Congratulations, 2023 Sparta Award Winners

IT Colleagues,

Each year, the SJSU IT Sparta Awards are given to one individual and one team who embody our division’s collaborative spirit, commitment to our university, and drive for excellence. Nominations are submitted by both peers and managers through an open process, and the SJSU IT Peer Consultation Group gives recommendations on each candidate before winners are chosen. It’s my pleasure to share 2023’s winners with all of you.

The 2023 SJSU IT Individual Sparta Award goes to Joseph “JR” Hotchkiss. While JR’s continuous commitment to quality work and reliable profession were the core reasons for his nomination, there were a couple projects that pushed his nomination over the top. Last year, JR automated a large volume of manual processes for our Biz Ops team. He also executed a major overhaul of the SJSU IT website with a redesign focused on student feedback.

The 2023 SJSU IT Team Sparta Award goes to the University Power Outage/IT Infrastructure Response Team: Debu Basak, Nick Cappelloni, Steve Chang, Kelly Deaver, Cuong Doan, Jason Ferguson, Pauline Garingan, Werner Goveya, Brent Jones, Aaron Langford, Kara Li, Matt Lord, An Nguyen, Keith Nowosielski, Tristan Orlino, Atul Pala, Manish Shah, Tien Tran, Tam Vu, and Rong Wang.

On the evening of Friday, August 11, a major PG&E power event took place that damaged SJSU’s power plant and caused a major power surge through campus that knocked out generators. This ultimately led to our data centers going fully down, damaging some of our equipment. When power was finally restored, this team took on the massive effort to bring systems back online. By Monday, August 14, approximately 95% of systems were already up and running again, including prioritizing life safety, student success solutions, and cyber security. The team continued to work above-and-beyond to ensure that all systems were ready for the start of the semester on Monday, August 21st. This work also required heavy collaboration with departments across campus, including the University Police Department (UPD) and Facilities Development & Operations (FD&O).

First off: congratulations to all of this year’s winners! Thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination and supported your colleagues and teammates. And thank you to the SJSU IT Peer Consultation Group for your insight on the candidates and continued support of the awards as a whole.

Lastly, thank you to everyone. So many of you are doing amazing work every day.

Best regards,
Bob-

SJSU IT Tips – LinkedIn Learning

Campus colleagues,

Earlier this year, I shared a LinkedIn Learning tip with our campus community. Today, I’d like to remind you about LinkedIn Learning’s on-demand eLearning portal, which has expanded their library of offerings and now hosts over 17,000 courses on an array of topics. Courses range from subject refreshers to complete sessions, so there is something for everyone.

  • Faculty: Are you starting to plan your courses for the upcoming semester? If so, I want to share with you that we have LinkedIn Learning integration with Canvas. This integration allows you to publish Linkedin Learning content to Canvas’ Pages, Assignments, or Modules. These LinkedIn Learning videos, courses, and learning paths can be assigned to students as prerequisites for classes or as modules to support learning objectives. Additionally, since many of these courses demonstrate real-world applications of the skills being taught, they can enhance the overall classroom experience by showing how the skills will apply outside of the academic setting.  Assignments can be tracked within Canvas to ensure students complete the courses to receive credit.
    To find out more about adding LinkedIn Learning assignments to your Canvas course, visit LinkedIn Learning – Connecting to Canvas.
  • Staff: Are you looking to hone existing skills or learn something new? Take advantage of the wealth of courses available to you at no cost with your SJSU LinkedIn Learning account. The online educational offerings can help you discover and develop business, technology-related, and creative skills through expert-led course videos.

Click here to log in to LinkedIn Learning

Thanks, Leon Nguyen, Interim Director – IT Program Management Office, for providing this tip. As always, the SJSU IT Service Desk is here to help by phone at (408) 924-1530 or online.

Thanks,

Bob Lim
Vice President for Information Technology
and CIO at San José State University

Examining Data Privacy

A hand holding a cell phone with a form open with fields for "Full name," "Date of birth," "Address," "City," and "Phone number."

Our personal privacy is essential to our sense of being and the formation of relationships – what we share and who we share it with helps define how we are perceived and how we perceive ourselves. So it’s no wonder that data privacy has become one of the most important concerns in higher education IT. 

