IT Newsletter: Winter 2023/2024

Cal State Monterey Bay: Information Technology

Table of Contents

Infographic: Google Quotas by Role

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Description: Google Workspace File Quota limitations at CSUMB.

  • Staff average 24.6 GB of their 75 GB storage. 90 percent use 46 GB of storage or less. 
  • Faculty average 71.9 GB of their 75 GB storage. 90 percent use 65.8 GB of storage or less.
  • Students are using an average of 4.7 GB of their 25 GB. 90 percent use 5.2 GB of storage or less.

Google Quotas: Professor Enhyrda Lutris' Over Quota Day

A cartoon of a bespeckled otter covering mouth in shock as it looks at a computer screen

Picture if you will, a new year filled with the sparkling excitement of a new semester at CSUMB and a belly full of clams. 

Yep, it’s 2024. CSUMB Ocean Professor Enhydra Lutris had a relaxing holiday with friends and family. They spent some time traveling the coast of California doing research on the abalone of the Pacific for a paper they are working on. 

But alas, it is now January 16 and time to head back to campus to prepare for the spring semester. Professor Lutris swims into the office and responds to all that email they weren’t able to access while doing their abalone research.

After they check their email, Professor Lutris goes to upload their research results and walks away before noticing the error message: Storage Full: To upload more files, you need more space in Drive. To see how you're using storage or to free up space, manage your storage in Google Drive. (Read knowledge base: What Happens When I’m Over My Google WorkSpace Quota)

Stunned, the professor calls the Technology Help Desk in dismay.

“I have so many important files I use with my students and colleagues, and now I’m trapped like a crab in a pot.”

“It sounds like you might be a candidate for a shared drive in Google Workspace,” they hear in return.

And from there, Professor Lutris learns about the differences between files in My Drive and a shared drive. 

Spoiler: Files you store in a shared drive count against the university but not against your individual quota. In addition, they don’t disappear when you separate from the university, so your institutional history can live on.

And Professor Lutris thought that was clam-tastic!

Salesforce Overview

We are on year five of our use of Salesforce at CSUMB. We’ve mostly used it for applicants, and we’re now using it for matriculated students around advising, but we could be using it more broadly across campus. 

What is the overall goal of using a client relationship management tool at a university?

Lead Generation

The bottom line is the return on investment. We need to increase our enrollment numbers, but that extends to donors and employees as well. Using a CRM means we can target those groups with precision, which leads to more accurate connections. In traditional business, that’s called “full-funnel lead generation,” and Salesforce is a proven industry tool for developing leads and making sales.

What is a “sale” in higher education? It’s any time a potential customer connects with us via a call-to-action and makes a decision that leads to our success. In the lifecycle of an applicant, it’s when they commit to the university and pay their tuition. For an employee, it’s when they accept our offer of employment. And for a donor, it’s when we’ve received their donation.

Lifecycles

As we expand our use of Salesforce, we need to think about those lifecycles and how some of the lifecycles intertwine. For instance, a student graduates, becomes an alumnus, accepts a job at CSUMB, and then becomes a donor.

Student:

  • Applicant - This begins when the student first shows interest in CSUMB.
  • Matriculated - Our relationship with the student should extend through their time as a student.
  • Alumni - After they graduate, we should continue to connect with the individual as they progress in their education and career.
  • Donor - At some point, their success could lead to them contributing to the university.
  • Parent - We are old enough now that the children of our alumni are choosing CSUMB.

Donor

  • Interest - Capturing how a potential donor first showed interest in the university is key to fostering a relationship.
  • Visitor - Knowing which events a potential donor attends and how often leads to a better relationship.
  • Engager / Ambassador - Repeated interactions can lead to someone being a fan of what we do (e.g., attends every basketball home game)
  • Donor - The relationship matures to the point where the donor wants to see the university succeed.

