Release 2025.08

What’s New: Your ITS Update for the 2025.08 Release

The 2025.08 release cycle was dedicated to successfully launching the new academic year, bringing the landmark Robert Day Sciences Center online, and executing critical backend upgrades to enhance the security, speed, and resilience of our campus technology. It was the largest single release in the department’s history — 46 tracked items — and it closed with one of the smoothest starts of term on record.

Key Initiatives for the Campus Community

1. Launching the Robert Day Sciences Center

Our primary focus was the monumental task of bringing the RDSC online. This work ensures that faculty and students have a world-class technological environment from day one.

• Complete network and Wi-Fi coverage: The RDSC network installation is complete. All floors, including the basement, have robust Wi-Fi coverage, and all network ports in offices and labs are active. Coverage was rolled out floor by floor as spaces were released, with weekly site walkthroughs keeping the schedule on track.
• Advanced AV and classroom technology: All AV and technology installations are complete, featuring state-of-the-art systems, and science faculty were trained on the new environment before term. When the classroom computing standard was updated ahead of opening, the team researched, imaged, and configured the full deployment within the window.
• Building operations technology: Multi-function printers were installed and configured, 28 security cameras were deployed, and EMS reservation touch panels were activated throughout the building — 15 units live at demonstration, showing real-time room status. All RDSC rooms were synced into EMS and joined to the campus directory.
• Wireless locks as a campus pilot: Fifty wireless door locks were deployed in RDSC, serving as the pilot for campus-wide adoption of mobile-credential-ready hardware.
• The last switch: The RDSC project formally concluded in mid-August with the final switch installed, and the team’s attention moved to the Sports Bowl.

2. Preparing for the New Academic Year

• Student and faculty onboarding: ITS supported New Student Orientation, New Faculty Orientation, and specialized department orientations. All courses for the new semester were populated with student and faculty data in Canvas. Seven back-to-back Tech Essentials sessions covered online safety, avoiding scams, and good practice for incoming students.
• Lab and classroom readiness: Student computer labs were ready ahead of arrival, with printing and asset management finalized in the last days. The new 2025–26 image was prepared and deployed to all classroom and lab computers.
• Sakai sunset: The transition from Sakai to Canvas is officially complete. All users now use Canvas, which offers a more modern and integrated learning management experience. “Welcome to Canvas” workshops were delivered and the website was updated with a new Canvas gateway.
• Academic software: All academic software licenses were updated for the coming year, ensuring uninterrupted access for coursework and research, and the MATLAB cluster license was reconfigured to remove an annual manual step.
• Exams at volume: In May alone the team processed 492 electronic blue book exams across two weeks — verifying student information and laptop loans, then processing and returning materials after each sitting.

3. Enhanced AV and Sports Technology

• Roberts Pavilion: The new arena sound system installation is complete, providing a markedly upgraded audio experience for events, and delivered in time for opening weekend.
• PlaySight for athletics: The PlaySight camera system was deployed for volleyball and basketball, enhancing video streaming and analytics for our athletic programs, with audio integrated into the arena control room.
• Commencement: The ceremony was carried on a primary switched feed with a rooftop wireless bridge providing a redundant path to the tent.

4. Collaboration and Identity

• Slack opened to staff and faculty: CMC’s workplace messaging platform moved out of pilot and into a beta release for staff and faculty.
• Identity modernization began: Early-access rollout of a modernized cloud identity platform started as the new foundation for campus sign-in.
• A supported path for AI: ITS designated Gemini through Google Workspace for Education as the supported AI assistant for work involving institutional data, giving the community a capable tool with appropriate protections in place. See AI at CMC.

