Executive Overview
Revised January 2014
2010
Kent State University
Information Services Strategic Plan
2015
Executive Overview – January 2014 Revision
It is my pleasure to present the revised and expanded Kent State University’s Information Technology strategic
plan. This document extends the existing IS Strategic Plan through 2015. The IT Strategic Plan remains directly
connected to the University’s plan. As such, it identifies specific, measurable objectives and milestones that will
ensure the greatest return on the university’s investment in this critical asset. The executive overview focuses on
three key elements of our strategy; Alignment, An Inclusive Process and IT Infrastructure Enhancement. The
complete strategic plan can be found at: http://www.kent.edu/is/about/ISstrategy.cfm
Alignment
With University Goals:
University Strategic Goals
Information Services Strategic Goals
I. Ensuring Student Success
1: Enable Student Success
II. Enhancing Academic Excellence and Innovation
2: Empower Teaching and Improve Learning
III. Expanding Breakthrough Research and Creative
Endeavors
3: Ensure Reliable, Secure and Accessible Systems
IV. Engaging with the World Beyond Our Campuses
4: Manage Costs; Improve Service Management
and Business Processes
V. Securing Our Financial Future
VI. Developing and Recognizing Our People
5: Plan and Manage Information Services
With Academic Affairs:
This revision maintains our commitment to supporting the project needs of the other university divisions. We have
mapped our IS projects to the Academic Affairs “Our Voices, Our Vision Strategy”.
High Level Mapping
AA Strategic Plan Goal
Information Services Strategic Plan Projects
Implement :
1. Ensuring Student Success
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
the Degree Works system,
the Advising Scheduling System,
Automated Advisor Assignment,
Course Signals, and
expanded Dynamic Student Checklists,
To enable students and advisors to review degree progress and plan coursework
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2010
Kent State University
Information Services Strategic Plan
2015
with a goal of graduation.
Implementing CurricuNET to improve efficiencies within curriculum development.
2. Enhancing Academic Excellence and
Innovation
Implement FPDC Productivity Database to monitor and evaluate FPDC
productivity indicators.
Provide integration between Distance Learning’s selected vendor support
organization’s computer applications and Kent State’s internal applications.
4. Engaging the World Beyond Our
Campuses
Maintain / enhance the fsaAtlas system to support streamlined processing of
international students.
Maintain / enhance the Banner Faculty Load and Compensation Module to
provide an integrated, efficient process for determining faculty assignments and
workload.
5. Securing Our Financial Future
Maintain / enhance the Electronic Data Warehouse (EDW) contains historical
trending information to allow for flexible analysis and timely decision making about
course enrollments.
An Inclusive Process
The process used to create this plan included four important elements:
1. DATA GATHERING:

Current State Assessment. This phase started with seeking answers to the questions, “Where are we
now? Where do we want to be? How big is the gap? What will it take to get where we want to be?” To
that end, we surveyed university stakeholders to determine their perspectives of the services we offer,
as well as to gather feedback and direction on strategic imperatives and university needs.

University Council on Technology (UCT) Faculty Audit. More than 300 faculty members
participated in a technology audit. Lead by the UCT, this audit provided clarity and direction around the
critical area of Learning Management Tools and Systems.
2. EXTERNAL INPUT: We reviewed the information technology strategy and tactical plans of approximately
10 institutions, as well as technology-related higher education resources such as Gartner, EDUCAUSE and
Campus Computing Surveys. These documents provided additional insights and perspectives as to current
trends, issues and concerns relative to technology and higher education. Additionally, the CIOs from five
major universities conducted a series of onsite interviews and discussions with major university
stakeholders to review and evaluate the plan, processes and organization. The full report of their findings
and recommendations is available at http://www.kent.edu/is/about/ISstrategy.cfm
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2010
Kent State University
Information Services Strategic Plan
2015
IT Infrastructure Enhancements
The plan also includes a renewed focus on strengthening the University’s IT Infrastructure. This renewed
infrastructure focus includes:






Moving Administrative Applications to a single virtualized server environment (Banner off Sun)
Implementing Unified Communications including an upgrading of all network components to ensure high
quality of service
Improving Data Management which includes automating adherence to retention policies, implementing a
new distributed storage architecture, eliminating older storage methods (tape), provided increased storage
capacity.
Improving IS Disaster Recovery simplifying the process and reducing the recovery time. This will be
accomplished by replacing tape backup with more modern disk replication techniques. By documenting the
recover process in detail and training our vendor on these processes we will reduce the dependency on
Kent State’s IS staff during disaster recovery.
Implement a single IS Operations Control Center that utilizes enterprise management software to combine
the monitoring and management of the application, server and storage infrastructure with the network
infrastructure.
Evaluate and pilot the use of cloud based computing to support application and storage needs of the
university. Services that might be early adopters of cloud based computing include infrastructure
applications (email and calendaring), web applications and storage.
Thank you. My e-mail address is emahon@kent.edu; I welcome your reaction and ideas.
Ed Mahon
Vice President for Information Services and Chief Information Officer
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