Supporting Virginia Tech’s strategic priorities through enabling technologies
During the 2024 fiscal year (July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024), Virginia Tech announced two new, overarching strategic priorities — Virginia Tech Advantage and Global Distinction — that would take center stage in the university’s continuous strategic planning process.
The Division of IT works both directly and indirectly to support the university’s strategic priorities, as well as to facilitate the enabling infrastructure that are crucial to the success of university’s goals. The activities, programs, and initiatives highlighted in this annual report reflect our commitment to these priorities.
Virginia Tech Advantage
Virginia Tech Advantage is a multi-year initiative to expand access to a broad range of educational experiences and opportunities for students with financial need. In addition to increasing scholarship opportunities for financially disadvantaged and first-generation students, Virginia Tech Advantage is focused on providing additional support for valuable experiences such as study abroad, internships, and career preparation.
The Division of IT supports the Virginia Tech Advantage through outreach activities as well as its long-standing tradition of employing students through internships, federal work-study programs, and other part-time employment opportunities.
The following achievements during FY 2024 reflect the division’s commitment to Virginia Tech Advantage.
- Online giving platform improvements
- Interactive map improvements help make accessible navigation easier
- Fostering cybersecurity education through outreach
- Cost optimization and resource management efforts are a win-win for Cyber Range and its users
- Elevating privacy with anonymous Cyber Range users feature
Global Distinction
Virginia Tech Global Distinction is the university’s commitment to “elevating our international prominence and strengthening our capacity to act as a force for positive change.” Behind this broad commitment are initiatives aimed at recruiting and developing top talent, investing in groundbreaking research, attracting strong partners, and expanding local, national, and international outreach.
Essential to the success of Global Distinction is a robust, evolving technology. The following initiatives and projects from FY 2024 in particular are working to support the Global Distinction initiatives:
- Enhancing user support by upgrading infrastructure and processes
- Providing technology support for the Job Architecture Project
- New Owl cluster provides CPU power with mega memory
- Advancing scientific research through visualization
Enabling technologies
Underpinning these strategic objectives is the university’s enabling infrastructure, which, according to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Amy Sebring, includes “the people, processes, and resources that form the operational core of the university and allow our campus community to advance Virginia Tech’s strategic objectives.”
Our work in the Division of IT is fundamental to ensuring the university’s enabling infrastructure is robust, flexible, and able to adapt to the university’s evolving needs. Therefore, nearly all of our activities directly support enabling the university’s technology infrastructure.
The following achievements from FY 2024 particularly exemplify our contribution to this foundational need.
- Redesigning identity access management ahead of ERP modernization
- Midpoint and Grouper help Secure Identity Services implement “identity-first” approach
- Updating the university’s identity and access management policy
- Telecommunications business model transformation streamlines procurement of voice and internet services
- University-wide phone system upgrade improves voice services on campus and on the move
- VT Open WiFi offers faster, easier guest internet access
- Enhancing Virginia Tech’s security posture
- Security Incident Quick Response Guide provides essentials for reporting and managing incidents
- ITLS enables full HIPAA compliance across Zoom accounts
- For personalized training recommendations, employees can now Ask Otter
- New Canvas integrations provide unique learning tools for specific majors
- Establishing a Customer Feedback Loop for 4Help IT Support Service
- Setting the stage for Enterprise Resource Planning modernization
- Investing in platform integrations to build efficiency into business operations
- Upgrades to FINTRACS improve financial tracking and reporting
- Data Loss Prevention to protect end users by safeguarding sensitive data across key university storage platforms
- Google Workspace Program ushers in new era of cloud storage management