2022 ASU Enterprise Technology Year in Review

ASU

Technology Enterprise Technology Enterprise

2022 Year in Review

“Universities have a vital role to play in creating and deploying technologies for social benefit. Enterprise Technology, along with ASU partners, are weaving a rich network, both in community and technological infrastructure. The full tapestry of ASU offerings – from living to learning to working – is aligned with the greatest needs of Arizona and our global society.”

Chris Howard Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer ASU, A Public Enterprise

Foreword

What’s in a name? It turns out a whole lot. This year marked a new chapter in our book as we turned the page from the University Technology Office to Enterprise Technology. With ASU as the New American Service University, hundreds of thousands of students, learners, faculty, researchers and staff have had the opportunity to thrive here.

Our evolution is about enabling millions more to thrive.

Words matter. As an Enterprise team, our charge is one of immense social impact; we must harness ASU’s ecosystem of learning experiences and knowledge resources to enable greater community success, engage globally and transform society.

True to our data-driven form, we can measure the year in numbers – like more than 9 billion visits to ASU’s websites this year. Or more than 87 billion security incidents were prevented to protect our community. But at Enterprise Technology, we like to qualify the year in the vibrant stories that colored our impact.

The stories that follow chronicle projects, initiatives and most importantly – people – that have led the catalytic work to better the learner experience and world around us. From building smarter regions to the launch of the T4 Academy to cultivate leaders who are globally engaged and locally attuned to the first Zoom Studio student hackathon, may these stories be reminders of our purpose and inspiration for the future.

Forks Up, Enterprise Technology!

Lev Gonick Chief Information Officer ASU, A Public Enterprise

by Semester Snapshots

Spring

January - May

Smart Region Summit forms partnerships to close the digital divide

The gathering of over 550 smart city experts strengthened a network dedicated to digital equity in Arizona and beyond.

ASU presents innovative

ideas at Salesforce Education Summit

Home to one of the largest Salesforce implementations in higher education, ASU co-hosted the 10th annual Salesforce Education Summit, showcasing the university’s journey to become a better connected enterprise.

Trusted Learner Network Unconference

envisions the credentials of the future

Diplomas, certificates and other badges of achievement are being reimagined in a world that is constantly evolving. The Trusted Learner Network

Unconference ideated ways to leverage the untapped value of digital credentials.

500+ ASU IT specialists participate in Empower 2022

ASU and Verizon partner to bring 5G to the university

The university is Verizon’s newest 5G Innovation Hub, bringing 5G Ultra Wideband to support development of immersive learning experiences, research opportunities and more.

ShapingEDU pitches projects for the advancement of learning

The community of dreamers, doers and drivers participated in a Shark Tank-style event that brought out innovative projects to bring education into modern paradigms of technology.

ASU+GSV Summit connects educational leaders to bring equality to learning

Equal access to education was at the center of the ASU+GSV Summit, which featured dozens of sessions and keynote speakers envisioning the future of learning.

This year, empowering the communities we serve was at the center of conversations among the ASU technology community.

Summer

June-July

Academic Progress rate — supported by Enterprise Technology Enterprise Technology’s data and analytics team created an academic performance dashboard that helped ASU Athletics reach the highest overall Academic Progress Rating (APR) in the NCAA PAC-12 Conference.

Learning Futures Open House invites ASU community members to experience XR

The Learning Futures open house connected industry leaders with Sun Devils to explore the future of virtual and augmented reality.

Fall August -December

Zoom Innovation Lab at ASU fuels studentdriven solutions

ASU and Zoom launched the student-led Zoom Innovation Lab to improve access to world-class learning opportunities, telehealth and more.

Located across all four campus locations in Phoenix, the ASU Tech Studio offers expert-level technology support, strategy and security for all Sun Devils.

Faculty enter virtual reality for Huddle experience

University faculty explored the future of virtual reality learning with Huddle, the collaborative learning environment developed by the student workers at Learning Futures.

ASU T4 Leadership Academy begins empowerment

ASU receives top ranking for student athletes’

ASU Tech Studio revamps services to more effectively support university community

$34.6M investment in ASU to help create reliable internet access and training for the region

As the largest university-led digital equity initiative in the country, ASU Enterprise Technology partnered with regional leaders to advance broadband, local tech support, equipment and training to communities in need across Maricopa County.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month’s Digital Trust Summit innovates privacy and security

Cybersecurity and privacy were at the forefront of the Digital Trust Summit, which highlighted emerging security technology and ethics in an ever-evolving digital age.

