The Hub: Published By, For and About ITS

ITS is in the news with stories on the Carolina Computing Initiative, a campaign against illegal file sharing and efforts to stump our resident geek!

The University Gazette celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Carolina Computing Initiative. A Daily Tar Heel article focused on the ITS campaign to discourage illegal file sharing, while Priscilla Alden, assistant vice chancellor for user support and engagement, tackled a question on saving .wdb files as .txt files in the Raleigh News and Observer’s Stump the Geeks column.

Shortly after Vice Chancellor and CIO Larry Conrad came to Carolina, he met with a group of campus IT directors who collectively represented a broad cross section of schools and units. In that and subsequent meetings, information about IT activities in campus units and views were exchanged. So valuable were the exchanges, Conrad approached the group to ask if they would serve in an advisory capacity to him as Carolina’s CIO. A new group, the Information Technology Executive Council (ITEC) was formed. Continue Reading

Steven Haring, a senior finance and human resource executive, has been named assistant vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Haring has extensive expertise in operating and capital budget preparation, financial reporting, automated financial systems and business software, accounting policies and procedures, human resource management and staff training and development. Continue Reading

Recently, a message encouraging flexible work arrangements was sent from Brenda Malone, associate vice chancellor for Human Resources, to the University community in acknowledgment of the unprecedented increase in the price of gasoline and the burden it places on UNC-Chapel Hill employees. The University encouraged individual units to perform their own assessments and determine the best approach for their staff.

In an effort to consider all viable options for ITS, Vice Chancellor and CIO Larry Conrad and ITS senior management focused on the issue of flexible work arrangements and reviewed various options – including flexible work hours, 4-day work weeks and telework.

The conclusion was that ITS is limited to offering staff the option of flexible work hours. Continue Reading

Access to UNC’s Oracle calendar will be unavailable this coming weekend beginning Friday, July 18 at 11 p.m. until Sunday, July 20 at noon. During this time all access to the calendar server via Oracle desktop client, Microsoft Outlook connector, Web interface, smartphones and PDA’s via SyncML or desktop conduit will be unavailable.

The UNC campus calendar server (also known as schedule.unc.edu, webcal.unc.edu, calendar.unc.edu, and syncml.unc.edu) will be upgraded during this period to maintain support from the vendor, Oracle. Continue Reading

Photos taken at the recent ITS Employee Council Summer Staff Appreciation Cook-out are now available in the Recent Photos section on the left hand side of this page under ITS Resources.

The name of the ITS division responsible for campus telephony and networking infrastructure has been changed from Telecommunications to Communication Technologies, effective Thursday, June 26, 2008. Continue Reading

Summer is heating up at Carolina and like many departments across campus, ITS Teaching and Learning has shifted into high-gear, preparing computer labs for fall semester. The Classroom Hotline group will be life-cycling 200 computers in student labs, upgrading each system to the Carolina Computing Initiative’s (CCI) new eco-friendly model, the Lenovo m57eco tower. Continue Reading