Partner Success

  Innovative Partnerships

Technology Services partnered with many other departments, teams and units to bring efficiency and innovation to their efforts. This year, the division created an essential software application integrated with Howdy to support graduate students, promoted the University Writing Center through Howdy, and brought an innovative teaching tool to the Texas A&M School of Medicine, which allows users to experience mixed reality while learning medical gross anatomy. The division also partnered with the Center for Teaching Excellence to identify the best training solution for Texas A&M’s mandatory student Title IX training.

Partnering with the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Technology Services successfully consolidated their tools and resources to leverage the benefits of IT unification fully. The division collaborated with Faculty Affairs, developed a test instance of Interfolio for faculty record retention and worked with teams to migrate formal faculty documents from various sources. To save storage, Technology Services worked with the College of Engineering’s local IT team to establish a new data retention policy to reduce unused recorded lectures. A preliminary report shows that this policy has saved the college about 80% of storage space and will realize cost savings due to the reduction in storage capacity needed.

Technology Services supported the migration of the University Police Department Excel reporting system to a customized platform and worked with Facilities and Energy Services to integrate the process of logging and tracking facilities-related requests for almost all campus locations. The redesigned AggieWorks platform offers enhanced transparency throughout a project, allowing users to track their requests from initiation to completion with real-time updates from the facilities coordinators. In fiscal year 2024, UAVS will complete several noteworthy installations, including ten classrooms at the Higher Education Center in McAllen and four lecture hall installations at the Health Professions Education Building at Texas A&M Health’s Bryan location.

HoloAnatomy Transforms Medical Education with HoloLens

Earlier this year, Technology Services brought an innovative teaching tool to the Texas A&M School of Medicine. HoloLens is a device from Microsoft that allows users to experience mixed reality, where digital and physical worlds merge. Unlike virtual reality, which blocks out the surroundings, HoloLens lets the wearer see and interact with holograms in their environment. One of the applications of this technology is HoloAnatomy, a software developed by Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic to teach medical gross anatomy to medical students.

HoloAnatomy uses HoloLens to project a 3D model of the human body that students can explore and manipulate. They can see the organs, bones, muscles, nerves and blood vessels in detail, and even peel away layers to reveal hidden structures. They can also zoom in and out, rotate and move the model around.

According to the developers, this method addresses several limitations found in traditional settings, such as the scarcity and cost of cadavers, the ethical and environmental issues of disposal, the health risks of exposure to chemicals, and the variability and damage of specimens.

One of the students who benefited from HoloAnatomy is John Smith (name changed for privacy), who is legally blind with color and contrast deficits. “As someone with a visual impairment, the modalities for learning gross anatomy, histology and neuroanatomy are fairly limited. While medical school is generally difficult, it is even more so when one is unable to visualize material to the same degree as classmates. In many other cases, this can be remedied by simply applying more time to studying; however, the visual nature of first-year medical school coursework and the fast-pace makes this challenging. The HoloLens AR headset has the potential to ameliorate some of these obstacles. An excellent example of this is in identifying vasculature – a task I had extreme difficulty with in the gross anatomy lab. With HoloLens, I was able to adjust the contrast and brightness of the hologram to make it easier for me to see. I was also able to isolate specific vessels and label them for reference. This made learning anatomy much more enjoyable and effective for me.”

HoloAnatomy is an innovative solution that leverages the power of HoloLens to revolutionize medical education. The School of Medicine used the trial of HoloAnatomy to explore collaborations with other schools across Texas A&M Health and use innovative technology with its students. This is just one of the many ways virtual and augmented reality can be used in the classroom and offer a new way of learning that is more accessible, accurate, flexible, collaborative and engaging.

Bush School Paves Way for IT Unification in Colleges, Schools

The Bush School of Government and Public Service, a school with a well-established reputation for excellence in academics, research and public service, was the first to implement recommendations for centralizing Technology Services two years ago. This significant step involved the consolidation of tools and resources to fully leverage the benefits of unification, backed by a diverse skill set of more than 700 IT professionals from the division.

