Vermont State Colleges (VSC) Community:
I am excited to welcome you back for the fall 2025 semester! I started officially in this new role in July and look forward to connecting with many of you over the coming months. Whether you are faculty or a staff member at CCV or VTSU, this next academic year promises to be full of excitement, challenges, possibilities, and opportunities. We in Information Technology (IT) Shared Services stand ready to support all of you as we work together to support our students’ learning journeys!
In this newsletter you will find many updates from the IT team about what we have been up to over the summer term, and there is also information about exciting things that are coming up. Here are some of the highlights:
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be a hot topic in higher education, and the newsletter offers some links to resources that might be helpful. We also have three AI-related projects that are exploring different aspects of how AI can support learning and the student experience.
Learn about significant technology upgrades to some classrooms and learning spaces at your local centers or campuses. A new tool called Panorama has also been launched by the Learning Technologies team which will help faculty assess the digital accessibility of their courses in Canvas. Look for training opportunities and support coming this fall.
In the Spring 2025 IT Newsletter, former CIO Kellie Campbell talked about the huge effort underway to select a software and implementation vendor for our new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. In the spring, we announced Workday would be our partner, and over the summer teams from across the VSCS have been engaged in planning and now system architecture and configuration. While there is a lot of work yet to be done before the first phase is complete next year, the new system will offer significant technology and experience improvements for students, faculty, and staff alike. For more details about how the project is progressing, see the update below.
Finally, in our never-ending quest to continuously improve the quality and responsiveness of our IT services across our five different service areas, we will be fielding a user survey this fall from Educause, an association of IT professionals across higher education. The results from this survey will help guide our planning efforts this year. In the meantime, if you have questions, concerns, or feedback for us, please feel free to reach out.
Best Regards,
Wilson
Wilson Garland
Chief Information Officer