Information Technology Services | History of Information Technology Services

Until 2007, New River received all technology services from Bluefield State College. House Bill 3215 required the separation of two and four-year colleges and New River began working toward this goal of an independent administrative structure as early as 2007. But to achieve this, personnel were needed and an entirely new phone and data infrastructure as well as classroom technologies and hosted services. As part of the statewide separation of 2-year colleges from 4-year universities, New River participated in extensive planning with a cohort of representatives from other colleges and universities, with leadership provided by Pat Hunt - the consultant assigned to the project by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System. The primary focus of the group was Banner and to a lesser extent, other enterprise applications.

In just a few years New River (1) created an entirely new data, voice and video network (it went live on August 28, 2009), (2) a new VoIP Cisco phone system was completed on January 29, 2010, and (3) a new virtualized data center was created in June 2011. We implemented a new portal solution (my.newriver.edu) on August 2, 2011 and a new web site redesign project was completed for www.newriver.edu on August 15, 2011. We created 18 IVN classrooms (see diagram) and we built an IVN support page to centralize IVN support. On September 20, 2013 we cutover 12 of our Internet circuits from multiple vendors to a single vendor to reduce costs and simplify support. We helped to create disaster recovery and business continuity plans. In August 2013 we implemented Smart Alerts (notifications sent from Banner to the portal to keep students informed of their personal account changes). A New River mobile application for smart phones was created in 2015. Blackboard Learn 9 replaced ANGEL as our learning management system for the Spring 2014 term (January 13, 2014). Since then we've replaced ANGEL with Brightspace D2L hosted at WVNET.

Dr. David J. Ayersman was hired in June 2007 to oversee technical aspects of distance education but he was also assigned the responsibility for overall leadership of technology services for New River. Technicians at each campus location (Steve Butler and Robert Davis at Greenbrier Valley Campus and Jeremy Ball at the Beckley Campus) were then reorganized to report to him and the first centralized technology services organizational structure was formed. Creating a centralized Help Desk was among the first priorities since communication among campuses was difficult and services were not yet being offered in a consistent or timely fashion. Eric Tucker was hired as the Help Desk Manager in March 2008. At Nicholas County Campus, Adam Argabright provided technical support on a part-time basis. A full-time technician was not assigned to the Nicholas County Campus until Nikki Gregory was hired in April 2009. Roberto Nunez was hired in April 2011 after Nikki left the College. Gary Davis was later hired when Roberto left the College. Information Technology Services hasn't really changed all that much since these early origins, but key people who have served with us have sometimes been part-time positions. Amy Reese and Josh Baker each worked part-time at the Help Desk on the Beckley Campus for several years. Lora Kosa was hired to manage the Help Desk full-time in August 2012. Steve Garlow later provided some management and oversight of the Help Desk. Most recently Gary Davis continues to prove himself through his highly effective managmenet of the Help Desk coupled with information security responsibilities.

Full-time hires in technology services since 2007 have also included Steve Garlow (March 2009), Ralph Payne (April 2009), Patrick Vance (July 2011), Dara Fann (July 2010), and Jason Garris (November 2009). Steve Garlow was our server administrator and Information Security Officer, so he was crucial in the implementation of an entirely new virtualized data center and two new virtualized computer labs. He was also a key person to configure the servers for ANGEL (it was hosted at New River) as well as SSRPM (Self-Service Reset Password Manager) and Secunia (our previous email archiving solution). We later migrated email archiving to an on-site DataCove device from Tangent and Gary Davis was instrumental in managing that for several years until recently migrating that service to the Tangent Cloud.

Although we began with only minimal Banner modules implemented, once Dara joined our team we began to implement many new services. She was instrumental in providing (1) online bill pay, (2) online admissions, (3) online registration, (4) banner integration with the portal, integration with Blackboard, and many other new services. Reporting was initially comprised of 30 or so scripts that were provided to us in Query Reporter, but Dara grew that list of scripts to well over 100 while also migrating to Argos for data reporting. She mentored Jason Garris for a few years and he now continues to work on all things related to Ellucian Banner as well as Argos , DropGuard, and DegreeWorks. Jason also created our current WebReporter scripts that display our course schedules from Banner onto a web page. He's also created our People Search directory and continues to work on reporting and compliance requirements while using his coding skills to create new solutions as needed. He supervised Billy Hazelwood for a few years and Billy was able to create a new photo ID Card system, a new SharePoint intranet, and other modern services that we still use. These new services have been created by our programmers with little or no cost increases to the College.

The first service that transitioned to New River was actually just desktop computer support, but email was the actual "enterprise service" that was chosen for the initial transition from Bluefield State to New River. The rationale was that communication is critical for all aspects of the overall transition, so that proved to be a prudent choice. I think we had over 12,000 mailbox accounts when we completed that transition (about 8,000 more than we should have) and we were using Microsoft Server 2003. The Projects area of our web site provides more information about the many, many initiatives and projects we've worked on since beginning in 2007. When we migrated all of the New River accounts from Bluefield State College, they were using Exchange only for employees. They had all of our student email accounts on an entirely different platform. We had to create accounts for all of the New River students, once we identified them.

A snapshot of the technology services that we were providing in 2007 (see 2007 services snapshot) appears as very basic and sparce. Comparing that to a similar snapshot from 2011 (see 2011 services snapshot) shows considerable growth. No history is complete without admitting that not all of our actions have been carefully scripted. Instead, we've sometimes taken a few progressive steps forward only to find that we needed to take a step back and then additional steps forward in a slightly different direction. We've tried to consistently respond to needs as they are presented or anticipated. We've always been challenged with having only limited staffing and needs for expertise that continue to evolve in new directions. It is amazing that a team as small as our IT staff has accomplished so much since 2007. We've had tremendous success by "growing our own" technicians who begin as part-time student workers and progress through other skilled posititions. Some have even become senior leaders in our IT department or elsewhere through corporate opportunities.

Working continuously to support and improve the day-to-day business processes throughout the College has perhaps proven to be more of a challenge for our technology services staff than some other areas of the College. It seems IT is often invited to participate in projects led by other offices while we must also fulfill our own plans and objectives. IT staff are typically involved in most capital projects. We are involved in plans for new locations as well as construction in existing locations. We've been successful at meeting these challenges and have been judicious to obtain external consulting and assistance when needed.

Our IT staff was instrumental in writing a grant proposal that was ultimately funded by the Department of Education in the form of a five-year $2 million Title III project (it ended in October 2013). We used much of that funding to completely re-create our Interactive Video Network with 18 classrooms and a robust infrastructure that included a 24-port MCU and an IPVCR. Today, we rely on Zoom services in the Cloud and we have 41 active Zoom rooms for instruction and meetings.

This partial history provides some insight to our development, direction, and key initiatives. Our technology services team will continue to keep pace with the changing needs of the College.