IT News

Microsoft has updated its higher education licensing model. In response, UITS is aligning Microsoft 365 license assignments with employee job responsibilities while making effective use of university resources.

The university's Space Management and Flexible Work Policy was recently introduced to provide campus with guidance for documenting work locations and flexible schedule agreements. In conjunction with the new policy, the university also needed a place to collect this information which would ultimately be used to help improve space planning, campus safety, facilities management, regulatory compliance, and long-term workplace planning.

This fall, UITS is highlighting expanded technology support across campus, including university-provided GenAI tools, broader classroom assistance from Instructional Technology Services, improved access to the IT Service Portal and Tech Zone, and new AI-powered support features coming soon. The update also reminds the campus community to stay alert for increasingly sophisticated phishing and investment scams.

History and innovation come together at the The Coit Museum in the University of Arizona's R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy. While its collections preserve centuries of pharmacy and health sciences, the museum is also embracing modern technology to make those stories more interactive, engaging and accessible for today's visitors. Founded in 1966 as an asset of the R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy and the University of Arizona, the museum exists to connect people with the history of pharmacy and health sciences. Its mission centers on collecting, preserving and interpreting those histories so they can inform and inspire future generations. Every artifact, photograph and document contributes to a larger story about the evolution of medicine, education and patient care.

One of the challenges faced in higher education IT hasn't been a lack of powerful tools‚ but the gaps between them. Student-supporting staff members often navigate an array of disconnected platforms to understand a student's circumstances, and then a different system entirely to act on it. Agentic AI offers a new answer to that problem; building a data layer and an interaction layer that allows for moving assemblages of data from and back to source platforms, by building a user interaction or workflow that is platform agnostic for the user. The University of Arizona is among a growing number of institutions exploring this potential.

Many people think of a new year beginning on January 1 or as the start of the academic year each fall. The University of Arizona's fiscal calendar begins on July 1 and runs through June 30, serving as the foundation for budgeting, accounting and financial operations across campus. The new fiscal year officially begins in July. Year-end financial activities, however, continue through August, with Federal grants closing later in September. Behind the scenes, months of planning and coordination make sure every transition happens accurately and with minimal disruption.

University IT Services teams are constantly implementing improvements—from network speed, to application updates, to reducing phishing emails. Almost all campus technologies, though, rely on identification, authentication and authorization. Every time you log in with your NetID and password, campus systems verify your identity and affiliation (student, employee, retiree, etc.). This architecture is the domain of the Identity & Access Management (IAM) team. 

As Vice President and Head of Delivery at ALTEN, located in India, he leads large-scale engineering programs, oversees AI-driven transformation initiatives, and helps organizations navigate increasingly complex technological landscapes. Yet despite years of experience in engineering, delivery, and business leadership, he saw an opportunity to deepen his understanding of the technologies shaping the future.

For nearly 70 years, Arizona Public Media (AZPM) operated from spaces in the University of Arizona’s Modern Languages building, which were never designed for modern broadcasting. Television studios occupied former classrooms and labs, repurposed from their original intent as distance-learning studios. Broadcast equipment grew organically over decades. Transmission paths stretched from campus to mountaintop towers and relay sites that deliver PBS, NPR, Classical and Jazz music, and emergency information across Southern Arizona, in addition to AZPM’s award-winning local productions.

When the University of Arizona Graduate College began exploring ways to better support prospective students, current students, and graduate coordinators, Patrick Barabe approached the topic with caution. As IT Director for the Graduate College, Barabe has spent years evaluating technology solutions and vendor claims. Like many experienced technology leaders, he has learned to approach emerging tools with a healthy degree of skepticism.