SSoE FY16 Technology Group Annual Report

A N N U A L R E P O R T F Y 2 0 1 6 TECHNOLOGY GROUP

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Annual Report

FISCAL YEAR 2016

This Report Highlights Performance, Accomplishments and Value Delivered By The Technology Group To The Swanson School Of Engineering’s Faculty, Students, Leadership, and Staff Through Fiscal Year 2016.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mission and Vision................................................................................................................... 2

An Ending Brings A New Beginning ........................................................................................ 3

Value Through Services, Resources and Relationships ........................................................... 4

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Education ....................................................................... 5

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Research ........................................................................ 6

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Industry & Development ............................................. 7

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Operations ..................................................................... 9

FY16 Goals: Defined and Accomplished ................................................................................ 10

FY17 Goals: Aligned to Plan, Focused on Value .................................................................... 11

About the Team ...................................................................................................................... 12

TECHNOLOGY GROUP

MISSIONProvide optimal computing environments, advanced resources, support, solutions consulting,

testing, and technical guidance to support the goals and objectives laid out in the SSoE

Strategic Plan.

TECHNOLOGY GROUP

VISIONThe Swanson School of Engineering’s technology offerings and organization will be viewed

by faculty as a top tier unit supporting their education and research goals. As well by peer

Schools, SSoE will be viewed as a leader in providing advanced technology resources for

faculty, offering superior and effective learning environments for students, and ensuring

technology alignment with industry partner needs.

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AN ENDING BRINGS A NEW BEGINNING

Nearly nine years ago in late 2007, work began on the complete renovation of Benedum Hall on the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus in Oakland.

The vision provided nearly a decade ago called for the transformation of Benedum Hall from a concrete-partitioned, fractured set of spaces into an open, integrated and collaborative set of spaces conducive to the cross-discipline work that Swanson faculty had become known for.

Through these past nine years, faculty, staff, students, parents and corporate and philanthropic partners have witnessed this progressive transformation of a facility that was a siloed set of spaces into an integrated set of teaching and research spaces aimed at promoting innovation and excellence.

As has been evidenced in previous annual reports, the SSoE Technology Group’s creation in 2009 and maturity since then became a reflection of this physical transformation of Benedum – what the Group was and what it delivered in 2009 are quite different than what it is and delivers now for the Swanson School in 2016.

The Group’s creation reflected an end to old practices in Swanson. An end to the silos and lack of standards. An end to the variations in resources and platforms for researchers and teachers alike. An end to mis-aligned staff and roles.

As the Group matured, and as this Benedum construction project ended, new beginnings appeared. Integrated operations. Process focus. Standardized but high level platforms for teaching and research. More services delivered by the University. Strong customer relationships. Awareness of and attentiveness to business alignment.

So just as the Benedum project ends, we see new beginnings. New classrooms for students and instructors. New research spaces for our innovative faculty. New opportunities for the SSoE Technology Group to deliver the platforms, services and resources needed to continue to maintain Swanson’s standard of excellence.

This annual report will elaborate the SSoE Technology Group’s accomplishments through Fiscal Year 2016, reporting against Plan targets in our core categories of service. Additionally, we will list our anticipated/planned accomplishments for the coming Fiscal Year 2017.

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VALUE THROUGH SERVICES, RESOURCES AND RELATIONSHIPS

The success of any service organization is fundamentally driven by the needs of the customer. The more tightly a service organization is aligned to the needs of the customer it serves, the more value that service organization will drive.

The SSoE Technology Group focuses on understanding those needs and representing them in the way the group is composed, the roles we play and the services we deliver. FY16 represented a continued focus on ensuring all of the services the Group drives to the Swanson School are rooted in customer need.

Building on the foundations constructed since the Group’s formation, FY16 saw team members being immersed more deeply into research operations and related activity. New laboratories, expanded management offerings and new resources for researchers were delivered through the fiscal year. Our guided position with the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) delivered more tools and integration to our teaching faculty, ensuring optimized use of the advanced technology rooms offered.