Employee

  • Interest - Capturing how a potential employee found out about a job opportunity to key to future recruitments.
  • Applicant - Knowing which and how many job opportunities they applied for is a key indicator of their willingness to work for us.
  • Employee - Fostering the relationship the employee has with all the service points of the university translates to job satisfaction and retention.
  • Recruiter / Ambassador - When that employee becomes a recruiter or is active in job searches, it elevates their relationship with the university.
  • Donor - When the employee wants to donate the money they’ve earned at the university, it represents the highest level of brand engagement.

When we think about our customers in this way, it makes for better relationships and returns on investment.

Welcome Fred

Headshot of Fred Nainavaii

Welcome to Fred Nainavaii, our new Director of Enterprise and Engagement Applications. He will be replacing Veronica Flores.

An alum of both CSU Northridge and Dominguez Hills, Fred brings will oversee operations of our Enterprise Applications unit lead by Pete Fernandez, our Data Integration Services unit lead by Jill Ostrie, our Engagement Applications department lead by Tom Burns and our IT Project Management office as well.

Fred comes to CSUMB from CSU San Bernardino, where he was the Director of Administrative Computing and User Experience within their Information Technology Services department. He led teams responsible for development, project management, operations and enhancements of CSUSB’s enterprise applications. 

Prior to that Fred worked at Fresno State as the Technology Services Director of Enterprise Applications, Mobile and Web Services. 

Additionally Fred has held upper management positions in IT Program Management and Business Applications for various healthcare organizations, including Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente.

Moving On: Chip Lenno and Pamela Cunha

Chip Lenno

Chip started with CSUMB in 2000 working as the Director of Technology Support Services. He became the Chief Technology Officer in 2008. For many years he also taught CST 351 and 451 with his husband, Professor Kevin Cahill, whom he met at CSUMB. They were married on campus in 2008 after their first marriage in San Francisco in 2004 was annulled by the California Supreme Court.

Previously he was the Director of Information Technology at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (now the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey). He is an alum of San Diego State, Texas A&M, and Pepperdine University, where he earned a Doctor of Education in Educational Technology.

Pamela Cunha

Pamela started with CSUMB in 1997 working as a temp in founding President Peter Smith’s office on both the CSUMB self-study and WASC accreditation. She also did temp work in Institutional Assessment.

In 1998 she accepted the position as an administrative analyst in New Media Services, the precursor to the current Center for Academic Technologies. She moved over to our Project Management Office in 2017 to become an IT Project Coordinator. Of late, she was also the subject matter expert and administrator for TeamDynamix, our work order system used by the campus.

Prior to CSUMB she spent 10 years as the production editor at Bon Appetit.

More Personnel News

Welcome Aboard is spelled out on a life perserver that hangs on a tropical palm tree with an wave crashing on the shore in the background

Welcome back to our division

  •  David Finkelstein, retired annuitant Database Administrator.

Welcome to Information Technology

  • Scott Chang, Data Integration Developer
  • David DeMers, Network Pathway Analyst

Student Assistant News 

Student Assistant Cecelia Colchico smiles while sitting at the Technology Help Desk in the library

Cecelia Colchico, IT's first Marketing and Communications student assistant and Human Communications major, will be graduating this Fall. Cecelia's been heavily involved in our department communications and has been the voice of over 70 IT videos including most of our Tech Tip Tuesday videos. We will miss her work ethic and her enthusiasm for working in IT Marketing and Communications.

Congratulations to our other IT Student Assistants graduating in Fall 2023

  • Stela Apostolova, Psychology, Center for Academic Technology
  • Leah Baker, Computer Science, former Technology Support Services, now Network Services
  • Edrich Grospe, Kinesiology, Technology Help Desk
  • Trinity Phan-Low, Communication Design, Web Services
  • Noah Wheeler, Kinesiology & Spanish Language and Hispanic Culture, Center of Academic Technology

Continuing Project: Changes to TeamDynamix Service Catalog

IT is continuing our work to improve customer experience within the TeamDynamix Service Catalog. This project started in Spring 2023 with user experience surveys and testing; it continued with the implementation of our “Report A Problem” ticket implementation in early August. The new “Report A Problem” ticket type gives our customer base the ability to report technology issues in a more direct and easy to find manner.  

