September 2008 Newsletter

Welcome to the first monthly edition of our newsletter. The purpose of this newsletter is to raise the visibility of the Information Technology departments and inform the GCSU community about technology issues. The newsletter will regularly report on the progress of the Strategic Information Technology Plan, the annual IT work plan, completed projects, and items of interest such as a security tip of the month, news of major software upgrades and patches, and productivity tips for Microsoft Office. An "Ask Mr. Knowitall" section will answer reader submitted questions. I intend to highlight a member of my IT team each month and welcome new employees as they arrive. I hope you will find this newsletter informative and usefull. I ask for your honest feedback to help me improve on future issues.

Sincerely,

Donald L. Steward
Executive Director of Information Technology and CIO

Welcome our new IT staff members

Mr. Edgardo Delgado is our new multimedia technology support specialist. Edgardo will be working with many of you to help implement new multimedia equipment and solutions in the classrooms.

Ms. Johanna Ramirez is our new intermediate database administrator. She is a graduate of GCSU and will be supporting Oracle database installation and configuration after a training period.

Please welcome Edgardo and Johanna to our university community.

The annual work plan for 2009

The IT division will be very busy during FY 2009. IT was fortunate to receive sufficient end-of-year funding to purchase equipment in advance to significantly improve the classroom experience for faculty and students. Over the fall and spring semesters IT will be replacing 80 instructor's stations with new Dell PCs. And we will be working with Physical Plant to install 20 Basic Projection classrooms that are equiped with a ceiling mounted projector, switching unit for laptop use and a new Dell PC.

The IT division will be working with the Library & Instructional Technology Center to develop a multi-year Tactical Plan in response to the IT Strategic Plan. As part of the Tactical Plan response to the Strategic Plan. IT will:

IT also plans to renovate and expand the wireless network coverage in several areas, consolidating three different web sites into one under the new content management system, and install over 100 end-of-year purchased Dell and Apple desktop or laptop computers.

IT staff member of the month - James Carlisle

James graduated from Middle Georgia College in Cochran with an Associate of Science in Business Administration; GCSU with a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in Computer Based Information Systems; Georgia Southwestern State University with a Master of Science in Computer Science. He comes to us from Middle Georgia Technical College where he was a faculty member for seven years and Systems/Network Administrator.

Security tip of the month

Faculty and staff computers at GCSU have virus updates automatically installed, but your home computer may not have automatic updates turned on. Check your home computer and set your computer to receive automatic anti-virus updates and automatic Microsoft updates. If you need help setting your computer to receive automatic updates call the Help Desk for assistance.

Tech Tip

Recently, there has been an increase in the amount of e-mails that come from various sources asking for account information and/or passwords.   These e-mails are instances of "phishing" (the process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication). Please, do not reply to any e-mail asking for such sensitive information.  Some helpful information on how to avoid these scams can be found here.

Ask Mr. KnowItAll

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