Our students, our faculty, our staff, our industry partners and our alumni make up the customer channels we focus on and support. Making it easier to collaborate. Or more efficient to work with industry. Or more interactive class sessions. Whatever the challenge or need presented, the SSoE Technology Group positions itself to understand the need and respond with value and impact.

The result of this impact is a Technology Group that is able to be nimble in the issues it tackles across a broad spectrum, a Group whose activities and actions are impactful to the institution on important matters, and a Group whose value to the Swanson School grows substantially year after year. In the coming pages we will dive more deeply per area of focus to better illustrate the Group’s actions, accomplishments and impact.


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Support of Swanson’s academic mission is a keystone of the comprehensive service model the SSoE Technology Group. Below are several of the accomplishments of this past fiscal year, led by Nathan Pearce.

A new approach to the annual classroom refresh of PC images has been implemented with great success. This new process allows us to virtually build and test the contents of our advanced technology classrooms in VDI. Once finished testing and validating the contents, we are able to remotely deploy this directly to the classrooms during our scheduled maintenance window. Through this process, we are able to completely refresh and validate our classrooms for the new academic year in a matter of a few days with minimal manual effort required.

All flipped classroom video content has been migrated from separate SharePoint sites into the University’s enterprise video hosting platform, My Pitt Video (Panopto). This allows students to have easier access by offering multi-platform playback (various web browsers on all types of devices: laptops, tablets, smartphones) and easy integration into Courseweb.

VDI solutions have expanded to multiple courses in various departments. This provides user access to tools such as SolidWorks, Lab View, and Primavera without the need to be working on a physical PC in one of the school’s advanced technology classrooms.

The Qualtrics survey platform has been leveraged to serve the needs of various academic centers within SSoE, including PittStart and Co-op. PittStart has implemented the tool to offer a learning platform and quiz as a task for students complete before reporting to their PittStart orientation dates. The Co-op program has moved to Qualtrics to collect student and employer data in a much

easier and manageable fashion than the previous, dying platform could offer.

Our relationship with the Center for Instructional Design and Distance Education (CIDDE), both the physical classroom division and the educational technology division, has continued to grow and strengthen over time. We now have formalized support procedures in place to better manage issues in the CIDDE classrooms throughout Benedum Hall. On the educational technology front, we now have full access to Courseweb in order to better support SSoE faculty in-house, we have helped improve the My Pitt Video platform through extensive use and feedback, and we have even shown off our classroom technology resources to interested parties from other schools/departments at the University.

Honorable Mention: Academic event support has remained extremely successful for events, new and old. The newly established, semi-annual Senior Design Expo relies on a web-based judging platform that is managed on-site during the events. The event keeps growing and is becoming more and more successful with each new semester. For the two Freshman Engineering hosted academic events, we offer technology support to presenters and help coordinate a live stream/video recording service for portions of these events.

Honorable Mention: We have opened up seven new advanced technology classroom spaces as the Benedum Hall renovation project came to a close. Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) now has five new departmental classrooms on the 12th floor, and Industrial Engineering (IE) recently opened up two new spaces on the 10th floor, bringing the total number of advanced technology classrooms to 27 – more than any other group at the University of Pittsburgh.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered:

EDUCATION


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Ensuring researchers are resourced with the tools and platforms they need to perform their innovative work is a key operating focus of the SSoE Technology Group. Whether taking the form of an active role in a research grant, providing operational-focused resources to increase efficiencies, or adding resources to ensure growing needs are met, the Group demonstrates flexibility and responsiveness in the service stance it takes in supporting the SSoE research enterprise.

Of the most common challenges to SSoE’s centers, institutes and large research labs, scheduling and user management with research devices is among the most acute. For years, these important research areas relied on email, spreadsheets and hand written note pads to manage time, schedule users and in some cases bill/invoice for time on a machine. The investment by SSoE and the University in these research areas demands a higher level of operational focus and a resource that is simple to implement and delivers value.

