGV accounts in time for registration on April
20th. UTRGV employees received their accounts on April
27th ahead of the July 1st target date.
The activation letters allow new students and employees to set an
email password and recovery options. Once the account is
activated, they have access to Office 365, eduroam, and more.
The team's goal is to have a fully-automated account creation
process that generates activation letters the same day the person
The myUTRGV portal went
live on March 20th and serves
as the online gateway to
access account information,
register for classes, education
resources, email, calendar,
events, and more.
(Kumar Raman)
appears in Banner or PeopleSoft. (Anne Toal)
UTRGV Account Activation Emails
Group
Date
Sent
Activated
Applicants / Transfers
3/23
12,808
6,442
Existing UTB Students
4/6
8,326
4,828
Existing UTPA Students
4/2
21,472
10,129
Hired UTB Employees
4/27
412
285
Hired UTPA Employees
4/27
1,124
654
As of May 4, Enrollment Services has reported that over 14,000
students have enrolled in classes for Fall 2015 at UTRGV.
(Jose F. Hinojosa)
The Banner Student
Information Systems for
UTRGV went live on March
20th. With the collaboration
from the Registrar's Office
team members, the UTRGV
students were able to
access important student
account information and to
register for Fall 2015 classes
on April 20th.
(Ricardo Riojas)
Office 365 Transition Resources page is now ready to assist students,
faculty, staff in moving important emails and files to their new
UTRGV account. The IT Service Desk members from UTB and
UTPA worked together on the self-help articles with step-by-step
instructions available online. Articles includes how-to move emails
from your UTPA or UTB account to your new UTRGV account and
also includes instructions on how to set the forwarding from your
UTPA or UTB emails to the new UTRGV account.
Isai Ramirez will be managing
the project and a planning
meeting will be held on May 6,
2015. Recently, the purchase
orders for additional scanner
licenses and new scanners
were generated. The statement
of work to upgrade the
environment was modified and
a requisition will be created to
begin the process.
(Janie Palacios)
Anyone needing help moving their UTB and UTPA email and files
to UTRGV is encouraged to visit the website, UTRGV.edu/Office365.
Additional personal assistance is also available at the IT Help
Desks on both campuses.
UTRGV Contracts
Frank Zecca, Isaí Ramírez, and Vangie Chia have been identifying
and collecting all existing contracts in preparation for UTRGV.
Cathy Vale, from the Project Management Office, is now the point
of contact for the contracts list. She will be collaborating
with contract owners and requestors at UTPA and UTB to ensure
all IT contracts that will be needed for UTRGV are in place. (Irma
Hermida)
All development work was
placed on hold on April 29th.
The core system administrators
will be working on two projects
for Service Now (SN), the SN
groups and Fuji
Upgrade. Tentatively, these
two projects should be
completed by the first week of
June. ServiceNow is working
on providing quotes for the
UTRGV instances and new
contract. (Janie Palacios)
POWER Center for UTRGV Athletes
The computer lab that were being used for Prep-Me for UTRGV
activities at the Academic Services Building has now been
UTRGV Huron Project
Transition
converted to serve as the POWER Center, a computer lab / tutoring
facility that serves UTRGV athletes. Student athletes are required
to log a certain number of tutoring and study hours throughout the
semester. (Omar Cantú)
The Project Management
Office, led by Esther
Dominguez, has taken
ownership of the process that
updates the project plans and
produces the reports for
all 20 UTRGV teams. She has
done a tremendous job of
taking over this process in just
a few weeks.
(Isaí Ramirez)
UTRGV Faculty and Research Support
The faculty and research support team has been working on the
following:
•
Working with Data Center Engineers upgrading the OFR
UTPA Computer
Replacement Program
cluster which houses campus-wide Virtual Servers.
•
Building a Virtual Server based online form for the
Over two hundred computers
have been ordered for this
year’s Computer Replacement
Program. IT staff will be
contacting UTPA employees
whose University computer
meets the criteria to receive a
replacement computer or
laptop. (Omar Cantú)
University Transportation Center for Railway Safety.
•
Setting up the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing
server for the Center for Survey Research.
•
Reconfigured the Symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP)
queue on thumper cluster for computational chemistry
jobs. The full capability of 96 SMP cores is available to all
super computer users.
•
Increased matlab computational capability on thumper
cluster by adding 25 additional compute nodes into the
matlab queue. For MECE Professor Caruntu.
•
Setup Gaussian application G03 on bambi cluster for Dr.
Phone Chargers
Evangelia Kotsikorou’s computational chemistry work.
In an effort to increase ITrelated services to students, IT
has ordered more mobile
phone charging stations for
installation in more buildings
throughout the UTPA
campus.(Omar Cantú)
(Robert Jackson)
UTPA Faculty Support Program
Video Production team, led by Michael Sandoval, produced five
video profiles of faculty who were recognized on Friday, May 1st
during New Faculty Support Program awards ceremony. The team
has been working on the videos project since March. (Omar Cantu)
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