ASU Data Conference convenes experts across the university

This two-day hybrid event gathered over 400 data professionals and enthusiasts from across the university, who leverage data-informed insights about ASU’s people, environments and products to create an even better foundation to work, learn and thrive.

University Technology Office becomes ASU Enterprise Technology

This year, we changed our name to ASU Enterprise Technology and rallied behind our core mission: to design and deliver an exceptional human-centered technology experience to all Sun Devils.

Enhancing the student experience

ASU students work with Silicon Valley Bank to create fintech solutions

Close to 50 ASU students came together with university and industry leaders to explore new solutions that address some of the most pressing challenges facing the financial technology (fintech) industry, as well as explore new career pathways possible after graduation.

“After coding non-stop for about 20 hours, we ended up implementing an end-to-end platform prototype that could automate the process of predicting success in lending loans and connecting startup clients to potential investors,” Fulton Schools of Engineering master’s student and team “Zion” developer Naveen Kumar explained.

ASU Enterprise Technology co-hosted the hackathon with ASU’s Fulton Schools of Engineering and Silicon Valley Bank to bring industry experts, new technologies and upskilling opportunities to ASU students.

ASU students develop app to help people experiencing homelessness

The challenge of finding accessible and safe hygienic resources is among one of many constant concerns for people experiencing homelessness. And with over 10,000 people without safe, secure housing in Arizona, finding solutions to support these individuals is critical.

Striving to provide solutions to this challenge, one group of students at ASU Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions have brought their coursework into the real world by developing Safe Hygiene 4U. The app offers access to maps and lists that share vetted resources like showers, clothing donations and shelters.

“With Safe Hygiene 4U, we hope to improve the health and confidence of families and their children,” team member and student Madeline Demasco said.

The course is supported by Apple’s Community Education Initiative, which partners with institutions to create opportunities for learners of all backgrounds to gain skills in coding. Led by ASU Enterprise Technology, ASU offers courses using the Apple Swift Playground coding across four colleges and counting.

ASU’s Cloud Innovation Center designs app to help teens navigate entry into the workforce

St. Joseph the Worker, the largest community-funded employment organization in Arizona, leverages its Teen Workforce Initiative to provide workshops and resources to improve workforce readiness and life skills. To expand its reach, St. Joseph turned to ASU’s Cloud Innovation Center (ASU CIC), powered by AWS, to partner in the development of an app to reach the age range where they spend their time.

For ASU student and ASU CIC intern Nilo Exar, the experience of working on this app was a rewarding one – it was about building an experience he wished he had not long ago. “It’s easier when people have a clear vision for what they want the app to be – and St. Joseph did,” said Exar.

Part of Enterprise Technology, ASU’s Cloud Innovation Center brings together faculty, professors, students and technologists to work alongside city leaders to ideate new ways to leverage smart technologies.

From ASU to AWS, three students share their journey from college to career

From ASU to AWS, three graduates from Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering shared their journey from college to career.

Three master’s students – Risabh Raj, Pradeep Kumar Chenchala, and Krishna Teja Kalaparty – used their experience interning at ASU’s Cloud Innovation Center, powered by AWS, to join the workforce. Raj, Chenchala and Kalaparty began working across three departments at AWS – Amazon Robotics, Amazon-Go and Amazon Lex respectively after graduating.

Hear from the students on how their internship impacted their career journey:

Risabh Raj: Cloud computing is the next big thing, along with machine learning. Before, websites used to be deployed on servers; but nowadays, the cloud has changed the entire scenario. All the functionalities and the software service, platform and infrastructures – everything is available on the cloud. I think it’s one of the best things that happened in the software industry.

Krishna Teja Kalaparty: I learned a lot of new skills on the job. Most of the things I was working on, I had the conceptual overview – but at the CIC, I was able to go into the nitty gritty and learn the application-based knowledge.

Pradeep Kumar Chenchala: I got to know the entire scope of projects taking place at the CIC and helped create a single endpoint for users to log in and work together.

ASU student developers explore real-time braille

translation in the classroom

A team of students at ASU developed an exciting innovation in accessible learning called EquiBraille: a braille board that uses artificial intelligence to offer visually-impaired students real-time access to written classroom material.

The idea behind EquiBraille surfaced at a “student jam” in partnership with Verizon. The event brought together students of all disciplines to ideate ways that 5G and wireless technology can serve education, healthcare and the environment. “What if we can make something that visually impaired students could use to have a better education and be able to achieve their dreams?” team member Keval Shah asked.