The Facility Online Manager (FOM) software was engaged by the Petersen Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering (PINSE) in 2010 and provided the platform to improve the increasing volumes of users moving through the Institute. In 2013, and evidenced in prior annual reports, the Group’s leadership took an active role in ensuring FOM was properly operated in PINSE and structured and delivering the benefits it was designed for. In 2016, FOM was expanded to three additional sites across Benedum Hall, and will be expanded across the University into other Schools in the coming months. School leadership is supporting advancing FOM across all of Benedum’s relevant research spaces. This standardized approach will deliver high value and better transparency into the day to day operations these sites engage in, while concurrently identifying opportunities for improvement.

FY16 continued a trend with the Technology Group assuming leadership positions at the School and University level on several efforts.

Detailed in the SSoE Strategic Technology Plan, research data storage is and has been a critical missing piece of the research operations puzzle for many years. Previous efforts by the Group to highlight this need went unanswered at the Institutional level. But with support from the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research, and a unit level effort led by Athletics that SSoE attached itself to, the issue has risen to a point of institutional priority. Efforts will continue and FY17 should signal a new and important resource added.

The Group’s leadership continued to play a central role in the School’s efforts to establish a direction and opportunity related to the Internet of Things (IoT) also noted in the Strategic Plan. Identifying IoT opportunities with the Industrial Internet Consortium along with regional and national industrial partnership opportunities were driven in FY16.

Finally, Group leadership’s planned role in the investigation of operational and strategic opportunities with the Swanson School’s and the University’s shared research facilities will undoubtedly generate large scale and impactful changes in the way researchers use these facilities, how they are managed, how they are promoted and how they can be improved in the immediate and long term.

Combined, these services and resources delivered along with initiatives carried forward present a strong and focused stance the SSoE Technology Group takes to support and advance the research enterprise in Swanson.


RESEARCH


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As referenced in the SSoE Strategic Technology Plan, the Group’s role in facilitating the relationship between industrial partners and the School is a critical one. Over the past seven years the Group has worked effectively with Industry Relations and the Development teams from Institutional Advancement to develop new services, interaction spaces and agreements to make our research work for industry.

Among the highest priorities for industry are our academic programs. In FY15, the Group assumed management control over the online graduate programs the Swanson School offers. FY16 brought the opportunity to move in a different but focused direction on the leader of these efforts.

A new senior manager of recruitment for SSoE online programs was hired in early 2016 with the three-pronged goal of program promotion, enrollments and revenues. To date, critical business analysis has been performed to understand the competitive landscape of our online graduate programs and a SWOT analysis has been applied to each program as well. Sales efforts are already underway at major national conferences and the upward swing will continue in FY17.

Chief among the challenges to a Swanson-based or even University of Pittsburgh-based sales effort is the data current collected and spread across multiple systems and

groups. Data contained on the same company with varying levels of accuracy and timeliness are present in what are considered core and school-based systems.

The Swanson School recognized the criticality of this need, and in advance of an enterprise/institutional CRM coming on line, the Swanson School engaged Salesforce to initiate the process of properly managing our industrial partners’ information and data relevant to relationship management.

The engagement of Salesforce will not only support the sales being driven through the online graduate program activity – it will also directly support the growing activity coming out of the Swanson School’s centers and institutes. These efforts, referred to as “Making Research Work” provide for a strong, focused operational structure that will drive industry into value-laden relationships with the University and Swanson.

Further on the Making Research Work efforts, the Swanson School and SSoE Technology Group leadership worked to formalize the structure proposed in the January 2016 white paper. An excerpt from the white paper follows that conveys that focus and benefit.

The University’s Institutes and Centers have acted as the accelerator of the research ascension at Pitt, discovering new techniques, materials or procedures, or building new assemblies, tools or resources.


INDUSTRY & DEVELOPMENT


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An acute need exists to provide centralized operational and business support to select research center staff, faculty and leadership. The Making Research Work proposal will recommend the creation of a function that will act as the operational and corporate relations arm of these Institutes and Centers – ensuring efficient operations, streamlined processes, standard protocols, and strong corporate interaction.