We have continued our work reorganizing the service catalog based on the results of our tree testing of the campus community we did in the Spring. We will be both reorganizing where tickets are found and combining similar services to make it easier for our customers to find in the long run.

However, this may cause issues if you have specific service tickets bookmarked or are looking for services as we continue to shift ticket categories to make them more intuitive.

If you are having issues finding the ticket you are looking for we suggest visiting our How to Search The Service Catalog knowledge base article. In this article you can find methods for upping your search game when it comes to TeamDynamix, including browsing by category, using A-Z, and making a favorites list.

Cybersecurity Awareness Fall 2023

For October's Cybersecurity Awareness Month Campaign, IT MarComm created a new version of last year's Spin & Win game, making it both easier and harder to win!

Instead of hosting one event as we had in previous semesters, we had four Spin & Win events that piggy-backed off of the already established and popular Otter Thursday events at the Otter Student Union Plaza during lunch time. We created many questions broken up into four cyber security topics, one for each week, tied to that week's Tech Tip Tuesday video:

The wheel included each week's topic as well as a "Hacked" space where harder questions lurked to trip up those playing the game. If they got the answer correct they were good, if they got it wrong they got a minus one strip. We also added the self-explanatory "Spin Again" spaces. During week four we threw in a "Wild Card" category where we would ask a combination of previous week's questions or IT branding questions such as what is IT's website address and where is the Technology Help Desk located.

How to play the game

Each week table visitors spin our wheel and answer three cyber security questions correctly on that week’s topic. Spinners had unlimited tries to get to three correct.  Once they did, they won that week's unique “Cyber Security Hero” button, designed by our new IT Graphic Design student assistant Terry Hernandez. 

Additionally the students who played earned raffle entries for a Starbucks Gift Card drawing.  The idea was to get them coming back, to collect the full set of pins, but also the more Hero buttons students collected- the more raffle entries they earned. One button equaled one entry, two buttons equaled three entries, three buttons equaled seven entries and all four buttons equal fifteen entries.

The results

We ended up with eighty-six raffle entries on our wheel with two students having fifteen entries each, three having even entries, and one having three entries.

Also during week three, Amy was pulled off the table for a few minutes to be interviewed about cyber security on campus by the Otter Media livestream!

While the tabling event was aimed at exposing our student population to cyber security awareness topics, we also had several employees who would stop by to spin the wheel and answer our questions to win a button, including President Vanya Quiñonez.

We wrapped up Cyber Security Awareness month with a special Tip-or-Treat Tech Tip Tuesday episode that included a tip about recent rental scams and the treat of our two raffle winners being chosen. 

Kaylyn Quintero and Amy Marbach pose with the Cyber Security Spin and Win Wheel outside of the OSU

Tech Tip Tuesday Fall 2023

For the Fall 2023 semester we started posting our full Tech Tip Tuesdays as reels on our csumb_it Instagram in addition to our CSUMB Information Technology Youtube channel posts. These are our tech tips with the most views per platform.

A list of our top three Tech Tip Tuesdays on YouTube:

A list of our top three Tech Tip Tuesdays on Instagram: 

Learn more about IT


Chief Information Officer
Chip Lenno

Publisher
Greg Pool
Director of Digital Transformation

Editor
Amy Marbach
User Services Communications Specialist

Writers
Amy Marbach
Cecelia Colchico (graduating this fall)
Greg Pool

Graphic Designer
Teresita Hernandez

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Details

Article ID: 159477
Created
Wed 12/13/23 10:35 AM
Modified
Tue 6/4/24 11:38 AM