Fordham’s Information Technology (IT) services are ramping up in anticipation to a move toward 24-hour service availability.
The department has added new faculty services, educational links and is sponsoring a special task force study to improve help desk service, according to Frank Sirianni, Ph.D., vice president and chief information officer of the department. Sirianni said that infrastructure is now in place for all full-time tenure-track faculty members to build and maintain their own web pages. IT support is offering one-on-one training for faculty members in developing and maintaining web sites.
Faculty and staff can now access the latest schedule of technology workshops at www.fordham.edu/training. Fordham employees can also schedule one-on-one training sessions in workshop topics, such as Lotus Notes, WAVES, Dreamweaver and the OS system. Employees can also request training in additional software applications not offered under the technology workshop topics (such as SPSS software), by calling their closest Faculty Technology Center at either the Rose Hill or Lincoln Center campuses. Group training is also available by request.
Sirianni said that all non-training issues, including problems with Internet connectivity, Lotus Notes, hardware, and websites, are still resolved through the University’s help desk.
“If you are calling about a service that the help desk can’t handle directly,” he said, “They will be able to steer you to the right department.”
If there is a critical issue, Sirianni suggests that the caller ask to speak with a help desk manager.
Sirianni also said the department recently assigned its IT Customer Service Task Force, headed by Deirdre Dillon, director of customer relations, to develop a way of measuring help desk performance with an eye toward increasing customer satisfaction.
“We hope to have made a significant improvement in customer service by the fall,” Dillon said.
Plans are underway to upgrade the entire IT department from an operational model, where information in software platforms was not integrated and little preventive maintenance was done on University-wide systems, to a strategic model, which will make software programs more compatible with one another and which should reduce—or even eliminate—serious outages.
“The real value of the new technology will be our ability to provide 24/7 web access, with self-help capability, to nearly all services for students, faculty and staff,” he said. “From soup to nuts: admission, registration, human resources, and many new facilities.”
In the meantime, IT encourages frequent visits to these sites for the technology-curious:
The Fordham IT News Room is online at www.fordham.edu/italerts. Katherine Egan, director of IT Strategy and Planning, encourages the Fordham community to visit the site for up-to-date IT news and alerts, and for information on compatibility issues.
Class training for faculty and staff is available through April 27 in Microsoft Office, graphics, web design, productivity tools and email, as well as one-on-one sessions, at www.fordham.edu/training.
