About the Division

Mission & Vision

Our mission is to provide technology solutions and business process leadership through collective expertise, collaboration with other divisions, and continuous learning to advance the University's mission, enhance the student experience, and support student success.

IT's vision is to be an innovative technology leader within higher education by providing essential services and emerging technologies that simplify and improve access to knowledge and learning; increase student success; and prepare the leaders of tomorrow with skills necessary for the future.

About the CIO

John McGuthryJohn McGuthry, Vice President and Chief Information Officer oversees the Division of Information Technology. The division includes six units: The Office of the Vice President; Information Technology; IT Security & Compliance; Process & Project Management; Institutional Research, Planning & Analytics; Learning & Research Technologies.

Mr. McGuthry joined Cal Poly Pomona in July 2011 as the University's Chief Information Officer with over 30 years of experience in the field and over 15 years as a Chief Information Officer. Before serving as Cal Poly Pomona's CIO, Mr. McGuthry led business process consulting and product management teams.

Mr. McGuthry earned his Bachelor of Science in physical sciences from the University of Maryland at College Park and his Master of Science in Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He actively participates in the technology community in Southern California, EDUCAUSE, and the CIO Executive Council.

Executive Assistant: Shelley Rimpsey

students looking at a laptop screen

IT Master Plan


Operational Excellence – We strive for operational excellence through recruitment and retention of technology staff committed to the success of students and the university.

Continuous Improvement – IT&IP utilizes a continuous improvement model that promotes efficiencies using common platform technologies and digitization of processes that positively impacts student success.

Responsibility – IT&IP promotes a culture of fiscal responsibility, ensuring budgets are spent wisely. IT & IP also fosters an environment of security and inclusiveness as well as practicing responsible data stewardship.

Respect – We encourage a work environment built on professionalism and respect to better serve students, faculty, and staff.

Safety – IT&IP emphasizes a culture of safety that promotes cyber awareness in all facets of technology, analyzes risk on existing and planned platform technologies, and invests in core technology that reduces campus risks.

 

INITIATIVE 1

PRIORITIZE SOLUTIONS TO SUPPORT THE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY

Goals:

  • When appropriate, major technology initiatives will follow Technology Governance model
    • Technology Governance Oversight will be chaired by the CIO with input representing the President’s Cabinet.
    • Working Groups, both ad hoc and standing, will be co-chaired by a member of the IT&IP Division and a member outside of the IT&IP Division.
    • Recommendations are provided by the co-chairs and implementation is the responsibility of the CIO.
  • Establish and maintain a 3-year technology portfolio for solutions that is heavily guided with input from the University Community.
    • IT&IP will establish a new technology request process and enhance the existing technology request process.
    • Each Division participates with their required solutions or directions
    • Solutions may be modified, scheduled, or delivered based on complexity.
    • Final schedules for major solutions will be guided by the cabinet and must consider cost and resources when scheduled.
  • All approved new technology initiatives are accompanied with a funded operational support plan.
    • Plan includes sources for funding the solution (hardware, software, maintenance, & human resources)
    • Plan includes an Accessibility review
    • Plan includes a Security review
    • Plan includes a Data review
    • Estimated implementation schedule

 

INITIATIVE 2

ADVANCE A CULTURE OF PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE

Goals:

  • Increase recruitment and retention of students and staff.
    • Implement a student hiring model with additional support and tools to increase the strength of student pools.
    • Implement a staff hiring model with additional support and tools to increase strength of staff pools.
    • Recognize and celebrate/reward individual achievements and their impact
  • Develop, encourage, and reward the achievements of teamwork.
    • Improve and reinforce the Division team award model.
    • Develop an external team award model to encourage cross divisional team awards.
    • Reinforce best practice team training as an integral component of professional development plans.
    • Highlight all significant short-term team efforts regardless of success. 
  • Invest in our personnel professional development opportunities
    • Encourage each team member to develop a 3-year plan aligned with their career goals.
    • Partner with EODA on the offerings of professional development programs tailored for the Division.
    • Provide support and encourage staff to further educational opportunities.
    • Identify and invest in professional development opportunities tailored for career growth.
  • Improve on the processes and organizational effectiveness of the Division
    • Routinely assess the division against NIST/ISO best practices.
    • Conduct regular assessments and improvements for all technology policies and procedures
    • Conduct two practice events per year for disaster recovery.
    • Conduct yearly reviews of incident reports to improve division procedures
    • Conduct intentional surveys and end user feedback on services and processes.
  • Ensure all technology services support a professional climate in which all are welcomed, respected and valued.
    • Regularly ensure the language and images used to describe and represent our services are accessible.

