Category Archives: Top Stories

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ITS ready to help with “homework”

As the U-M community adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are working from home and connecting online with colleagues, often for the first time. Information and Technology Services (ITS) responded with urgency to help students, faculty, and staff host lectures, access university resources, collaborate with colleagues, and continue to support the university from home. Strong networks In… Read More »

Hacks with Friends 2020: Envisioning solutions for today and the future

The sixth annual Hacks with Friends (HWF) welcomed 123 IT and technology professionals and advocates (including four students) from across Michigan IT to the Ross School of Business on March 5 and 6. This year’s event had the most diverse representation of units and groups from any previous year with 22 different affiliated groups involved from three of the… Read More »

2020 presidential debate: Doing our part to support democracy

You have probably heard that the University of Michigan was selected to host the second of three 2020 Presidential Debates. The event will take place on the Ann Arbor campus on October 15, 2020, and will be staged largely on the university’s athletics campus, with Crisler Center as the main stage. In addition to the Crisler Center, other… Read More »

ITS to replace ServiceNow with TeamDynamix as part of service management improvements

In 2013, ITS adopted ServiceNow as part of a multi-phase initiative to provide consistent and effective IT service management (ITSM). Since then, ITS has been steadily raising its level of service excellence by establishing several ITSM processes and customizing ServiceNow to meet service management needs. But there was still room for growth and improvement.  User-centric, laser-focused customer service… Read More »

University leaders approve investment in core network upgrade

What does it take to connect the #1 public research  university in the U.S. to the rest of the world? The answer is a powerful network, that allows faculty, students, staff, and researchers on the U-M Ann Arbor campus to reach and share enormous amounts of information with their partners around the world. The data network is the… Read More »

Duo at U-M: Crossing the finish line

79,093 in Ann Arbor.  39,163 in Michigan Medicine.  10,184 in Dearborn.  8,315 in Flint.  That’s how many U-M students, staff, faculty, and sponsored affiliates – more than 133,700 in all – are now using Duo two-factor authentication to help protect the privacy of the institution’s digital information and assets as well as each individual’s personal information.  The most… Read More »

The secret to creating a successful hybrid course? Iterative improvement.

Beginning in 2013, the Taubman Health Sciences Library (THL) has offered a Systematic Reviews: Opportunities for Librarians hybrid course for librarians that includes both online and in-person content delivery. What started as a pilot in Google Sites has since exploded into a highly popular program with a long waiting list that has trained over 270 librarians. A large… Read More »

Hacks with Friends 2020 registration now open

Register today for Hacks with Friends 2020—a fun-filled event where you have two days to break out of your confines, form a team, build a project (or hack) from scratch, and show it off in a competition!  The 2020 Hacks with Friends (HWF) will take place March 5–6 at the Ross School of Business. HWF is open to… Read More »

U-M receives grant to develop secure, high-capacity research network

Several University of Michigan units have received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for a project that will enhance the university’s network security and assist the needs of its research community. NetBASILISK — short for Network Border At Scale Integrating and Leveraging Individual Security Components — is a collaborative effort that… Read More »

Cybersecurity outreach shows career in IA is attainable

By | January 20, 2020

The Information Assurance: Michigan Medicine (IA) team was awarded a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Innovation Mini-Grant from the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion. With the goal of spreading awareness of the field of cybersecurity and available job opportunities, the IA team developed a two-hour interactive introduction to the field of information assurance. Participants learned about the role… Read More »

Profiles in IT: Nathan Magyar—UX designer extraordinaire

Michigan IT News recently talked with Nathan Magyar who works as a user experience designer at the Center for Academic Innovation (AI). Magyar takes the AI mission to heart: to design the future of learning through research, innovation, experimentation, and iteration. Tell us about your role. As a user experience (UX) designer for the Center for Academic Innovation,… Read More »

Evolving Michigan IT: Preparing and supporting our community for the future

Nearly 100 people packed a Michigan IT Symposium session to discuss the next evolution of the Michigan IT community and program. Formally charged in 2012 to align to a common vision, the community has grown to include about 3,300 people across the University of Michigan—a majority of whom work in a traditional IT role.  Seven years later, the… Read More »

ITS and OIE partner with campus to pilot new accessibility tool in Canvas

The Office for Institutional Equity (OIE), the University Library, Information Technology Services (ITS), College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts (LSA), and other campus partners are piloting the Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT) in Canvas to address more content accessibility issues earlier in the course creation process. The team, collectively the Learning Materials Accessibility Team (LMAT),… Read More »