UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — IT professionals across Penn State’s campuses and special-mission units are working together in new ways to create solutions and solve problems for students, faculty and staff. 

Thanks to efforts from the IT Optimized Service Team (OST), which facilitated Commonwealth Campus IT’s move into Penn State IT this summer, IT staff members across the commonwealth are collaborating to provide a more efficient, capable and responsive IT experience for the Penn State community. 

As the work of the IT OST continues, Penn State IT professionals are finding even more ways to collaborate.  

Among these efforts, task forces have been created to explore further standardization of audio/visual resources across the commonwealth, examine the role of Penn State IT in improving University events and continuing to bring together Penn State’s IT professionals for collaborative opportunities. 

“Previously, you were a campus employee and that’s what you focused on day to day,” said Kari Williamson, director of Commonwealth Campus IT. “And now there are Penn State IT employees focused on Commonwealth Campuses as a whole. So if we need somebody to help out at a neighboring campus, it’s much, much easier to make that happen.” 

Williamson calls it a “one team” approach and says Penn State has already benefitted from this new IT structure. 

Within the new model, different IT units at different campuses are working together to streamline previously distinct processes, software packages and hardware configurations in order to boost compatibility from campus to campus.  

Take Penn State Hazleton’s largest classroom facility — the Kostos Building — for example. Following a 2017 renovation, by this summer, a technology update was needed throughout the classroom spaces. Though an outside vendor quoted the University nearly $40,000 per classroom to refit them, an internal team of IT experts from across the commonwealth — Tony Cingle at Penn State University Park, Rob Notari at Penn State Scranton and Vince Mitchell at Penn State Schuylkill — was able to do it better, quicker and for less. 

Using Schuylkill as a model, Cingle and Mitchell dedicated a week on-site to prepare three classrooms, create documentation and train the Hazleton IT team while Notari worked remotely to support them.  

The work was done — alongside other critical IT tasks to prepare for the semester — before classes began this fall. 

“We were able to pull in talent from neighboring campuses to help provide a seamless academic experience for our students at the start of the semester,” Williamson said.  

The collaboration has led campus IT staff to standardize operating instructions for equipment and software and hardware request processes, too. 

“A lot of our faculty and staff now are moving between the campuses,” Notari said. “So you need a common platform to be able to have a faculty member come up from one location and have their computer be supported and work with the classrooms in another location.” 

Additionally, enhanced back-up support for employees is now available across the campuses. For example, in August when an IT colleague needed to go on leave unexpectedly just before the semester began. Cingle assembled Kevin Churik and Keith Jedlowski from Penn State New Kensington and Penn State Behrend’s Jim Serafin, Shawn Alexander, Nick Scott and Scott Smith to cover the pre-semester work and ensure the campus was up and running. 

“That kind of speaks to the push now and the desire for collaboration,” Alexander said. “There’s a willingness to accept and offer help among us. It’s been a really great thing.” 

Smith was on-site communicating with faculty who were preparing for the semester, relaying their needs and concerns to his teammates who worked remotely to rebuild the campus’s lab systems, install new software and update the campus’s A/V resources. 

“It was cool how quickly this came together, how we were able to align efforts to not only be caretakers while our colleague was gone, but actually to move things forward so that when he came back, he didn’t have to worry about catching up,” Cingle said. 

That’s the idea moving forward — to help all campuses and units be on the same page so all are able to offer consistent IT services and support for students and employees across the commonwealth.  

“We’re going to be doing stuff that Penn State’s never done before,” Jedlowski said. “We’re using the expertise and experiences that exist across the campuses to be able to give you a higher level of service and support all over the University.” 

Additional information about the IT OST is available at change.psu.edu.