Author Archives: Bob Lim

The 2020 SJSU IT Sparta Awards

Zoom screenshot of Sparta Awards winners, Bob Lim, and Mary Papazian

It’s important to celebrate the hard work, dedication, and the successes of our division. But it’s equally important to celebrate the people in our team that make this success possible.

What are the SJSU IT Sparta Awards?
The 3rd annual SJSU IT Sparta Individual and Team Awards recognize our staff members who bring out the best in each other through a collaborative spirit, a commitment to innovation, and everyday leadership.  Award winners provide consistent and exceptional service, whether working with students or building something with a campus department. Every member of the IT Division has the opportunity to nominate employees through an open call. From there, I work with the IT Peer Consultation Group to choose the most outstanding project, program, team, or individual to win the award.

It’s my pleasure to announce the 2020 SJSU IT Sparta Award Individual and Team recipients. These folks all went above and beyond, dedicating themselves to helping our university community during one of the most difficult years in SJSU’s long history. They’ve put in the work and led by example, garnering their peers’ respect within SJSU IT and the university at large.

2020 SJSU IT Sparta Award Individual Winner
Tristan Orlino, from the Computing Services Department, is this year’s individual award winner. Tristan was nominated for always going above and beyond his work duties to help our students, staff, and faculty. Your contribution to our virtual lab implementation and deployment was instrumental in our Desktop-as-a-Service strategy’s success.

2020 SJSU IT Sparta Award Team Winners
The Team Award went to Bruce Kelbert, Rod Maciel, Devona Williams, Fred Asuncion, Phil Braverman, Cameron Myers, Danny Vo, Andy Yeung, Daniela Zopiyatle, Frank DeFanti, Jake Hanley, and Trevor Wylie who won this year’s team award.

Thanks to their work with the Equipment Loaning Service last year, our students, faculty, and staff were able to make the transition to remote modalities. Behind the scenes, this team had to quickly change their operating procedures to follow EH&S health & safety guidelines. Those changes involved a lot of extra work, but they went the extra mile to keep the customer experience seamless and positive.

Thank you to everyone who sent in nominations. I also want to thank the SJSU IT Peer Consultation Group for discussing the merits of each candidate and team nominations with me. Their input and feedback are very much appreciated.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s winners!

Thank you.
Bob Lim

Ensuring Technology Access

Throughout the COVID pandemic, SJSU IT has scaled up our existing Equipment Loaning Service, and we’re going even further in 2021. Students, faculty, and staff can use the equipment loaning service to borrow the technology equipment they need. We have everyday equipment like monitors, mice, keyboards, laptops, webcams, microphones, headsets, etc. With another round of CARES Act funding coming, we’re working directly with faculty and college staff to identify student needs and aligning our equipment inventory to match. Access to technology should never be a barrier for our students.

In Fall 2020, these were the top five things that were checked out:

  1.  Laptops (371)
  2.  WiFi Hotspots (112)
  3.  Webcams (45)
  4. USB Microphones (32)
  5. Headsets (17)

Extending access to education and the resources needed to succeed in higher education is a foundational mission of San Jose State University. The Equipment Loaning Service has been a part of SJSU IT for years, but in the wake of COVID-19, it was apparent that many students’ access would be restricted. We’re doing everything we can to help bridge that gap. 

I want to make sure I recognize and thank Darlene Bargas, Devona Williams, Daniela Zopiyatle, Cameron Myers, Fred Asuncion, Rod Maciel, Andy Yeung, Frank De Fanti, Phil Braverman, Danny Vo, Bruce Kelbert, who put in the work on this program for our campus.

Best regards,
Bob Lim

Building the Hybrid-Enabled Classroom

In coordination with the Office of the Provost, SJSU IT is upgrading a number of larger classrooms across campus with technology to enable hybrid instruction for Fall 2021 semester. The chosen classrooms will be outfitted with in-person streaming equipment, laptop screen capture, live recording, additional monitors, and more. Having technology in the classroom will help our instructors bridge the gap from Zoom to classroom while we transition back to campus. We’re also upgrading existing smart classrooms that haven’t been refreshed in a while.

These upgrades align with our strategy to be future-facing in the shifting world of higher education. Changes in everyday pedagogy are coming, and SJSU IT is building for tomorrow. Once we’re fully returned to campus, these upgraded rooms will add value for years to come. 

Coe Tran, Bruce Kelbert, Tino Cruz, Trevor Florez, and Marco Rodriguez get the thanks for working on these classrooms.

Best regards,
Bob Lim

Labs Anywhere, Labs Anytime with DaaS

UPDATE (August 2022): In preparation for Fall 2022, SJSU IT is adding even more virtual labs for faculty and students for instruction and research to meet campus community demand.

Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) represents our University’s next generation of computer labs, allowing students to access labs anytime, anyplace. DaaS not only reduces the need for students to be on campus to do lab work, it’s cost effective, flexible, and adaptable. 

The College of Social Sciences debuted their state-of-the-art “Spartan Experimental Economics Lab” DaaS lab dedicated to their rigorous exploration of complex economic and social sciences topics. Similar labs are up and running in the cloud for other colleges, hosting powerful applications like MATLAB, RStudio, JMP Pro, Python, and more. Our virtual solutions team is always excited to build something new for instructors, whatever department they’re from. DaaS labs give students access to computer resources they may not have otherwise, whether that’s in data, systems, or even creative fields. Simply fill out the request form and we’ll reach out to you

DaaS is a big win for our goal to have a mobile campus where students can study and get work done from anywhere at any time. And that’s where we are today. We’re connecting with instructors to find new ways of bringing lab work directly into the classroom. We’re also using DaaS as a secure solution for our staff who work with sensitive or valuable data — these virtual desktops are protected by our campus network. As we progress toward the goals of Transformation 2030, SJSU IT will be working with DaaS more and more to expand remote work, learning, and teaching opportunities. 

Lee Andersen, Tristan Orlino, TG Tran, and Scott Pham have all done great work getting our DaaS program where we are today.

Best regards,
Bob Lim

Premium Password Management for SJSU

Logo for LastPass

One of the driving goals of SJSU IT is to make San Jose State University the safest campus in the country. Our strategy for getting there is to make security easier. We use a layered approach to put extra barriers between attackers and your data. One of the simplest but most effective protections is good password management — having strong passwords unique to each site you use that you change regularly. But that can be a pain. With dozens or hundreds of accounts all over the web, it’s almost impossible for us to keep track of what passwords we’re using where and when we last changed them. A password manager simplifies that whole process for you, making everyday security easier.

I first let campus know about our plans to bring LastPass’ enterprise password management to everyone in our campus community at no cost back in October 2020. LastPass will suggest, store, and autofill extra-secure random combinations of numbers, letters, and symbols for all of your accounts. Because LastPass encrypts all of your passwords, it’s much more secure than keeping them on a notepad or Google Doc and more reliable than trying to remember everything. 

The SJSU IT Information Security Office will continue to keep you updated on when it’s ready for you.

I want to thank Ravi Pisupati, Michael Hastings, Nikhil Mistry, Tristan Orlino, Andy Trembley, Bruce Gardner, and Jason Ferguson for working on bringing LastPass to our community.

Best regards,
Bob Lim