University Technology Governance

IT Governing and Advising Groups

The Office of the CIO convenes the IT Council (ITC), IT Project Steering (ITPS), and the Student Change Control Advisory Board (SCCAB) to provide oversight and to ensure that the university continues to appropriately advance the use of technology to meet its mission, vision, and goals.

Visit cio.northeastern.edu to learn more about this IT Governance framework.

Additionally, ITS staff welcomes and values input from partners and other members of the Northeastern community, actively soliciting feedback or other information to help guide decision-making. The following are groups of either governance or advisory nature that ITS actively convenes and with whom it engages.

Banner Functional Team

The Banner Functional Team convenes members of ITS and the major functional areas that use Banner ERP to review, plan, and schedule upcoming releases.

Chair: Michael Bruno

Participants

Cheryl Coleman, Ray Murphy, and Hung Nguyen; Tracy Fredrickson (Advancement); Jeff Wormuth (Finance); Annie Dervin Jundt and Charles Price (Registrar’s Office); Robert Hovestadt (Student Financial Services)

Classroom Committee

A joint committee between the Office of the Provost and ITS, with participation from Faculty Senate representatives and Facilities, that meets regularly throughout each year to plan and oversee ongoing classroom upgrades, transformations, and additions.

Co-chairs: Karen McCarthy, Marcus Robinson, Eric Stewart (Office of the Provost)

Cloud Computing Advisory Committee (being established as part of the CCoE Project)

A cross-functional committee, with representation from faculty and other university partners, that provides input into strategic direction with cloud technologies and their application in support of teaching, research, and enterprise applications.

Chair: Harry Hoffman

ITS Participants

Steve Duncan, Harry Hoffman, Spencer Pruitt, Raphael Schroter

CRM Steering Committee

The CRM Steering Committee brings together leaders from ITS and other university departments to provide oversight and strategic direction on the CRM portfolio, including advocating for CRM practices across the institution, determining projects and programs, and measuring success and business value.

Co-chairs: Steve Duncan, TBD (formerly University Registrar)

Members

Jennifer Barrymore (Advancement); Chuck Kilfoye (Chancellor’s Office – Learner Success); Karen Phillips (College of Professional Studies); Jeff Wormuth (Corporate Relations/Finance); Marina Macomber (Enrollment Management); Sara Wadia Fasceti (PhD Network); Bruce Ronkin (Student Advising); Charles Price (Registrar’s Office); Rana Glasgal (University Decision Support)

IT Providers

The IT Providers group meets every other week and is a forum for open collaboration and transparency between ITS and technology-focused partners throughout the university. Acting as an extension of ITS, these participants are in roles related to IT support within their departments and together, the team shares feedback and news on changes that have occurred or are planned for future release, advise on changes and future direction, and provide overall awareness, transparency, and engagement.

Co-chairs: EJ Lewis, Cait Riley; Desiree Gualandri (Office of the Global Network and Strategic Initiatives)

Participants

Greg Anderson (COE), John Bardascino (Public Safety), Deanna Beirne (CenSSIS), Robert Birichi (VP For Student Affairs), Jacob Bouvier (School of Law), Michael Callahan (Husky Card Office), Jing Chen (Facilities), Kyle Coleman (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Chris Franson (Media Studio), Tom Gibbons (Seattle Regional Campus), Anthony Grimaldi (DMSB), Lauren Hankin (Edge), Ryan Hill (Marine Science Center), Sarah Hooke (School of Law), James Jones Jr (COE), John Khan (COE), Charles Kilfoye (Central Coop Education Services), Warren Lord (Financial Aid), David Louis (COE), Andrew MacDonald (Public Safety), Michael MacNeil (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Jacqueline Nguyen (College of Professional Studies), Thomas Olson (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering), Sokhean (Jonny) Ouk (Media Studio), Francis Oywech (External Affairs), Thomas Papadopoulos (COE), Carl Parisien (Facilities), Rue Quizon (Toronto Regional Campus), Pooja Ravichandran (CenSSIS), Hamad Rehman (COE), Andrew Scott (CAMD), Greg Smith (Khoury), Jeffrey Smith (Office of the Chancellor), Jonathan Stirling (Library), Joel Swanson (Office of the Chancellor), Ernesto Valencia (Library), Bradley Whitmarsh (School of Law), Karl Yee (Library), Patrick Yott (Library)

IT Services Leadership Team and LT Plus

The IT Services Leadership Team (LT) works closely and collaboratively to align strategy and efforts across ITS units and the IT portfolio. LT+ expands on the LT group to also include the AVP direct reports who have substantial team or operational leadership responsibilities. Among the goals of LT+ is to broaden the circle of awareness, input, and engagement on strategic direction and significant efforts in ITS.

Chairs: Karen McCarthy, Marcus Robinson

Learn More About ITS Leadership

ITS/Provost Classroom Support

A weekly advisory function between ITS and the Office of the Provost to monitor the status and quality of faculty classroom support and make real-time improvements, as well as to address longer-term priorities from the Office of the Provost.

Chair: TBD

ITS/Registrar Monthly Meeting

The purpose of the Registrar/ITS monthly meeting is for the Registrar’s Office and ITS Leadership to collaborate on current and future goals and objectives and to discuss status of inflight projects.