Improving the ways in which our communities work, learn and thrive

Encouraging

ASU faculty innovation showcases three tech-enabled learning experiences

Enterprise Technology’s Learning Experience (LX) team assists in the integration of s technology into course design. Three examples in the realms of online community building, improved web accessibility and creative tools exemplified this standout work:

1. Building online communities with Slack. Cara Sidman, Clinical Associate Professor at the College of Health Solutions, can have up to 1,200 students a year, with 20 TAs at any given time. Sidman uses Slack to streamline and enhance communication for her ASU Online courses.

high

2. Ally’s web accessibility tool supports learning for all. Using Ally, an intuitive dashboard that breaks down accessibility concerns, School of Social Transformation instructor Terri Hlava has made adjustments to her materials that make a significant impact for those who need it. When explaining her commitment to supporting web accessibility in her course, Hlava said: “In the spirit of inclusivity, that’s just what you do.”

school

students nationwide to get their heads in the cloud

Enterprise Technology partners with the W. P. Carey School of Business, National Education Equity Lab and Amazon Web Services to co-deliver a course on the foundations of cloud computing to high school students, who can earn college credit as well as an industry certificate.

The course stretches students to explore the role of cloud technology in a modern business, identify appropriate cloud services to support business needs, configure basic cloud infrastructure through ASW and recommend improvements for basic cloud infrastructure changes.

3. Incorporating Adobe’s suite of creative tools. The rise of multimedia provides new learning experiences that reflect the kind of content today’s learners engage with most. Karla Murphy and Chelsie Schlesinger, co-instructors at the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies use Adobe’s suite of tools for students to build narratives in new forms, like podcasting.

In addition to the technical foundation they are learning for cloud computing, these skills will make students more employable and hopefully ease the transition into college,” student and teaching fellow Trinity Smith reflected.

WorkASU partnership fuels three times the innovation

Enterprise Technology partnered with Robots & Pencils to develop custom text bots for the ASU Slack workspace. The goal? Help incoming students connect with their peers and university resources.

An introductory chatbot in Slack gives incoming students the information needed to operate within the tool. Then, it provides a path to the communities they’d find most valuable, for example, peers in the same college or major.

“When I joined Devil2Devil, I was able to meet other future students from all over, and it made it easier to talk about my college decision because everyone was going through the same thing,” said senior Nyeedra Blackelk Noel.

The Slack integration developed for Devil2Devil, ASU’s network for incoming and enrolled students, illustrates tech innovation that supports student success.

shared John Paul (JP) Rabusa, an undergraduate senior in Popular Music.

Fusion on First provides students with state-of-the-art learning and living experiences

Part of Enterprise Technology’s work to advance digital transformation at ASU includes equipping our campuses with the right technology and digital infrastructure to enhance how we learn, work and live.

Fusion on First is a 13-floor building that offers both living and learning spaces for Sun Devils. It opened in fall 2021 but reached new heights with its grand opening this year. Home of Herberger Institute’s Popular Music program, in addition to Fashion, the space features state-of-the-art facilities, supported by Enterprise Technology.

Jorge Costa, a popular music instructor and engineer, evaluated what the technology outfitted in the spaces offers. “I’m pretty comfortable saying we have the best recording spaces in Arizona right now,” Costa said.

ASU’s Experience Center chatbot supports the Sun Devil community

ASU’s Experience Center (EC) offers 24/7 support to the entire Sun Devil community. This team of over 140 agents and specialists are available to help students, faculty and staff from any location navigate the many services the university provides to its community – from IT troubleshooting to parking and transport, password reset, facilities and more.

This year, the EC’s released a new chatbot to assist students with financial aid questions. This artificial intelligence-driven software simulates human-like conversations with users via text message on chat. It will soon expand to other EC services for everyone in the ASU community.

“The recording rooms are feats of technological and engineer ing genius.”

As Gigi Speaks, Director Information Technology Services, put it, “the chatbot is impactful to the user because it can provide simple answers instantly instead of having them wait for an agent to become available.”

October 06, 2022

In the media

MAY 18, 2022

Arizona State students are teaching high schoolers AWS cloud

September 27, 2022

Student team developing virtual classrooms at ASU’s Learning Futures

January 6, 2022

Amazon Sidewalk Bridge Pro offers professional-grade connectivity

Advancing digital transformation

Behind Enterprise Technology’s tech-enabled activities is an intricate infrastructure that shapes daily interactions. We’re innovating the technological processes, models and relationships that connect the ASU+ community.

