Information Technology (IT) professionals from across Illinois State University came together in the State Farm Hall of Business on April 13 for the spring Continuous Improvement in Technology Extension (CITx) conference.
CITx is a half-day conference that sprung from the full-day CIT conference held each summer since 2013. CIT brings Illinois State’s over 200 IT professionals together to learn about upcoming projects and to discover collaboration opportunities.
The conference began with a 90-minute IT News update. Dean of the College of Applied Science and Technology Todd McLoda kicked off the session with a keynote address discussing how technology has changed and how Illinois State IT professionals work to stay on the cutting edge.
Following McLoda’s talk, staff from across campus shared updates from their units. Some of these updates include:
- The IT Service Management tool (Cherwell) is going to receive a minor upgrade designed to make the tool more responsive for tablets and mobile devices. May 2018 is the expected upgrade date.
- IT Help is moving into version 2.0, which features integration with my.illinoistate.edu, single sign-on, simplified user interface, and more. Fall 2018 is the target release.
- The Web and Interactive Communications team celebrated the launch of the new University homepage on January 10. Director Arturo Ramirez reported that the new design has led to more prospective student leads and more overall traffic.
- Adobe Creative Cloud is scheduled to be made available to the Illinois State community in July.
- ReggieNet will also be seeing an upgrade in July, which will improve the grade book and run more responsively on mobile devices.
- Milner Library has recently launched Ready Record Studio, which allows the Illinois State community to record presentations easily. In addition, Milner has recently acquired a 3D printer and is rolling out the process of how 3D printing will be used by the Illinois State community.
Finally, the CIT planning committee announced the launch of the CIT MVP Award. There will be two awards presented over the course of the year. The first, presented at the summer CIT conference, is the full-time employee award. The second, presented at the spring CITx conference, will be awarded to a student MVP. For more information on the award and how to nominate an MVP, check out the awards website.
“CIT is very pleased to provide an annual recognition of our outstanding IT staff and student employees,” said CIT Planning Committee Chair Carla Birckelbaw. “The MVP Awards give us the opportunity to publicly acknowledge the great work happening behind the scenes to continuously improve the student, faculty and staff experience with technology at Illinois State.”
After IT News, the group split into four discussion groups, with topics ranging from growing your IT career to how to utilize bot programs. Topics were selected by the conference planning committee based on submissions. If you are interested in assisting the committee, email isucit@IllinoisState.edu.
CITx is sponsored by Administrative Technologies, the Office of Academic Technologies, TechZone, and the College of Business.
Learn more at CIT.IllinoisState.edu.
