College's IT Professionals Share Expertise at Campus Conference

Penn College's third annual IT Conference, presented by Information Technology Services, was held Thursday in the Student and Administrative Services Center and Bush Campus Center. ITS employees were joined by their counterparts at other institutions to network, learn more about mutual challenges and meet with vendors. The conference offered two sessions each in three distinct tracks: security, IT management and virtualization, and included a keynote speech on "IT Trends and Topics" by Jim Cunningham, the college's vice president for information technology and business. The morning address traced the explosive growth of Penn College's information technology infrastructure from its humble advent 15 years ago to today's 2.5-to-1 ratio of students to campus computers, and previewed a number of advancements looming in the industry's "crystal ball": "smart" classrooms that integrate a number of teaching/learning tools, ePortfolios that enable students to create online resumes, portals, mobility and other unified-communication issues, digital signage, social networking and "clouds" (outsourcing institutional data centers to off-site locations).
Most photos by Jessica L. Tobias, student photographer