Participants

Mike Bruno, Steve Duncan, Kacie Harkins, Karen McCarthy, Marcus Robinson (ITS); Eric Hatch, Charles Price, David Rogers, Eric Stewart (Registrar’s Office)

Learning Management Environment Steering Committee (LMESC)

The Learning Management Environment Steering Committee (LMESC) identifies opportunities and provides recommendations regarding the tools and functionality of universitywide learning technologies. The Steering Committee employs its technology and pedagogy expertise to advance learning, discovery, and engagement grounded in sound principles of learning and practice. This group researches and discusses the role of learning technologies at Northeastern.

Co-chairs: Laurie Poklop (CATLR), Lindsey Sudbury

Learn More About LMESC

NU Admit Steering Committee

The purpose of the NU Admit Steering Committee is to steer the execution of the project to convert graduate and undergraduate admissions systems to Slate.

Participants

Amol Deshmukh, Steve Duncan, Erin McManus (ITS); Charles Price (Registrar’s Office); Liz Cheron, Shane Karcz, Marina Macomber, Jeff Portu, Mallik Sundaram (Enrollment Management)

Research Computing Advisory Committee (RCAC)

This rotating group of faculty members actively participates in setting the current and future direction for research computing for the entire university. The group provides technical direction and advocacy for both research, and research-related computer education, for the university. RCAC serves in an advisory role to the Senior Vice Provost of Research and the Vice President of Information Technology Services to best serve the research community on campus in terms of computing resources and on research computing matters. The scope of research computing includes both high performance computing (HPC – including the MGHPCC) and non-HPC research computing.

Chairs: Paul Whitford (College of Science)

Service Management Team and Change Advisory Board

SMT is a cross-department group of ITS staff that evaluates incoming requests and distributes work as appropriate. It also serves as a key communication forum across IT groups to ensure effective service management. The Change Management Board, chaired by the change manager, is responsible for assessing and approving all production changes in an effort to mitigate the risk of service disruption. Changes are evaluated for business and end-user impact, completeness, and organizational readiness.

ServiceNow Executive Steering Board

The ServiceNow Executive Steering Board meets approximately four times per year and drives the success of the ServiceNow program by aligning and prioritizing investments with university goals and delivery capabilities. The Steering Board monitors and directs efforts to protect benefits and optimize risks related to the university’s ServiceNow investment, and is accountable for the overall ServiceNow program, projects, roadmap, and prioritization.

Chair: Brighid Whalen

Participants

Steve Duncan, Harry Hoffman, Karen McCarthy, Marcus Robinson; Suzanne England (Human Resources); Marina Macomber (Enrollment Management)

ServiceNow Program Board

The monthly ServiceNow Program Board serves as the primary advisory board for platform demand, assessing demand and associated components including strategic fit, customizations assessment, and business case creation and review. The board also addresses conditional actions to be completed, assists in story creation once a decision has been reached, and escalates enhancements/demands that are outside of current resourcing capabilities and priorities.

Chair: Brighid Whalen

Participants

Kacie Harkins, EJ Lewis, Lindsey Sudbury; Michelle Scharnagle (Human Resources); Kevin Schultz (Enrollment Management)

ServiceNow Technical Governance Board

The quarterly ServiceNow Technical Board serves as the advisory body on platform-related technical options, approaches, standards, design, and data governance. The board recommends solutions designs, guides technical aspects of ServiceNow business projects, advises on customizations and integrations, and guides technical standards and policy recommendations.

Chair: Jonathan Jackson

Participants

Dib Paul Choudhury, Amol Deshmukh, Anjana Ranjanathan, Tom Waldman

SharePoint/Office 365 User Group (NUSPUG)

Group of approximately 80 SharePoint and Office 365 power users from throughout the university who meet monthly to preview new features of the Office 365 platform, view demos of those products and use cases, provide feedback, and discuss future direction and service opportunities.

Chair: Deb Thayer

Learn More About Sharepoint User Group

Student Hub Steering

The weekly Student Hub Steering, which has involved representation from Chancellor’s operations, including Student Affairs and Education and Innovation; Office of the Provost, including Office of the Registrar; and implementation vendors, discusses potential enhancements, reviews discovery findings and design concepts, and prioritizes new feature releases.

Co-chairs: Karen McCarthy, Marcus Robinson

Student Experience Team

This group, comprised of approximately 20 students from a variety of academic programs and levels, serve as active contributors to the Student Hub program and other ITS student-focused services and initiatives. Their responsibilities include discovery efforts, design concept ideation, feature reviews, user acceptance testing, and proposing and prioritizing future enhancements.

Co-chairs: Reem Alsanea, Khusbhu Shakur (student)

University Digital Design System Advisory

Monthly advisory group between ITS and External Affairs primarily focused on the university’s front-end web framework that supports Northeastern’s digital design system including brand, accessibility, security, and web standards.

Chair: Matt Salerno, Donna Coffelt (External Affairs)

Workday Release Governance Committee

Cross functional committee consisting of HRM (Human Resources Management) and ITS leadership that reviews and assesses proposed changes for release to production Workday tenant. The group meets weekly to review proposed changes. All approved changes result in an entry to the ITS Change Advisory Board for communication and awareness

ITS Participants: Mike Bruno, Steve Duncan

University Governing and Advising Groups

ITS leaders and staff participate in a wide range of university groups, bringing the IT perspective to these respective groups, conversations, and, where appropriate, decision-making. They then bring these perspectives, information, and decisions back to ITS.