In a meeting on Monday, April 1, Chief Information Officer of IT Tim Wilson spoke on the department’s developments in implementing Wi-Fi access points, hiring additional work-study students and resolving student help tickets.
IT successfully built Wi-Fi access points on the second floor of West Penn, in the CMI’s podcast studio and at numerous points in Boulevard Apartments, according to Wilson.
The access points can be utilized by connecting via SSID, then using on-campus credentials to sign-in to the network.
On Boulevard’s issue of spotty connection, Wilson said it, “seems like it has been solved, we haven’t had any specific issues within Helpdesk tickets.”
Wilson went on to explain that the issue was likely rooted in connection errors within the devices themselves.
According to Dean of Student Life Michael Gieseke, about 800 students live on campus.
Wilson said at night there are, on average, 1000 connections to the Wi-Fi system at night, and about 1800 in the daytime.
IT operates 120 servers to connect those devices, according to Wilson.
He said most of those connections come from extra devices like phones and game consoles.
The communications work-study position at IT was filled, and is currently writing informative articles for the department’s Helpdesk system.
Wilson expressed interest in hiring a work-study student for a position in IT, working to help resolve tickets.
Regarding the wage of the work-study student, Wilson said, “If [the position] is determined to be very valuable, we would work with HR to benchmark it. It would more than likely not be traditional work study wages.”
Wages of IT employees have previously resulted in a shortage of labor within the department.
According to Wilson, in February the department employed only one of its 4.5 positions due to competitive wages in the field of IT. The department is now fully employed again.
Wilson said he hopes the proposed work-study position will help the department fill its labor shortage.
IT received 90 helpdesk tickets related to connection issues in March of this year, according to Wilson.
“Many of those tickets seemed to be a situation where a device will cache a password of some sort, and that password cached on that device will expire,” said Wilson. “There was then confusion on reinitiating a password change on the device.”
Wilson said he is working on reaching out to those who submitted tickets to see if they are still having problems.
As of publishing, SGA’s elections board has yet to declare a winner in the presidential and vice presidential elections.
President Marc Palombo said two out of three board members have submitted their count, and the results will be announced as soon as the third turns in their numbers.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee Chair Alicia Broyard said the committee is in talks with the Bodily Autonomy van, a non-profit supplying free sexual health products and information.
Broyard said the van will likely be in the shuttle parking lot next to Boulevard Apartments.
The Finance Committee was dissolved, stating SGA’s finance planning for the semester has concluded.
Members of the now-defunct committee have been moved to the Student Innovation Committee.
The next SGA meeting will be held on Monday, April 8 at 3:15 p.m. in LH200. Anyone is welcome to attend.
