UMBC Office of the Vice President of Information Technology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/12958

The Vice President of Information Technology is the university’s Chief Information Officer (CIO). The Vice President provides university leadership for information technology at UMBC and serves on the executive leadership team of the university. The Vice President is responsible for providing information technology services in support of teaching and scholarship, research computing, and administrative support. Reporting directly to the President, the Vice President is responsible for strategic planning and implementation, coordination, budget, personnel, and policy related to information technology at UMBC.

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Managing cybersecurity in local governments: 2022
    (Kennesaw State University, 2025-02-15) Norris, Donald; Mateczun, Laura
    This paper, based on data from our second nationwide survey of cybersecurity among local or grassroots governments in the U.S., examines how these governments manage this important function. As we have shown elsewhere, cybersecurity among local governments is increasingly important because these governments are under constant or nearly constant cyberattack. Due to the frequency of cyberattacks, as well as the probability that at least some attacks will succeed and cause damage to local government information systems, these governments have great responsibility to protect their information assets. This, in turn, requires these governments to manage cybersecurity effectively, something our data show is largely absent at the American grassroots because, on average, local governments fail in to manage cybersecurity well. After discussing our findings, we conclude and make recommendations for ways to improve local government cybersecurity management.
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    Parsing Post-deployment Students’ Feedback: Towards a Student-Centered Intelligent Monitoring System to Support Self-regulated Learning
    (Springer Nature, 2024-07-02) Javiya, Prachee; Kleinsmith, Andrea; Karen Chen, Lujie; Fritz, John
    A student-centered intelligent monitoring system collects data from students and provides insights and feedback to students about various aspects of the learning process. It often leverages data collected from educational technology systems, such as Learning Management Systems (LMS), to support students’ self-regulated learning. A well-designed system needs to strike a delicate balance between the power of machine intelligence (e.g., automatic characterization and inference of students’ behaviors) and the need to promote students’ agency (e.g., the desire to be responsible and take control of their own behaviors). This paper presents a comprehensive qualitative analysis of anonymous student survey data collected from over 500 students with experience with a Learning Activity Monitoring System (LAMS), which has been in operation for over a decade in a public minority-serving higher education institute in the US. The study offers valuable insights into the effectiveness and user perceptions of LAMS they use in their learning context. This analysis reveals the sense-making process or lack thereof, and its implication in exploiting the potential utility of the LAMS. The findings also highlight students’ varied expectations and requirements, providing critical insights for the ongoing development and refinement of the LAMS system toward an intelligent monitoring system that truly centers students’ agency and promotes self-regulated learning. This study contributes to the growing body of work in hearing and understanding students’ genuine voices and the sparse literature of large-scale qualitative analysis of students’ feedback during the post-deployment phase on student-facing data-driven monitoring systems in an ecologically valid context in higher education.
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    Using Analytics for Institutional Transformation
    (Educause, 2012-09-04) Suess, Jack; Dillon, Mike; Mozie-Ross, Yvette
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    Reclaiming the Lead: Higher Education's Future and Implications for Technology
    (EDUCAUSE, 2010-12) Hrabowski III, Freeman A.; Suess, Jack
    U.S. education, K-20, is under constant scrutiny as the country faces increasingly competitive global markets, a worldwide recession, rapid technological and demographic changes at home, and struggling educational systems nationwide. As recently as this past summer, President Barack Obama, in a speech on education at the University of Texas at Austin, said: "I want you to know we have been slipping. In a single generation, we've fallen from first place to 12th place in college graduation rates for young adults. . . . In one generation, we went from number one to number 12. Now, that's unacceptable, but it's not irreversible. We can retake the lead. . . . The single most important step we can take is to make sure that every one of our young people . . . has the best education that the world has to offer."