The unification of IT services for the Bush School also involved several town hall presentations, where personalized opportunities to answer questions were provided, clarity and transparency of the process were presented, and a positive working relationship with the faculty, staff and students who rely heavily on IT support was established. The new organizational structure for the division also allowed the skillsets of IT professionals from other areas across the university to be leveraged in support of the school's unique projects, including the hybrid teaching model for both the College Station and Washington D.C. campuses. Technology Services also streamlined services and enhanced support for the campus in Washington D.C., where the Bush School supports 93 students and 34 faculty and staff, in addition to the 1,746 students and 238 faculty and staff in College Station.

"Integrating a variety of existing technologies and the teams that support them certainly brings challenges, for the IT personnel and for those that we are serving," said Ed Pierson, Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology Services.

The unification of IT services for the Bush School is part of a larger initiative by Technology Services to cultivate careers for IT professionals and provide enterprise-level technology solutions with better security and flexibility for all faculty, whether they are teaching or conducting research. By moving to a design, build, run and deliver model, Technology Services aims to provide guidance and structure for professional growth within the organization, and promote personal growth while contributing to the overall success of the university.

As part of this initiative, Technology Services also launched a Technology Testing Program for faculty, which involves a structured process for faculty members to evaluate and provide feedback on new technologies and tools that can enhance their teaching and research. The Bush School was the pilot test for this program, and Technology Services is looking at enrolling other colleges and schools, such as Architecture, in the near future. The program aims to foster innovation and collaboration among faculty and IT professionals, and ensure that the technology needs and preferences of the faculty are met.

Developing Web-based App for Police Reporting

Technology Services partnered with the University Police Department (UPD) to create a customized reporting system for Texas A&M University’s police department. The project involves the migration from spreadsheets to a web-based application that can process Title IX and student travel requests as well as reduce the risk of federal violations and fines. The previous spreadsheet solution was prone to errors and the macros often broke. Additionally, only one person at a time could input data into the spreadsheet solution. The web-based application, now in a pilot phase, allows up to 100 people to work in the reporting system simultaneously while helping safeguard the university from costly fines. So far, this solution has been successful in increasing the accuracy, efficiency and accessibility of the reporting system and will be evaluated based on the annual reports required. Depending on the success of this new solution for the flagship campus, discussions are underway for other campus locations to utilize this same tool.

Establishing Consistency in Faculty Records Storage

Historically, Faculty records at Texas A&M University were saved within the respective academic units or departments rather than in a centralized location. The university introduced Interfolio as a centralized mechanism for retaining faculty records and a portal was developed that supported an Interfolio integration. However, many files remained saved with the faculty member’s respective department. 

Technology Services collaborated with Faculty Affairs and developed a test instance within the unit’s portal where documents are now being imported to test this new feature. One of the challenges of this project was getting the documents into production and making sure those using the portal had the appropriate permissions and access. Additionally, the departments were storing files in varying ways, either through Laserfiche, paper copies, or on a local server. The partners for this group include Faculty Affairs, all academic units, the School of Law, Texas A&M Health and Texas A&M at Galveston. The efforts on this project are ongoing.

AggieWorks Offers Improvements, Transparency through Upgrade

AggieWorks serves as the primary platform for university employees and students to request facilities-related support at almost all campus locations. It is an essential component for facilities work order management and underwent a significant upgrade in the summer of 2023. This initiative, spearheaded by Facilities & Energy Services, has integrated the process of logging and tracking facilities-related requests from routine maintenance to larger construction projects. The redesigned AggieWorks platform now offers enhanced transparency throughout a project, allowing users to track their requests from initiation to completion with real-time updates from the facilities coordinators. This has not only improved the user experience but also bolstered the university's ability to oversee daily operations and maintain its dedication to superior academic and research facilities. Impressively, since its inception, the platform has efficiently handled more than 31,000 requests, which translates to an average of 241 requests daily.

Get Involved

The Get Involved platform is a software web application that helps students and the Division of Student Affairs manage their student organizations. By using modern tools and processes to automate and review existing code bases, we were able to deliver new features and eliminate old software applications by combining those features into this single application. Due to the centralization processes, resources that existed only within the prior non-centralized IT groups were made available to other departments which allowed us to accelerate the Get Involved project/service. In 2023, Technology Services moved the application into a new high-availability architecture with enterprise-class support for the servers and systems running on those servers.

