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Behind the scenes of Opening

Opening. It means different things to different people. If you work at Syracuse University, it means the week students move in for the fall semester and the welcoming activities the University undertakes, known also as Syracuse Welcome. Parents have told us that in their experiences, SU stages one of the best college openings anywhere in the country. ITS is a big part of that event, mobilizing over 70 professional and student staff, along with temporary employees for a few of the most important days in a student’s life. While SU’s CIO Chris Sedore is the Executive Sponsor, primary responsibility for the ITS Opening event falls to the Academic Applications and Service Centers (AASC) unit of ITS under AASC Director Jenny Gluck. The person responsible for the overall project management for this past Opening was David Hoalcraft. During this year’s Opening from August 25 to August 29, 7,742 residential students successfully connected to the campus networks. If you’ve worked on computers, you know that is no small feat.
Planning Planning typically begins in the spring with the assembly of the ITS Opening core team, which includes staff from Networking, Service Center, Information Security, and Communications. This group performs an in-depth review of the prior year’s Opening feedback, determines improvements and enhancements for this year’s Opening, and finalizes the Opening “model” which will be used to bring our residential students onboard in the most convenient, visible, accessible and effective way possible. During this time, the network connection software is tested to ensure that it works seamlessly with the most current versions of operating systems, computers and devices. The ITS Opening logo is developed and used for branding on T-shirts, the ITS website, all communications, banners and posters. The hang tag tickets and codes, and information packets are designed and ordered. The Opening team connects with all the schools and colleges and the SU Bookstore to coordinate computing requirements for that year, and works with other University departments who are part of the Syracuse Welcome to ensure that their communications include information from ITS to help students prepare for using SU's computing resources. Incoming students are also contacted by email from ITS about its services and to help them prepare for the connection process. This includes preparing and publishing on the ITS website comprehensive advice and making sure students know how to find it. One of biggest and most challenging tasks is to determine where and how ITS will be present during the five days of Opening. These locations include residence halls, the Taking Care of Business tent on the Quad, the ITS Service Centers, Sky Halls, Help Desk phone support, and poster and banner placement. A typical ITS Opening requires one Opening Coordinator, ITS Opening Helpers, 15 ITS Building Coordinators for residence halls, Taking Care of Business (TCB) tent Coordinator and TCB Helpers, ITS Field and Service Center Technicians. The 2010 Opening required more than 70 people, including ITS professional and student staff, and TEK Systems temporary technicians, and in-depth training for them all; 16 ITS full-sized banners; 150 t-shirts in various sizes; 75 ID badges; 12,000 hang tags and the entry form into OrangeTracker; 30+ tables and 75+ chairs for each of the locations; 15 bins containing cables, supplies, water bottles, and candy, one bin per building; 10,000 New student packets to be handed out in residence halls; 60 backpacks for field technicians that included USB flash drives containing software diagnostic and support tools and manuals; laptops and cell phones for communication; five internal listservs; an Answers site for Opening information; countless meetings; lots of posters in lots of places; and golf carts.
Opening! All of this preparation culminates into five of the most exciting, interesting and anticipated days for ITS staff—Opening. During this time, we get a chance to interact with new and returning students and their parents while performing the important task of getting our students connected and acquainted with SU’s computing resources. A typical Opening day looks like this: The Opening team looks at the prior day’s activity to review resource demands, analyze hang tag results, identify common issues and solutions, evaluate student occupancy and connection status and generate the daily report. The Opening team and building coordinators meet to share this information and discuss the upcoming day’s activities. The Building coordinators then go to designated locations and meet with the field technicians to begin the day’s activities. During the support hours, field technicians walk the halls looking for hangtags and/or remain at table to help walk-ups while building coordinators act as triage for issues and communications. The Opening team keeps in contact with the Building coordinators via emails, calls, and texts; and visits locations in the golf carts to deliver supplies and provide support. All day long, the Service Centers and phone support handle a multitude of students with everything from general questions to complex computing issues.

Post-Opening After the Opening dust settles and classes begin, there is still work to be done. A post-Opening customer survey is created and sent to our customers for additional feedback. The hang tag information is carefully analyzed and disseminated. A post-Opening Debriefing survey is sent to participating ITS staff and ITS student staff to collect feedback on issues and improvements for the next year. The work that goes into these five days is a reflection of ITS’s commitment to making Opening a welcoming and reassuring time for our incoming students, and getting connected means more than just securing an IP address on a network. It sets the foundation for students’ computing for years to come, helping to make SU a great place for each student to start their digital future.