 

INITIATIVE 3 

INVEST IN INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS AND CAPABILITIES

Goals

  • Increase and Modernize the Information Security Program.
    • Standardize and improve information security end user training and awareness.
    • Review and modernize the tools and procedures used to protect the university’s core technologies.
    • Review and modernize the tools and procedures used to protect the university’s laptop and desktop computing technologies.
    • Invest and grow the capabilities of the information security team.
  • Expand the Student Digital Experience to Support Student Success
    • Invest in student centric technologies that enhance student learning
    • Enhance technologies that support student co-curricular activities and engagement
    • Invest in technologies that support student academic planning and graduation
    • Enhance technologies that support the student digital experience in administrative and academic areas
  • Invest in best-in-class platform technologies.
    • Identify new platforms that provide the greatest flexibility for the university environment.
    • Identify training opportunities to best utilize platform technologies for business analysts and application programmers.
    • Identify consultants to assist with the development and enhancement of platforms to fast forward the adoption of platform technologies.
  • Expand data storage, data analysis, and data visualization platforms in order to generate actionable insights to improve student support services and organizational practices
    • Enhance and modernize the Data Warehouse environment
    • Grow capabilities to enhance reporting skills
    • Enhance campus capabilities in Evaluating Data
    • Enhance the division's abilities to provide predictive analytics for key initiatives
    • Enhance the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning with digital technologies
    • Formalize university data governance practices and adopt a university-wide data dictionary platform
  • Expand The use and adoption of digital capabilities.
    • Continue to invest in technologies to eliminate the need for paper-based campus transactions.
    • Utilize platform environments to optimize university processes
    • Continue to identify student and employee individual data for a more personalized digital experience.
  • Expand the investment in technologies that support a flexible environment.
    • Continue to invest in mobile platforms for university employees
    • Continue to identify opportunities for students to participate in mobile platforms
    • Invest in mobile enabled campus environments.
    • Flexible technology that allows students, faculty, and staff to engage with the teaching, learning, and research experience whether in person or remote
  • Partner with Academic Affairs with Strategic Technologies.
    • Identify and invest in technologies that benefit the operational environment and learning environment.
    • Identify and invest in technologies that benefit the research and learning environment.
    • Continue to invest and modernize the academic technology learning environment.

Departments


Advanced Computing supports faculty and student achievement through technology by integrating modern technologies into our campus resources. We offer support from the initial grant proposal to the final stages of research projects and technology requests.

Reporting to the AVP, Learning & Research Technologies, Institutional Research, Planning and Analytics (IRPA) serves the university by providing leadership and support for strategic planning, business intelligence, data visualization and analytics.

Information Technology Operations is responsible for delivering and supporting our secure, reliable technology infrastructure in support of 六色网's academic mission. IT Operations collaborates with the campus community to provide critical services and applications. We maintain the university's telecommunications, cloud, on-site data centers, networking infrastructure, and the strategic use of multimedia resources. The Client Services department provides support for campus computing devices for students, faculty, and staff, including classroom and lab technologies. 

  • Information Security –  Works in collaboration with the campus community to protect the integrity of campus information technology infrastructure to mitigate risks and losses associated with security threats, while supporting access to technology.  Provides risk, threat, alert, vulnerability and alert monitoring, investigation, and advisory services for the University’s computing and information assets allowing for improvement to preventative, detective and corrective controls.  Collaborates with faculty and students to support teaching, learning and research related to IT cybersecurity.
  • Information Compliance – An information technology compliance program to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the internal controls and assessment processes, monitor regulations for new or changed requirements, and coordinate with internal and external auditors to ensure compliance. Assists senior management in identifying IT related control gaps and associated remediation plans, and that policies and procedures are updated in a timely manner. Maintains core IT risk processes according to industry standards/frameworks (e.g. ISO27001-2, COBIT, ITIL, NIST, etc.).  Compliance requirements include, but are not limited to:  FERPA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, Section 508, GLBA, Red Flag Rule, GDPR.
  • Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR)  - Work with the University community to establish IT Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity criteria and plans;
  • Accessible Technology - Leadership, oversight and coordination for the campus implementation of the CSU's Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) to comply with Section 508, WCAG 2.0AA, and WAI-ARIA.  It includes each of the three priority areas of ATI: web accessibility, instructional materials accessibility, and procurement.

The Process & Project Management Office (PPMO) seeks to promote best practices in business process management and project management across the university to advance the university's mission.

The PPMO is customer service-oriented and provides services within the following service areas: Change Management, Project Management, Business Process Management, and Communication Management.