The Event Planning feature was also launched in Get Involved and recently finished phase one of the recognized student organization recognition functionality to migrate most student organizations by December 2023 and begin processing recognition renewals beginning in January 2024.

Additionally, Technology Services made changes to various form and workflow engine components which improved and enhanced existing Get Involved functionality including:

• Good Bull Fund application review process/requests
• Fish Camp counselor selection
• Corps fall orientation week check-in
• Leadership applications
• The Big Event chair applications
• Sports Clubs memberships for all brought on board
• New Student Conference break-out session registration
• Implementation of four-quadrant risk and affiliation model for organizations

Technology Services is also working on replacing another vendor application called Maroonlink with the Get Involved platform in Spring 2024.

Finally, the platform is creatively utilized in student organization concessions events at Texas A&M. The team added a new functionality to support concessions permits approvals which now utilizes its own workflow within the platform. This critical need was brought to Technology Services, and within four days, a structure of solutions was built.

Interactive Training Module Developed for Title IX, Mental Health

Historically, the interactive course development for Texas A&M’s Title IX training was contracted to a third party. All students are required to take the training within a certain window of time via the university’s Howdy portal. The Division of Risk, Ethics and Compliance requested a customized training solution and Technology Services partnered with the Center for Teaching Excellence to identify the best training solution. At this same time, student services also reached out for support with an interactive mental health training module that could be added to the Title IX training in development. Professional course designers were contracted to create the custom training courses which were successfully launched in Texas A&M’s learning management system, Canvas. In the first week, half of the student population had already completed the training despite having a month to do so.

Writing Center Doubles Undergraduate Participation

The University Writing Center (UWC) sought assistance in promoting writing resources available to all students. Statistically, students who engage with the UWC tend to perform better in their courses; however, a majority of those students are seniors. 

To expand the student categorizations and encourage all students to visit and utilize the UWC, including those early in their academic journey, Technology Services generated a Howdy notification—a pop-up displayed when users log into the portal—highlighting the increased likelihood of academic success for those who participate in UWC sessions. Clicking on the notification directed users to the UWC website, where they could conveniently sign up for writing consultations. The UWC used the Howdy pop-ups to target first-, second- and third-year undergraduates, and first-generation students from those groups in particular. In previous semesters, the fourth-year undergraduates outnumbered the other three undergraduate classes combined. One of the primary goals of the UWC was to bring more balance and encourage students to use consultations in earlier years, and it worked! Notably, these efforts yielded impressive results, with engagement showing a remarkable 50 percent increase in consultations and junior-level student engagement doubling. In addition, the ratio was much stronger at the times the pop-up was visible in Howdy. 

Policy Supports Reduced Storage Needs

To reduce the amount of unused recorded lectures, Technology Services and the College of Engineering have a new data retention policy. Instead of recording every lecture by default, faculty members can now choose to record their lectures through the Howdy portal. This ensures that only the lectures that are useful will be recorded and stored. A preliminary report shows that this policy has saved the college about 80% of storage space, as previously only eight out of 62 terabytes of data were ever viewed by students. This change is expected to provide significant cost savings as the cost to store this data was almost $400 per terabyte. In addition to cost savings, the goal is to enhance the efficiency and quality of online education for both faculty and students through strategic and accessible data storage.

Enhancing Classroom, Conference Room Technologies

University Audio Visual Services (UAVS) provides high-quality multimedia solutions for faculty and students at the flagship campus in College Station, Texas A&M Health locations across Texas and the Higher Education Center at McAllen. Formerly known as Instructional Media Services (IMS), this unit within Technology Services ensures classrooms and conference rooms are equipped with state-of-the-art technology that meets university standards and is easy to use.

In fiscal year 2024, UAVS will complete several noteworthy installations:

• Complete ten classroom installations at the Higher Education Center in McAllen 
• Complete four lecture hall installations at the Health Professions Education Building at Texas A&M Health’s Bryan location

These installations will feature significant design improvements to enhance the user experience and system reliability for displaying content, supporting distance education students and more.

UAVS also plans to upgrade more than 44 rooms on the College Station campus, replacing outdated or obsolete equipment, and more than 60 audiovisual systems for classrooms, conference rooms, shared learning spaces and labs across the state for Texas A&M Health.

