Employee Spotlight: Jennifer Rasmuson

If you've ever been in the University Center, you have probably passed by Jennifer at least once. She is the Manager of BearLogic and has been working in UNC's IT department for five years. She obtained her undergraduate degree in marketing and then went on to complete her M.B.A. BearLogic currently employs eight people and Jennifer says her favorite part about her job is getting to work with students because "it keeps you young!" She thinks the most challenging part of her job is the fast pace in which technology changes. It can be hard to stay up with the newest trends. She also thinks that following the acronyms and "crazy tech talk" that her peers use can be hard because she does not consider herself to be a "techie." If Jennifer could trade jobs with anyone, it would be Michelle Obama because, "it's like being the President of the United States but without the extreme pressure." She thinks it would also fulfill her need to rule the world. "If I'm gonna shoot big, i should go REALLY big."

She wants people reading this to know that BearLogic is a non-profit retail store. It is not state funded. That's why students are able to get such great prices on all the the tech gear sold there. Any money made from BearLogic goes to the university general fund where it helps to keep students employed, among other things. "You have to buy this stuff anyways, so you might as well buy it as BearLogic and keep a student working! At the end of the day, the money you spend at BearLogic will come back to you in some say," said Jennifer.

Jennifer has a husband, Craig, who was the coach for UNC's basketball team for seven years. They have two awesome kids, Ella, who is 13 and Mitch, who is nine.

BANNER 8 UPGRADE: The "Rest" of the Story

You've heard about the Banner 8 upgrade and you know you have been affected by it, but do you really know what went into the planing and implementation of this project that was rolled out on budget and on time?



The short window of time that the system was down was just the tip of the iceberg for the University of Northern Colorado's Information Technology Department to roll out the Banner upgrade. It took months of planning, assembling and testing before the three day conversion that the university members saw on January 30th-February 1st.



The Banner product is used at More than 1,000 colleges and universities throughout the United States. Some colleges and universities have not upgraded to Banner 8 yet, but they are well on their way. The company that wrote Banner (SunGard) required all universities and colleges to upgrade by April 2011.



The Information Technology department began this project in July of 2009. It all started by researching how other universities make the conversion, taking the lessons learned from other institutions and applying them to make our upgrade smoother. After understanding the difficulties that other universities faced with Banner 8 and reading the documentation, IT staff had to build the 30+ servers it actually takes to run Banner. After assembling the server, test plans were written by IT and other departments. then the Banner 8 software was installed on the servers. After months of constructing a test environment, the Information Technology department asked Payroll, Accounts Receivable, HR, Accounting, the Registrar's office, Admissions, and other departments to conduct their tests to verify that Banner 8 was working correctly. Finally, after everything was tested, the Banner 7 information was transferred to Banner 8 and it was ready for faculty, staff and students to use.



All in all, the time, research, and effort put into this project was quite substantial and affected many people from the university. Many of the 70+ staff members in Information Technology worked on this project diligently for more than six months, as did personnel from Payroll, Accounts Receivable, HR, Accounting, the Registrar's office and Admissions.



Next time the UNC's systems are down for maintenance, you can bet that staff members have been putting in a lot of extra time and effort to make sure the maintenance or transition goes smoothl



If you have any questions about the Banner 8 conversion, you can call technical support at 351-HELP.

Employee Spotlight: Heath Moore

Heath is originally from Longmont, Colorado and has been working at UNC's IT department since November. He currently maintains and installs smart classroom technologies. His favorite thing about working for IT is that he can help students in their learning process by keeping the smart classrooms up and running. When there's a problem with a smart classroom, he's a man to fix it! He loves contributing to education, "even if it's just a little thing like fixing a problem with the smart classroom." I asked him, "if you could trade jobs with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?" To which he replied, "Well... I think my boss is going to read this, so I'm going to say that I don't want to change my job with anyone!" Then he thought for a moment and said, "Pat Boland, so i could own the Denver Broncos!" One of his favorite quotes is, "Be patient with the new guy, he's trying to learn as fast as he can." Heath is married to his high school sweetheart, has 3 great boys and a dog named Lilli.

Reader Spotlight on Abdullah ALbagshi

Meet Abdullah ALbagshi!!

What year are you at UNC?

Freshman, and honestly, I find it difficult to belong to this place for many reasons. At the top of this list, it's Geographical location.
In Saudi Arabia, I went to an all boys school, so it is different to be in a university where there are more women than men.

What major are you studying?
Right now, i am studying special education, but I'm thinking to change my major to communication disorder or speech debility.

what do you want to do when you graduate?
I will return to Saudi Arabia and find a good job there.

Is there anything you would like to say to the IT department at UNC?
Keep going! Make school easier for us and please be more specific when you explain something. Be patient with international students like me! I have a hard time understanding IT stuff.

Sharepoint- Get With It!

University of Northern Colorado Colleges and Departments- are you a part of Sharepoint? If you aren't, you really should be. Sharepoint is a versatile technology that UNC faculty and staff can use to increase efficiency of business processes and improve team productivity. It offers tools for collaboration that help people stay connected across organizational and geographic boundaries. Sharepoint can be accessed from any browser, anywhere.

Sharepoint offers a secure single workspace for your college or department to coordinate schedules, recognize birthdays, organize documents and participate in discussions. It will allow you to author and manage documents, let others check out the document before editing, view past revision, and restore previous versions. Sharepoint also offers a place for the colleges and departments, whop have their own site, to participate in forums such as blogs and wikis. This tool will help you to create community within your college or department.

The best part about Sharepoint is that it comes at NO ADDITIONAL COST to faculty and staff members!

If your department or college would like to create their own Sharepoint site, it's as easy as filling out a form and faxing it to the Technical Support Center. Before you know it, your group will have these tools at their fingertips, wherever they can open an Internet browser. To get a copy of the form, go to www.unco.edu/it and click on the "forms" button on the left hand side of the page. Once you are there, click on number "3". Scroll down and click on "Sharepoint", and finally you will be able to open and print the Sharepoint Site Creation Form.

Don't let you college or department go another day without using this collaborative tool that is readily available for your use.

Worms, Spyware, Trojan Horses, Viruses and MORE!

Does your home computer seem to be running slow? Does it seem to have a mind of its own? If so, your computer may be infected with malware. Malware is short for malicious software which gets installed without your knowledge. Some more common types of malware are viruses, spyware, worms and trojan horses.

To help prevent malware it is important you have a reputable antivirus and keep it updated. Pop-up blockers keep those annoying advertisements from appearing, but they can also stop malware from being downloaded. Other ways to protect your computer are using a personal firewall, keeping Windows updated and knowing the files you share with other are not infected.

Even with all that protection, your computer can still get infected. If you are a member of the UNC community and you suspect your personal computer has malware installed, you may bring your computer to the Information Technology's Bear Logic at the University Center and let our service center fix your computer. The Bear Logic Service Center is very affordable and has all the tools to get your home computer cleaned of malware. For more information about Bear Logic's Service Center, please visit http://www.unco.edu/bearlogic/GeneralArea/service.htm