Information Technology

About OIT

The Office of Information Technology (OIT), founded in May of 2000, provides administrative and academic computing support services for the entire University.  The department consists of five divisions: Administrative Computing, Infrastructure, Enterprise Systems, Technology Support Services, and Instructional Technologies. 

OIT Organization Chart

Administrative Computing

Administrative computing provides implementation and support services for the Student Information System and Enterprise Resource Management Planning System (Banner).   This division provides critical support tools needed by the academic colleges to gain access to educational records.

Infrastructure

The Infrastructure division consists of three primary groups:  Telecommunications, Network Services, and Security.  Telecommunications is responsible for the engineering and installation of University wide data and communications physical plant.  Network Services oversees the University local and wide area networks.  Florida Tech has recently upgraded its core backbone to support a bandwidth of ten gigabit. 

Florida Lambda Rail

To support and increase the ongoing research efforts, Florida Tech became an equity owner in the Florida Lambda Rail, a University owned network utilizing the next generation network technologies, protocols, and services.  Through the Florida Lambda Rail, Florida Tech has access to the National Lambda Rail and Internet 2 which are national high speed networks for research universities and technology companies.  By participating in these networks, Florida Tech researchers have access to participate in groundbreaking work in the areas of grid computing, experimental protocols, and other research activities requiring high capacity, flexible network architectures.

Enterprise Systems

Enterprise Systems is responsible for the support of university critical systems and services, web services, and research computing.  The web services unit provides support for both academic and research based initiatives.  Research computing is one of the more complex support requirements provided by the Enterprise group.  They operate the community parallel processing system as well as provide assistance with the design and support of department specific research computing upon request.  In addition, this unit is responsible for local and offsite data backup and recovery.  This includes offsite systems for failover in case of a disaster.

Technology Support Services

Technology Support Services consists of the Technology Support Center (Helpdesk), Computer Lab Support, and desktop software licensing.  The Technology Support center provides first level support for faculty, staff, and students at Florida Tech.  This includes a call center, field technicians, and desktop repair and replacement operation.  The Lab Support group operates six instructional computing labs available to the entire campus and 3 departmental labs through agreement with the various colleges.  The Lab Support group also maintains and operates the Applied Computing Center, an open lab co-located with the campus library.  This is a full service facility providing access to the array of productivity software and services as well as specialized software needed by each academic college or department.  Technology Support Services also oversees centralized software licenses as well as helps coordinate and negotiate the software licenses held by departments.

Instructional Technologies

Instructional Technologies is responsible for classroom technologies, support and training for teaching technologies, and a video production studio.  Instructional Technologies has implemented two standard classroom formats:  Fully equipped, and laptop ready.  The majority of the classrooms are fully equipped which consists of a PC, document camera, DVD/VCR, wireless microphone, Audio capture and playback, projector, a writeable display tablet (Sympodium).  All faculty must take a one hour training course before teaching in a multimedia classroom.  Instructional Technologies provides training for the Learning Management tools and provides other consultations to aid with the integration of technology into the curriculum.  The Technology Enhanced Content Center is a facility that was developed as a location where faculty can have access to the tools and staff to aid them in their development work.   The video production studio provides professional grade equipment to develop video-based material to augment campus-based courses or for the development of online curriculum.  This group also provides video streaming of both live and previously recorded material to off campus constituents.

The Office of Information Technology continuously strives to match technology with the strategic and operational needs of the University.  To aid in this alignment, there are two advisory committees and one governance committee.  The Academic Computing Information Technology Committee (ACITC) is made up of faculty representatives from each college.  The Administrative Computing Information Technology Committee (ADITC) is made of representatives from the administrative departments.  Each of these committees helps establish priorities and an open forum for the sharing of ideas and initiatives.  Both of these committees report their recommendations and findings to the Information Technology Executive Committee (ITEC) where policies, procedures, and policies are reviewed and approved.