Researcher Uses Cloud Optical Character Recognition

1M PER DAY

Within a Texas A&M University Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment, researcher Xiaoding Liu from the Mays School of Business is using the optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities of Amazon Textract to assist with data processing. This project aims to analyze massive amounts of historical patent data, traditionally stored in PDF form, using artificial intelligence (AI) models provided by Textract and trained by AWS, distinguish all the text within and store this data in plain text form. Parsing this data manually for pertinent information, which involves approximately 4 million files or 20 million pages stored in a relatively inaccessible form, presents specific challenges for researchers, primarily costly search times. For comparison, AWS Textract can process 1,000,000 files per day. Textract is the only optical character recognition (OCR) engine that has been proven to reliably and accurately extract data from these historically low-quality documents. Using a cloud OCR service, Liu is billed only for the resources consumed during the extraction and analysis process, which will be a fraction of the cost and time required when using conventional channels. In collaboration with Texas A&M Cloud Services and AWS, this project will help optimize and simplify what would have taken multiple people weeks or months to handle due to the nature of the large data sets.

Cloud Computing Expedites Simulation Results

TIME SAVING

For more than 20 years, Dr. Edward Osei performed computationally intensive research projects at Tarleton University, a member school of The Texas A&M University System. His legacy workflows and infrastructure were complex and he had many obstacles. Then he began to work with Amazon Web Services through Texas A&M University Cloud Services which is available to researchers.

Osei has access to a virtually unlimited cluster of computers utilizing the same automation routines developed more than 20 years ago to run on Windows platforms. Osei also obtained a grant from AWS to support his research efforts, and anticipates a broad range of research activities would benefit from this collaboration, including climate variability/change impact modeling, large-scale regional bioeconomic modeling, data disaggregation (mining) to develop representative farms for economic analyses, biophysical model calibration and estimation of carbon sequestration rates on Texas rangelands, and microsimulation modeling of health care provider availability.

So far, Osei has utilized the services mainly to support semi-automated calibration procedures for several projects that estimate soil carbon sequestration rates on Texas rangelands. These calibration procedures are highly intensive computationally, and about a week of simulations on the AWS system generated significant benefits in terms of time that the research team saved compared to manual calibration efforts. Future efforts on the AWS system will continue to focus heavily on parallelizable procedures that can be run on large clusters to obtain results for publications promptly. These will include bioeconomic modeling and climate-change simulations for large U.S. production regions. Data disaggregation procedures will be performed once new data becomes available from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Census.

REDCap: Dynamic Cloud-Based Research Tool for Multi-Institutional Studies

Dr. Steven Riechman in the School of Education and Human Development, utilizes cloud services for researchers at Texas A&M University as a researcher funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to identify breath biomarkers of physical, mental and sleep deprivation fatigue and develop predictive models using physiological data from wearable technology. The dynamic capabilities of REDCap in the cloud have been central in managing a complex interdisciplinary, multi-institution experimental study led by Riechman.

Because of the sophistication of this study, he was able to push the capabilities of REDCap and received strong technical support to achieve his research goals. Reichman is now using the system for several other studies, including one in which he examines professional gamers' cognitive abilities, and seamlessly collects data that would otherwise not be possible due to the wide dispersion of those on the professional level.

Graduate Software Application Tracks Milestones

At Texas A&M University, there are approximately 17,000 individuals actively engaged in graduate studies—whether pursuing a master’s degree or a PhD.

Technology Services worked with the Graduate and Professional School to create ARCS, an essential software application integrated with Howdy, which plays a pivotal role in supporting our graduate students. Think of ARCS as a personalized progress tracker – depending on the specific degree program, students encounter milestones including preliminary or qualifying exams, research proposals, final exams or a defense and more, all on part of their academic journey.

These milestones represent critical achievements, guiding them toward their ultimate goal of graduation.

ARCS isn’t just about individual progress, it’s part of a holistic approach to graduate education. By automating various processes, ARCS not only saves valuable student time but also streamlines administrative tasks for university staff.

Last year, it was estimated that over the last 10 years, more than 90,000 degree plans and change petitions were entered with more than 450,000 approvals. The Graduate and Professional School continues to save in excess of 180,000 hours of manual data entry and processing with the automated system now in place. What would once take days or even weeks now only takes minutes.