ºÚÁÏÉçÇø

The first thing Scott Campbell wants you to know is, there are two distinct IT departments within ºÚÁÏÉçÇø.

“There's Central IT, who provides the campus backbone—networking, Banner, security, all that,” said Campbell, an instructor of Computer Science and Software Engineering as well as Senior Director of Technology for the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC). “And then, every college has a local IT group.”

The local IT group for CEC is composed of Campbell, Jeff Gutowski (Systems Administrator II), Kelly Adelman (Network Support Specialist), and Beverly Wells (Administrative Assistant). 

“Kelly handles most of the desktop fresh build issues,” said Campbell. “Jeff is a System Administrator who tends to handle the larger systems: networking stuff, firewalls, the bigger servers. Bev handles ordering, tracking, purchasing, things like that.”

The CEC IT team also employs ºÚÁÏÉçÇø associates like David Harrison (Cybersecurity & Networking), who Campbell says was instrumental over the summer. “We’ve got some really good ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs—David's one of them,” said Campbell. “I think it's a great job for ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs because we do such a broad range of things. We have Linux, Mac, Windows machines. We have servers. We have a data center. David helps us with tasks like physically running cables, installing operating systems, and patching computers.” 

Key projects over the summer

In many ways, what CEC’s IT team worked over the summer is an extension of what they work on throughout the year. “We're here to provide teaching and research tools and computing for CEC faculty and staff,” said Campbell. That means managing, patching, and upgrading end user computing functionality for around 800 computer workstations across CEC. “We have a lot of tools that we use” to do this work, said Campbell. “We probably have 60 to 90 different software tools that we use on a regular basis.” CEC IT’s work managing computer workstations and faculty and staff technology goes on all year and continues into the summer season.

One key project CEC IT completed over the summer was an unexpected one – the infamous CrowdStrike incident which caused a highly disruptive blue screen error on computers worldwide on July 19, 2024. On this day, all of ºÚÁÏÉçÇø’s IT teams worked to restore computing functionality across campus, including CEC’s IT team, whose work started early that morning. “I saw it when I woke up early in the morning at 5:30,” said Campbell. “I called Jeff and Kelly and said, ‘We've got a problem. Get in here.’ By six o'clock, they were here.” The team successfully got all the impacted computers back up and running, as well as CEC’s servers. 

While acknowledging CrowdStrike’s error in this incident, Campbell is quick to point out that Crowdstrike software is, on the whole, extremely helpful. “It’s saved us from massive problems. Yeah, they screwed up,” said Campbell. But, he says, “I feel so much safer with CrowdStrike. I don't think that we would continue to have the level of openness we have today if we were not running CrowdStrike.”

A people-centric team

Whether speaking of their work over the summer, or their continued efforts year round to support the teaching and research efforts of CEC faculty and staff while juggling IT responsibilities across departments, Campbell has nothing but praise and admiration for his team.

“The thing that impresses me the most is that they are so people-centric,” said Campbell, speaking of Gutowski, Adelman and Wells. “They really understand how impactful this stuff is to people. Their mentality is, ‘let's figure out how we can help you’—instead of, ‘no, that's not the way we do it.’ It’s a joy to be able to work with people who just want to help people get their job done, to get stuff done better.”