A Tribute to President Hutchinson

On May 16th, an emotional campus community celebrated the career and many contributions of President Hutchinson during her 30 year tenure at Chico State, including her support in creating the inaugural Division of IT in 2021 and bringing Vice President of Information Technology Monique Sendze on board to grow and manage the brand new division. The Division of IT worked together to construct a technology-themed centerpiece to display at President Hutchinson's retirement party, featuring both historic and modern equipment in the tower, and slideshow of employees holding up signs stating well-wishes for her retirement.

DoIT Outreach to Graduating Computer Science Students

In an effort to connect with students who are career-bound in the Information Technology field, Division of IT representatives Chris Witthans, Joshua Compton, and Scott Kodai joined forces with Professor David Zeichick's computer science seminar to present and start a dialog about the future of IT at Chico State and the pros and cons of moving towards modern solutions.

The students were presented with challenges that a modern institution faces and broke out into groups to discuss solutions to present to the class. Kodai and Witthans followed up with feedback and insights about the challenges and shared examples and strategies that addressed burning questions that students had about careers in IT.

Compromised Accounts

As phishing attempts are on the rise, Information Technology Support Services (ITSS) has reported an unusually high number of compromised Chico State accounts that need to be locked until the affected user can take action. If this happens to you, here is what to do:

Contact ITSS immediately. They are located in Meriam Library 142 and can be reached by phone at 530-898-4357 or email: itss@csuchico.edu. A support technician will walk you through the steps of re-enabling your account during regular business hours, and business hours during summer are 8am-4pm on Monday-Thursday.

The Inner-Workings of Commencement

At every commencement, Creative Media Technologies work silently in the background to capture every special moment and oversee all the details that honor our graduates. From the 49,841 photos captured, the video coverage of 7 ceremonies and 8 commencement events, the 3,864 photos rapidly edited for use, and over 3,500 programs printed, the dedicated staff pulls together for a seamless event.

New this year was a half hour infomercial-style video about recent developments at Chico State that played while guests took their seats and waited for ceremonies to begin. Back stage, the media productions team maintained intense focus throughout all 7 ceremonies to time the Marching Order software, live video, and orchestra to conduct the flow of each event.

Join Us at the Cal State Tech Connect Conference

Chico State's Division of Information Technology will be participating in the CSU-wide Cal State Tech Connect taking place the week of July 24-27. This is a virtual conference that highlights CSU campus initiatives in enhancing privacy and security; fostering diversity, equity and inclusion; evolving technology, infrastructure, and services; and teaching, learning and transforming the student experience. Featured speakers include three of Chico State's Division of IT directors presenting on the topics below:

• Steve Krok, Chris Mendoza, and Elbert Chan: Using Microsoft Power Platform and Cloud Services to Manage your Infrastructure
• Chris Witthans and Scott Claverie: Enhancing Cybersecurity in Higher Education with Red Canary, MDR, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
• Scott Claverie: Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) Is it the next best thing in telephony services for your campus?

Phish Alert Button Coming Soon

Beginning this month, the Division of IT has begun the proof of concept phase of testing a new "Phish Alert" button that will roll out to the entire campus community later this summer to combat phishing scams. KnowBe4, the provider of the world's largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by tens of thousands of organizations to protect data privacy.

In May of 2023, the Division of IT sent out a simulated phishing attempt through the KnowBe4 platform to take the pulse on how the campus is handling phishing attempts. Out of the 21,000+ phishing simulations emails sent, 5653 users (26.7%) opened the test email, 830 users (3.9%) clicked the phishing test link, and 321 users (1.5%) entered their login credentials. The users who took the phishing bait were from all over the United States, including Hawaii, South and Central America, Eastern and Western Europe, India, and Japan.

DoIT End-User Survey Results (Highlights)

Service optimization is impossible to perform without an honest and thorough understanding of end user opinion toward IT services and software. The Division of IT completed their 2023 IT End User Satisfaction Survey in May 2023. We had 250 respondents to the survey compared to 770 respondents in 2022. This survey helps us develop data driven insights to help DoIT decide what IT services need to be addressed to meet the demands of our campus community.

This year customer satisfaction scores in the four IT core areas: business enablement, IT communications, IT services, suite of applications offered, increased between 1%-4%. We have overall good satisfaction scores between 81% - 84% range and between 4%-12% above benchmark for most scores. Our most satisfied users were faculty and students while staff and MPPs were less satisfied. Our strengths are in the IT services we provide, especially network, application suite offered, service desk timeliness and effectiveness, as well as the professionalism of our IT staff. IT Innovation, agility, and ability to deliver timely and targeted training, and feedback receptivity had lower scores between 76%-79% satisfaction. The top 5 specific areas for improvement called out in the survey were:

• Easier access to printing services. Students are finding other ways to print rather than using school printers. Print services on campus cost money and it is difficult to find the funds to print at school.
• Wi-Fi service is spotty and the computers in the library are outdated and slow.
• We need to maximize the tools (making the most of them) rather than purchasing new tools. Or consolidate tools that do similar work.
• Access to software and software training needs improvement. Support for Qualtrics should be in place.
• IT Support Services (ITSS) is understaffed.

Global Presence at Commencement

The families of our diverse students travel from all over to attend the commencement festivities at Chico State, and over 27,500 viewers joined the celebration online via live stream during the 7 ceremonies that occurred over 5 days.

For those who cannot attend in person, Creative Media Technologies works in the background to capture the ceremony on video and live stream it for audiences all over the world. Below are 25 countries where viewers tuned in from to watch the live stream during the 2023 commencement week:

Highlights from the Network Refresh Project



The Division of IT recently completed work on the Network Refresh Project, an initiative that involves switching out the network equipment in all state-supported buildings that provides connectivity to all campus technology assets. This project was no small feat, occurs every six years, and involves a strategic 3-way partnership of Chico State subject matter experts, a best-in-industry vendor (Deloitte), and financial support from the Chancellor’s Office.

These highlights reflect the magnitude of the campus-wide network refresh:

• 226 high-density switches installed and migrated
• 9,780 network ports installed
• $777,000 of network switch equipment

This network refresh gives Chico State the prestige of having the best-in-higher-education network, further enhancing the Chico experience with the most powerful, sustainable, and nimble infrastructure in the CSU system.