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    Assessment and Analytics in Institutional Transformation
    (EDUCAUSE Review, 2011-09-12) Hrabowski, Freeman; Suess, Jack; Fritz, John
    U.S. higher education has an extraordinary record of accomplishment in preparing students for leadership, in serving as a wellspring of research and creative endeavor, and in providing public service. Despite this success, colleges and universities are facing an unprecedented set of challenges. To maintain the country’s global preeminence, those of us in higher education are being called on to expand the number of students we educate, increase the proportion of students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and address the pervasive and long-standing underrepresentation of minorities who earn college degrees—all at a time when budgets are being reduced and questions about institutional efficiency and effectiveness are being raised.
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    Project-Based Learning Continues to Inspire Cybersecurity Students: The 2018–2019 SFS Research Studies at UMBC
    (ACM) Golaszewski, Enis; Sherman, Alan T.; Oliva, Linda; Peterson, Peter A. H.; Bailey, Michael R.; Bohon, Scott; Bonyadi, Cyrus; Borror, Casey; Coleman, Ryan; Flenner, Johannah; Enamorado, Elias; Eren, Maksim E.; Khan, Mohammad; Larbi, Emmanuel; Marshall, Kyle; Morgan, William; Mundy, Lauren; Onana, Gabriel; Orr, Selma Gomez; Parker, Lauren; Pinkney, Caleb; Rather, Mykah; Rodriguez, Jimmy; Solis, Bryan; Tete, Wubnyonga; Tsega, Tsigereda B.; Valdez, Edwin; Varga, Charles K.; Weber, Brian; Wnuk-Fink, Ryan; Yonkeu, Armand; Zetlmeisl, Lindsay; Doyle, Damian; O'Brien, Casey; Roundy, Joseph; Suess, Jack
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    The SFS Summer Research Study at UMBC: Project-Based Learning Inspires Cybersecurity Students
    (2018-11-12) Sherman, Alan; Golaszewski, Enis; LaFemina, Edward; Goldschen, Ethan; Khan, Mohammed; Mundy, Lauren; Rather, Mykah; Solis, Bryan; Tete, Wubnyonga; Valdez, Edwin; Weber, Brian; Doyle, Damian; O’Brien, Casey; Oliva, Linda; Roundy, Joseph; Suess, Jack
    May 30-June 2, 2017, Scholarship for Service (SFS) scholars at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) analyzed the security of a targeted aspect of the UMBC computer systems. During this hands-on study, with complete access to source code, students identified vulnerabilities, devised and implemented exploits, and suggested mitigations. As part of a pioneering program at UMBC to extend SFS scholarships to community colleges, the study helped initiate six students from two nearby community colleges, who transferred to UMBC in fall 2017 to complete their four-year degrees in computer science and information systems. The study examined the security of a set of "NetAdmin" custom scripts that enable UMBC faculty and staff to open the UMBC firewall to allow external access to machines they control for research purposes. Students discovered vulnerabilities stemming from weak architectural design, record overflow, and failure to sanitize inputs properly. For example, they implemented a record-overflow and code-injection exploit that exfiltrated the vital API key of the UMBC firewall. This report summarizes student activities and findings, and reflects on lessons learned for students, educators, and system administrators. Our students found the collaborative experience inspirational, students and educators appreciated the authentic case study, and IT administrators gained access to future employees and received free recommendations for improving the security of their systems. We hope that other universities can benefit from our motivational and educational strategy of teaming educators and system administrators to engage students in active project-based learning centering on focused questions about their university computer systems.
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    Using IMS Standards to Advance Next-Generation Digital Learning Environments (NGDLE)
    (2019-02-26) Suess, John
    The NGDLE is a vision for a learning ecosystem not a detailed technical specification. As such, the NGDLE will evolve over time as technology matures and the research in teaching & learning identifies effective practices. This talk focuses on what Jack Suess (UMBC) believes to be three essential elements for success: 1. The role of standards in building a learning ecosystem, the most important standards to follow, and why standards such as Open Badges, Comprehensive Learning Record, and LTI-Advantage are essential for interoperability and integration; 2. The importance of learning analytics in advancing effective practices in course design and pedagogy, student graduation and retention, and personalization of learning; and 3. The importance of universal design principles to think more broadly about accessibility of learning resources and to move beyond a course-centric view of learning.