Information Technology Services, formerly known as IRT, has seen many changes during the past year seeking to improve in ways that benefit the campus community.

One of the changes that familiar to students is the recent upgrade from the Portal email system to Office 365. Future upgrades and changes include a bandwidth improvement, a new tech center in the library, and more.

Vice President for Technology and CIO Ed Clark said every upgrade is being done with the interest of students, staff, faculty and all university personnel in mind.

“We didn’t do Office 365 because it’s the newest email system, we did Office 365 because it helps with collaboration, it enhances teaching and learning. It kind of moves the university forward and gives us new capabilities,” Clark said.

One upcoming change for the fall semester that will be felt by people across campus is a bandwidth upgrade. St. Thomas currently has a two-gigabit bandwidth. Gigabit; not to be confused with gigabyte. Gigabyte refers to memory storage but gigabit refers to data transfer capability. In other words, how fast the stuff can move. If campus Wi-Fi has ever seemed slow it is because the bandwidth is being used up, a problem ITS is looking to fix.

ITS is planning to triple the capacity of the bandwidth by fall. The long term goal is a 10 gigabit bandwidth. Clark says that the current bandwidth gets used up at the peak hours of noon and 10 p.m., which he attributes to video streaming.

“At two gigabits we are filling up those pipes, getting it to 95 percent capacity, and that’s not very good. By creating headroom we’ll take a lot of pressure off our system and off our local network, as well as see fewer network problems for our students, faculty and staff,” Clark said.

Senior Jacob Pauna is excited for these new changes to campus.

“It’s cool that (St. Thomas) is making an effort to keep its technology up to date for its student body, and it shows that they care,” Pauna said.

Students will also be able to get their hands on the St. Thomas E-Learning and Research center, or STELAR, which will be in the library. There will also be a Tech Fair where outside vendors will showcase educational gadgets. While many of forthcoming upgrades on campus depend on hours of discussion with the campus community, the mission of services like the STELAR center is different.

“Part of the goal of STELAR is to constantly bring new ideas in to see if they have a lasting impact. We want to experiment. We’re going to have VR devices in there, we’re going to have augmented reality. We want people to come in and try it out and see how they can apply to it their academic pursuits,” Clark said.

Recent graduate Adrianne Curtis supports this addition to campus.

“I think it’s great that the university and ITS are trying so many different things to help students connect with learning. I think that it will definitely help people out,” Curtis said.

Clark is eager to further collaborate with departments across campus in order to strive toward the university’s goals.

“We’ve partnered with the registrar and with the libraries and the college of business and engineering and so on and so forth to deliver all these. Campus partner is a key message we’re trying to put across,” Clark said.

Jeffrey Langan can be reached at lang5466@stthomas.edu