Develop dashboards for near real-time informed decision making.

With numerous dashboards serving teams across the university, we know the power of data and the stories that it tells. One example includes the use of near real-time dashboards by Sun Devil Athletics’ Academic Coaches to evaluate student-athletes academic progress. And this year, ASU was ranked number one in student athletes’ Academic Progress Rate by NCAA.

Advance the university’s shift to become a fully cloud-based infrastructure.

Enterprise Technology is proactive in always seeking to optimize tools to serve the ASU community and beyond. One such example showcases how the team strategically guided the migration of the AZTransfer system’s database – which houses all transfer student data from across Arizona’s community college systems and the three Arizona public universities – to the cloud resulting in better performance, better responsiveness and more visibility for users.

Support Enterprise-wide technology upgrades and transitions.

Aligning with the university’s goals of becoming more accessible, flexible and agile, Enterprise Technology led the strategy and execution of adopting tools like the new enterprise-wide solution for voice communication using Zoom Phone, QuestionPro’s survey tool, Badgr’s suite of digital credentialing tools, and Adobe Sign’s e-signature application.

Ensuring a connected community.

Every day, thousands of students, faculty and staff log on to ASU’s wifi network. Enterprise Technology plays a key role in strategizing and implementing the digital infrastructure that allows innovative learning, living and working spaces to thrive online. For example, across the first week of classes for the fall 2022 semester, ASU websites served over half a billion web requests across all ASU sites.

Drive an advanced chatbots strategy to support the Sun Devil community.

Enterprise Technology provides technical expertise across the ASU Public Enterprise.

From development through software engineers to providing real-time data analytics, Enterprise Technology partners with ASU enterprises to provide the tools, talents and expertise that supports a variety of widely used products and services offered at ASU. This includes support for the Interactive Degree Planner, My ASU, ASU Mobile App, and ASU’s Salesforce instances, to name a few.

Prioritizing student success, technical development and the power of scalability, ASU is utilizing chatbots in a number of unique ways to support student and staff success. For example, in partnership with ASU’s Academic Enterprise and the Experience Center, Enterprise Technology served as the technical support for chatbot development and deployment to enhance student engagements.

Enterprise Technology’s digital trust and information security approach includes a number of services that protect ASU community members’ digital identity and personal information. Our presence at getprotected.asu.edu showcases these efforts, which include proactively responding to security incidents, providing antimalware software, conducting security reviews, and much more.

Ensuring the highest levels of trust.

Enterprise Technology

products initiatives &

Huddle + ASUniverse

ASU’s Learning Futures’ Huddle project brings groups together in VR spaces, while the digital twin of the university’s Tempe campus is an introduction to the ASUniverse, a segment of the metaverse.

ASU Sync Studios

The ASU Sync Studios provide technology-enabled spaces for faculty to reach their students wherever they are.

Leading smart city programs at ASU

Sustainable and long-term partnerships with leading companies play a critical role in advancing ASU’s smart technology initiatives from the campus to the community. Enterprise Technology supports two key partnerships that explore emerging technology within the community: ASU’s Cloud Innovation Center, powered by AWS, and the Cox Connected Environments Collaboratory at ASU.

MediaPlus

MediaPlus is a media streaming and management platform developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in partnership with ASU.

Digital Equity Initiative

ASU’s Digital Equity Initiative is bringing together partners from across the university as well as working alongside local organizations and school districts, to connect the under- and unconnected across Arizona. This body of work received $34 million in funding from Maricopa County to advance digital inclusion in Phoenix.

Experience Center + ASU Tech Studio

Combined, these service centers provide 24/7 support for the Sun Devil community across a variety of services.

Trusted Learner Network

The Trusted Learner Network is creating a digital credential model that is more easily shareable to match the increased mobility of our learners and our lives.

ASU’s named a Verizon 5G Innovation Hub

ASU has become Verizon’s newest 5G Innovation Hub, which powers the campus with Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network.

Learning Experience

Enterprise Technology’s collections of software offer tech-enhanced experiences using 21s century tools, including Adobe Creative Cloud, Zoom, Slack, Canvas and more.

ASU Digital Backpack

Every Sun Devil gets an ASU Digital Backpack loaded with 21st century technologies.

Pocket

Enterprise Technology is developing Pocket, a digital wallet and portfolio that explores the use of breakthrough technologies to transform how individuals capture achievements in learning, work and passions, and match their skills with jobs of the future.