Operationally, in many ways appropriate Institutes and Centers in the Swanson School of Engineering have the potential to be self-supporting businesses, with the ability in some cases to charge user fees, provide services for

sponsored research, and under appropriate frameworks, engage in fee-for-service and more corporate research arrangements. Combined, these Institutes and Centers have the potential to generate millions in revenues each fiscal year to the University.

We will demonstrate in this proposal that select Institutes and Centers, once operationally optimized, could be generating millions more in revenues annually. Revenues that can be directed back into each unit’s equipment and staff and concurrently improve and widen the University’s corporate research partnerships.


INDUSTRY & DEVELOPMENTcontinued


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Understanding the workflow and resource needs of the organization is key to any technology services unit. Three key initiatives spanned the fiscal year and saw the Group enhance security, reduce costs and personnel time, and help to lead a new enterprise initiative.

In 2014, the National Institute of Standards & Technology released its Cybersecurity Framework. The NIST CSF offers organizations a standardized approach for managing cybersecurity activities and reducing cyber risk. In early 2015, Penn State University’s Engineering school endured a massive, school-wide hacking/security incident; that incident rippled across higher education, and especially engineering schools. In Summer 2015 the SSoE Technology Group agreed to partner with the CSSD Security Group to be the first school on campus to have the NIST CSF applied to its current technical and operational state.

The NIST CSF exercise, which probes even deeper than a technology audit, was applied to the Swanson School in Fall 2015. The results were generally positive, and provided an “intrusive snapshot” of where Swanson is, and where the SSoE Technology Group stands in adherence to best practices. And while gaps identified need to be addressed quickly, the general takeaway was that Swanson is well situated as it relates to best practices and adherence to standards.

Managing the school’s expanding data, application and database needs has been and remains a central offering of the SSoE Technology Group. Soon after the group

was formed in 2009, an enterprise level purchase was made for hardware to answer those needs. Since then various changes and expansions have been made, with all equipment residing in the University’s Tier 3 Data Center in Blawnox, PA.

Since that purchase, the Group has progressively leveraged virtualized environments to deliver the same services. Virtualization of resources is common across industry and higher education, and SSoE has been one of the thought and use leaders on optimizing resources and lowering costs through virtualization. In late 2015, a major project was initiated to migrate off all physical servers and move to virtualized servers (also called a “P-to-V” migration). By end of FY16, Swanson will be fully virtualized. Still offering the same high performance, stable environments and platforms we have since 2009 – but now at lower costs and requiring a reduced personnel commitment.

In late 2015 the Chancellor charged CSSD with leading a project that would deliver a comprehensive CRM solution to Pitt. The CRM would hold student, accounting, corporate, advancement and other related data – all in one centrally managed location. Members of the SSoE Technology Group were asked to sit on a select leadership committee that would oversee the entire process.

As FY16 comes to a close, the committee has narrowed its vendor choices, and the Swanson school has again established a leadership position in this important effort.


OPERATIONS


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FY16 GOALS: DEFINED AND ACCOMPLISHED

As illustrated in the previous pages, the SSoE Technology Group experienced an extremely productive FY16, broadening its reach and impact, while delivering the highest level of service and high performing platforms for its faculty, students and staff. Below is an accounting of the Group’s specific goal attainment, as laid out in the FY15 Annual Report.

This and future annual reports will align the Group’s Goals with those elaborated in the Strategic Plan. That Plan is a living document, and edits are made on a regular basis. These next-year goals will consistently represent the objectives and strategies conveyed in the Plan.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Education

School-wide rollout of the Unified Student Record to all SSoE Departments

Result: USR was successfully rolled out to all departments and units across Swanson. Impact has already been conveyed and extremely positive.

Freshman program rollout of the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Spring semester School-wide

Result: This goal was not attained due to decisions related to investment levels.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Research

Collect requirements related to establishment of enterprise source control software aimed at improving code management & sharing and project management across SSoE

Result: Progress was made toward identifying best source and limited adoptions were made by research groups but an enterprise solution has yet to be agreed upon until more firm requirements elaborate best resource.