Behind the Scenes: A More Resilient & Secure CMC

1. Modernized and Resilient Infrastructure

• New storage and virtual environment: We migrated our entire virtual machine environment to a new, high-performance storage system serving roughly 100 critical college servers. It was selected for its security features and immutable backup capability, in a service model that removes replacement cycles and warranty exposure. Storage events feed directly into our security monitoring platform.
• Virtualization upgraded end to end: A complex upgrade of the virtualization environment was completed over three weeks, host by host, with two team members earning platform certifications during the work.
• Backups, verified: The backup platform was upgraded across all campus servers and validated, extending protection to workloads that previously sat outside it.
• Proactive system maintenance: In a recent incident, our team successfully rebuilt a failed storage cluster using spare drives with no data loss or service interruption, demonstrating the resilience of our systems. A seamless upgrade to the campus authentication service was also completed, improving the security of our single sign-on.
• Sequencing with care: Adding geographic separation to the redundant network core was scheduled into the following release, so that work on the core sits well away from the start of term.

2. A More Secure Campus

• Security alerts and awareness: We increased vigilance against online threats targeting our community. A campus-wide tech alert warned students about fake orientation events advertised on social media, reminding everyone to verify communications through official cmc.edu domains, and a poster campaign carried the same message about employment scams.
• Practicing what we teach: ITS ran its own phishing awareness exercise internally before taking guidance to campus, and used the results to sharpen how we ask people to report.
• Endpoint visibility completed: Endpoint protection is now fully integrated with our security monitoring platform, giving a single view across network and endpoints. Data loss prevention and security automation were identified as the next steps.
• A network for scientific equipment: We finalized the architecture for a secure network segment for sensitive scientific equipment, protecting both the instruments and the broader campus network.
• Policy people can read: The Responsible Secure Computing Policy was rewritten as a short, practical document that points to the detailed standards behind it — easier to follow, and easier to apply. See Responsible Computing.

3. Managing the Estate

• Software asset management: Software licenses were loaded into FreshService with automatic renewal notifications and contract linking, designed jointly with procurement so renewals arrive with time to make good decisions.
• Domain strategy defined: A long-term plan to give key services their own subdomains was set out, giving CMC room to integrate new services cleanly and improving the security posture of campus email.
• Consortium governance: The shared IT committee framework was revised with annual chair rotation and an IT leadership sponsor assigned to each committee.

This release cycle represents a significant step forward in our campus technology infrastructure. The launch of the RDSC, combined with crucial backend upgrades, provides a powerful and stable platform for teaching, learning, and research at CMC.

Looking Ahead: ITS Priorities for the 2025.12 Release Cycle

Following the successful launch of the academic year and the monumental effort to bring the Robert Day Sciences Center online, our focus now shifts to a phase of maturation, security enhancement, and process refinement. The 2025.12 release is dedicated to fortifying our digital infrastructure, streamlining core institutional processes, and delivering tangible improvements to the campus experience.

1. Fortifying Our Digital Foundation: Security and Governance

• Finalizing the Information Security Policy: The culmination of a multi-year effort, we will finalize and seek formal approval for the college’s comprehensive Information Security Policy.
• Proactive security testing: We will engage our security partner for an external assessment, continuing the annual practice of independent testing.
• Retiring legacy authentication: We will move the community fully onto app-based multi-factor authentication, retiring older telephony-based methods.
• Business Impact Analysis: We will complete the first revision of our BIA template so that we and our campus partners can better understand operational priorities and plan recovery.

2. Streamlining Our Services

• FreshService expansion to HR and Finance: Building on the successful launch within ITS, we will begin onboarding Human Resources and Finance for a more unified support experience.
• A centralized knowledge base: We will introduce a beta wiki and knowledge management platform as a central repository for documentation, project plans, and process guides.
• Finalizing the ITS inventory: We will complete our inventory of software and hardware assets, enabling better lifecycle management and financial stewardship.
• Modernizing international student services: We will begin the data import and implementation of VIA, a modern platform designed to streamline SEVIS reporting.

3. Future-Proofing Our Core Technology

• Geographic redundancy for the network core: We will carry out the planned work to separate the redundant network core across two buildings, adding a further level of resilience.
• Modernizing identity management: We will advance our cloud identity platform — a key step in our long-term strategy to strengthen security and simplify access.
• Supporting the next capital project: We will finalize the network design for the Sports Bowl, ensuring its technological foundation is robust and integrated from day one.
• Mobile credentials: We will prepare our systems to be “locks ready” for mobile credentials — the first step toward using smartphones for secure building access.