UCS Toolkit - OIT Technology Meetings

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OIT Technology Meeting - September 2005

The first of the new OIT Technology Meetings was held on Wednesday, September 7 in the Busch Campus Center. These meetings are replacing the PC/LAN Administrators Meetings.

Announcements

Armen Varjabedian, MSSG
There are new regulations going into effect that require the University to no longer use social security numbers as student ID numbers. In LDAP, there are currently two fields for each student, a SSN and a student ID. Up to now, these numbers were the same. This will be changing in February and a new student ID number will be issued. The new ID number will still be nine digits, but will use a range of numbers that the Social Security Administration has identified as a range in which they will not issue SSN. For any application that currently uses student ID numbers, you need to make sure that it is actually looking at the student ID field and not the SSN field. This includes applications that read the magnetic strip on the RUConnections cards, since these will all have to be reprogrammed to use the new student ID numbers instead of SSN. These same changes will also be applied to faculty/staff at some point. Any one currently receiving some sort of administrative data feed that includes SSN should have already been contacted about the change. If not, make sure you get in touch with you contact person.

Presentations

IT Certificate Program
Tricia Nolfi, University Human Resources
This is an RU specific class, it's about doing your work AT RUTGERS. It is not a substitute for technical training. Participants will be required to take five foundation courses and three electives from a growing list. The eight classes must be completed within an 18 month time period that begins with the taking of the first class.

The program begins in October of 2005. More information will be provided as we get closer. Classes will be listed in the UHR Professional Development Calendar.

It will be required for new employees in IT positions, but will be open to all University employees, even non-IT, on all three campuses.

OIT Technology Meetings
Armen Varjabedian, MSSG
The thought behind the new format is this. There are a lot of very talented individuals working in IT at the University. We want to encourage everyone to share their knowledge and ideas with their peers.

The way in which we hope to do this is with the presentation format of the meetings. As Tom Grzelak has outlined in previous emails, each month the meeting will consist of two to three presentations or demos, lasting 10 to 20 minutes each, including some Q&A time. This will take place in the auditorium style room. Following the presentations, we will have two to three break out sessions in a classroom style setting to encourage conversation. The break out sessions may or may not be follow-ups on topics covered in the presentations.

The presentations topics will be chosen based on suggestions from the group, as well as what is believed to be of interest to a the general IT population. They can be on anything from some OS specific tips, to new non-OS specific technologies. These will be presented by individuals who volunteer to share their knowledge with their peers. The vendor demos will no longer be part of this format. Instead, we will work on putting together a vendor fair in the spring.

In order for these meetings to work, it will take the backing of the individuals who make up the Rutgers IT community. These are your meetings and they will be as successful as we all make them.

To facilitate matters, we're enlisting the assistance of the UCS Toolkit Committee. Since this group is made up of individuals experienced with IT at Rutgers, we felt they would be a good group to identify topics of interest and potential presenters. The committee is currently made up of a mix of OIT staff and non-OIT staff, though the ratio is not where it once was since a couple of people have left the University. I'd like to have some additional non-OIT staff participating in deciding on the meeting agendas, as well as upkeep of the toolkit site. If you are interested in working with us, please contact me ASAP as we will be meeting very soon to work out the presentation topics for the next few months.

Also, even if you can't volunteer for the committee, if you have any suggestions for topics, either something you'd like to present, or something you'd like to see presented, please contact Armen.

What Happened to RUCS?
Mary Ann Chianelli
RUCS has recently been re-organized as the Office of Information Technology (OIT).