Before we dive into a conversation about privacy, I want to let you know that SJSU IT doesn’t use your data to monitor you. We’re never checking in to see what you’re doing, but that doesn’t mean entities outside of SJSU aren’t. We’re doing everything possible to make your accounts and data safer and more secure. You can find our privacy notice here.

Data privacy is about more than just how and what kind of data gets collected. It’s also about protecting your data and earning your trust – privacy and security are inherently linked together. We highly value your trust and we work hard to protect your privacy and your data. 

When we talk about data privacy, it’s important to know how data about us is collected actively and passively. Active collection is when you share information explicitly, such as when you complete a transaction online, fill out a survey, make a new social media profile, or sign up for a new service. Passive collection is when your actions and choices are being monitored and mined for data, such as how cookies track which websites you visit, how long you visit them, and what you choose to click on. Another example of passive data collection is data that is collected through your everyday interactions: your gender, outward physical health, and shared experiences. In today’s world, your data is collected all the time, whether you know it or not.  

Aside from our own university privacy notice and the CSU’s privacy notice, San José State University follows an increasingly complex web of data privacy regulations and laws. Federal regulations such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) are designed to protect student data. There are also special considerations for health and wellness data through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). On the state level, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was the first comprehensive data privacy legislation in the country and remains one of the strictest. There are many more regulations, rules, and best practices to be taken into consideration when thinking about data privacy. 

However, even this ever-growing list of regulations fails to keep pace with the rate of advancement in technology. Because of this rapidly shifting landscape, we cannot rely solely on regulations and policies to protect us. We have to be extra cautious about what we share, where we share, and with whom we choose to share. It’s up to each of us to be mindful. 

Data privacy is a deep topic that weaves through many areas of Information Technology, and I know it matters to so many of you, as it does to many of us in SJSU IT.

Best regards,
Bob Lim
Vice President of Information Technology
and CIO at San José State University

 

SJSU IT Tips – DocuSign UI Refresh

Campus colleagues,

DocuSign is gradually moving to a new design system and recently rolled out a new user interface. There are quite a few small changes, but I wanted to share some highlights with you.

  1.   The Manage tab has been renamed to Agreements, where you can  find envelope folders inbox, sent, completed,  etc.
  2. My Preferences has a refreshed interface.  No functionality changes are involved; only a change to the look and feel.
  3. The pages under the Agreements and the Templates tabs have a UI refresh.  As part of this update, the navigation for the envelopes lists and templates lists are paginated instead of having an infinite scroll pattern.
  4. For Power Users who use the Bulk Send feature, please note that the Bulk Send feature also has a refreshed interface. There are no changes to the bulk send functionality; only a change to the look and feel.

Thank you Jocelyn Tom, Application Business Analyst, for all your work on digitization and for providing this tip. As always, the SJSU IT Service Desk is here to help by phone at (408) 924-1530 or online.

Thanks,

Bob Lim
Vice President for Information Technology
and CIO at San José State University

SJSU IT Tips – Call Forwarding and Voicemail Anywhere

Campus colleagues,

Working hybrid or traveling this summer, but still need access to your office phone? Here’s a couple tips: you can forward your office calls to another number and access your voicemail from anywhere, anytime.

To forward calls from your office to another phone number:

  1. Press the Forward All softkey.
  2. Enter the number to which you want to forward your calls. Be sure to prepend the 10-digit phone number with a “71” (e.g., 714089241000).
  3. The Forward All icon will display on your phone screen indicating that call forwarding is active.
  4. To cancel call forwarding, press the Forward Off softkey on your phone’s touchscreen.

To check your voicemail remotely:

  1. Dial 408-924-6800 and press * when the greeting begins to play.
  2. Enter your 5-digit extension (e.g., 41000) followed by #.
  3. Enter your voicemail PIN followed by #.

NOTE: If this is your first time accessing your voicemail, you’ll need to complete the voicemail setup process, including creating a new voicemail PIN.

Thank you Aaron Langford, one of our Network Analysts, for helping maintain our phone system and providing this tip to campus. As always, the SJSU IT Service Desk is here to help by phone at (408) 924-1530 or online.

Thanks,
Bob Lim
Vice President for Information Technology
and CIO at San Jose State University