Co-lead efforts for Qualtrics research safety training data integration into AccessIT and Peoplesoft personnel records

Result: This goal was partially attained in working with Environmental Health and Safety to establish review processes for specialized training. Integration with AccessIT and Peoplesoft remains a goal and will be carried forward to FY17.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Industry and Development

Collaborate with Corporate Relations to develop an interactive business to business image and functionality on the SSoE web site

Result: Design was initiated and sites are estimated to launch at the end of FY16. Additionally, representation on University level committees to develop same industrial pathways to service will deliver even more in the way of structure and “B-to-B” interaction.

Develop comprehensive set of collaboration and integrated LMS offerings targeting industry-linked Project Classes with Corporate Relations.

Result: Work continues on this front in greater communication with Corporate Relations and associated groups. This goal will be carried forward to FY17.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Operations

School wide pilot rollout of Faculty Recruitment workflows in PeopleAdmin/PittSource

Result: All requirements were completed and pilot systems were opened up for users. SSoE administrators will be granted access to same, with full implementation of the tool happening in early FY17.


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FY17 GOALS: ALIGNED TO PLAN, FOCUSED ON VALUE

This and future annual reports will align the Group’s Goals with those elaborated in the Strategic Plan. That Plan is a living document, and edits are made on a regular basis. These next-year goals will consistently represent the objectives and strategies conveyed in the Plan.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Education

• Implement integrated advanced technology classroom asset management with SSoE InSite facility management software.

• Implement Crestron Fusion classroom electronic management software across all SSoE advanced technology classrooms (27).

•Provide technical resources and guidance in advance of the 2017 ABET Accreditation process for SSoE.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Research

•Take university leadership stance in maximizing efficiency in shared research facility through expanded and standardized use of Facility Online Manager (FOM) management software across SSoE and beyond.

• Introduce service role in the Group specifically designated to support the unique and growing needs of the School’s institutes and centers.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Industry and Development

• Implement digital signatures across select centers and institutes to improve contract processing and document management.

•Take leadership position in development of new enterprise CRM tool aimed at corporate relations management and donor management, and position SSoE as university pilot.

Area of Focus, Services Delivered: Operations

•Complete first school-wide cycle of device image refreshes to establish base year for future program.

•Complete Physical-to-Virtual migrations at the University Network Operations Center, reducing maintenance costs and improving stability and efficient management of School’s data storage, database and application resources.


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ABOUT THE TEAM

FY16 brought continued change and role adoption to the Group. Refined roles were a direct result of continued alignment with School and University changes, strategic plans. The “constancy of change” across the team is a reflection of the strategic dedication we have to ensuring our roles reflect value delivered to the Swanson School.

Richard R. ColwellFirst-Year Program Office & Student Services Technology Lead

[email protected]

Jeremy DennisTechnology Projects & Software Licensing Manager

[email protected]

J. Kenneth DotyDistance Learning & Technology Services Lead

[email protected]

Kevin KratzSoftware Developer

[email protected]

James A. LyleECE Department Technology Lead, Senior Electronics Specialist

[email protected]

Matthew McColloughBioE Department Technology Lead

[email protected]

Jason McDonaldChemE Department Technology Lead

[email protected]

William McGaheyECE Department Technology Lead, Senior Systems Administrator

[email protected]

Stephanie OpalinskiSenior Manager of Online Graduate Engineering Program Recruitment & Energy Educational Programs

[email protected]

Nathan J. Pearce Educational Technology Lead

[email protected]

Peter ScalercioMEMS Department Technology Lead

[email protected]

James M. SegneffIE Department Technology Lead, Senior Systems Analyst

[email protected]

Fred TylkaCEE Department Technology Lead

[email protected]

Brian VidicDirector

[email protected]

The information printed in this document was accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of printing and is subject to change at any time at the University’s sole discretion.

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SSoE FY16 Technology Group Annual Report

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