Much like the recent centralization of the IUS Police and Purchasing Department, the IU Southeast IT Department merged with the system-wide University Information Technology Services. With the merger, IU Southeast’s branch can now access more resources from other IU campuses.
The merger will not have a negative effect on the students at IU Southeast, but it will allow IT to focus more on issues helpful to the students.
Tom Sawyer, IUS chief information officer, said the merger will allow the IUS IT Department to work closer with other IU campuses to help with problems they are having. They will be able to work closely with IU Southeast’s problems, as well.
Sawyer said UITS created a strategic plan in 1998, in which the universities and their IT Departments became two separate branches of the IU system.
“It is no longer necessary to have a bunch of the resources we have here on campus due to the fiber networks of UITS,” Sawyer said. “You won’t see much of a change on campus. The biggest change is the staff will become a part of UITS instead of IUS IT Department.”
As far as the amount of service the department can give to students, Sawyer said they should be able to provide the same if not more.
“Having one centralized IT Department gives IU leverage over other universities,” Sawyer said.
Nick Ray, director of Support Services, said there are many different ways they are doing classrooms and computer labs at other campuses that would really benefit students at IU Southeast. This includes setting up a group study workshop in a classroom or computer lab that would allow students to hook their laptops up to a TV screen and share their work with their team members.
“There are people in UITS who can help us do expansions here,” Ray said. “This is a great opportunity. There is a transition team that is going over the small stuff — business cards, name tags and things like that.
“I don’t know if anyone in IT knows if the pay will stay same or what,” Ray said. “All of us are kind of learning about this as we go.”
Sawyer said, in light of the merger, business will be the same. However, who to report to will be different.
“When you go through the paperwork and little decisions that have to be made — all the electronics in IU — it’s a lot to go through, and it just takes time,” Sawyer said. “If I have things my way, then there are going to be a lot of changes happening in the next few months.”
Sawyer said some of the changes he is looking to bring to IU Southeast are projects like group learning environments, structuring the computers in the computer labs differently and many other ideas.
“I have staff members doing non-IT jobs that they are doing because no one else wanted to,” Sawyer said. “The centralization will allow us to off load these tasks and get back our mission and IT-related jobs.”
Ray and Sawyer both agreed this was the right thing to do.
“This was the right time to centralize and has been coming for the past four to five years,” Sawyer said.
By BRYAN JONES
Staff
jonesbry@umail.iu.edu
