OIT Division Award for Excellence

The 2020 OIT Division Award for Excellence winners were: Danny Davis, Tom Farwig  and Mark Harben. 

Also nominated for this year’s award were: Damon Armour, John Constantelos, Dan Grigg, Cheri Pipkin, Crystal Tenan, and Sarah Ward. All were recognized for their meritorious accomplishments and contributions. 

Pride of the WolfPack Award

2019-20 Pride of the WolfPack Award winners were TJ Buffaloe and Jennifer McFarland. The award honors staff members who make significant contributions to improving the services, systems and experiences of OIT, as well as the campus community.

T.O.A.S.T. Award

The 2019-20 recipients for the Totally Outstanding Attitude, Service and Talent Awards are:

Service Awards

This fiscal year, NC State recognized 10 OIT employees who reached five-year milestones in their university service.

Retired

OIT employees who retired during the 2019-20 fiscal year include: Dave Collins, Renee Dowell, Tom Holden, John Klein, Vic Lynn, Harry Nicholos, William Setzer, and Susan West.

Professional Activities

• Everette Allen serves on the advisory council for the Apex Academy of Information Technology. He also co-hosted the Apple Managers special interest group at UNC CAUSE 2019.
• Damon Armour, Mardecia Bell, Deborah Booth, Elizabeth Cole-Walker, and Lavanya Sridharan are members of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
• Damon Armour, Mardecia Bell, Rennie Bidgood, Deborah Booth, Elizabeth Cole-Walker, and Andrew Kotynski are members of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA). Cole-Walker also supports the ISSA career services board and Infosecon as a volunteer. 
• Damon Armour, Deborah Booth, Andrew Kotynski, and Andy Raynor are members of the International Information System Security Consortium (ISC2). 
• BJ Attarian, Brandon Bouché and Hal Meeks co-presented “Podcasting 101 Revisited” at AHECTA 2019. Attarian and Bouché co-presented “PackTV on a Budget.” BJ Attarian presented “Extending Learning to the Set top Box with Apple, Roku and GCP.” Bouché presented “Broadcasting Using NDI.” Hal Meeks presented “Streaming for Free.” 
• BJ Attarian became a Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Certified Instructor.
• Madison Bell became an Apple Certified Pro in Final Cut Pro X.
• Mardecia Bell serves as a member of the UNC Information Security Council.
• Mardecia Bell, Elizabeth Cole-Walker and Andrew Kotynski are members of the FBI’s InfraGard.
• Mardeica Bell, Gwen Hazlehurst and Susan West are on the executive planning team for the NC State Women in IT group and are among its founding members.
• Rennie Bidgood is a member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and College News Association of the Carolinas (CNAC).
• Brandon Bouché passed his board certification exams to become a Society of Broadcast Engineers Certified Video Engineer and Certified Broadcast Engineer. He also achieved his A+ Certification.
• Ron Bradley is the co-chair of the UNC CAUSE Conference planning team.
• Elizabeth Cole-Walker continues to provide support to the North Carolina Military Business Center, including lecturing at the Defense Contractor Academy. She also is a member of the FBI RED DART/NCMS (formerly the National Classification Management Society).
• John Constantelos spoke about OIT’s CMDB project at several events this year.
• Brian DeConinck presented “5 People Who Should Be On Your Web Team (But Probably Aren’t)” at UNC CAUSE 2019 and at WPCampus 2019.
• Lauren Etheridge presented “The Ballad of Ebony and Ivory: Microaggressions in IT” at UNC CAUSE 2019.
• Darren Fallis serves as the OIT primary representative and Elizabeth Cole-Walker as the OIT alternate representative to the university Institutional Review Board (IRB) charged with protecting human subjects participating in research across the university. 
• Louise Flinn won a 2019 Award for Excellence in the Short Video category of the SIGUCCS Communications Awards for her New Student Orientation video, Phishing and 2FA at NC State. She also presented “Successful Failure, a Duo Outage Story” at UNC CAUSE, “Communicating through Storytelling” at the EDUCAUSE IT Communications Community Group’s Coffee Shop, and Data Security Training for the NC State Board of Trustees. She is also developing an in-house online training module for Data Security Training.
• Pat Gaddy served as NC State Staff Senate chair-elect.
• Rhonda Greene was selected to serve on the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America’s board of directors and continues to serve on the national PRSA Technology Section executive committee. She also served as an alternate NC State Staff Senator and as a member of the Computer Loan Program.
• Dan Grigg volunteers on the North Carolina Project Management Institute (NCPMI) communications team, co-chairs the Public Sector Community of Practice designed to support project management professionals and helps to plan the North Carolina Infragard Cybercamp for 30 STEM-focused high school students. 
• Stan North Martin and Dan Grigg are members of and volunteer with the NC State chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), an organization driven to improve the campus culture of diversity.
• Andy Kotynski is a volunteer member and chair of the Technical Advisory Board for the Town of Wake Forest.
• Andy Kotynski and Lavanya Sridharan are members of the Project Management Institute.
• Andy Kotynski presented “Developing a Digital Forensic Investigation Service: An In-House Journey” at the EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference. This presentation was the result of Andy’s research associated with his practicum for a master’s of science degree in network technology with a concentration in information security management earned from East Carolina University.
• Lisa Lowe is a co-principal investigator and the NC State lead for a successful NOAA Restore grant proposal entitled “Building Resilience for Oysters, Blue Crabs, and Spotted Seatrout to Environmental Trends and Variability in the Gulf of Mexico.” She also co-authored and co-published two research articles: “Modeling Spatiotemporal Patterns of Ecosystem Metabolism and Organic Carbon Dynamics Affecting Hypoxia on the Louisiana Continental Shelf” and “The impact of alternative nutrient kinetics and computational grid size on model predicted primary production and hypoxic area in the northern Gulf of Mexico.”
• Stan North Martin co-led the EDUCAUSE pre-conference workshop “Cultivating IT Communication Strategies That Engage and Inform” and serves as co-leader of the EDUCAUSE IT Communications Community Group.
• Jen McFarland served as conference co-chair for WPCampus 2019 and co-chaired its Diversity and Inclusion team.
• Katie McInerney participated in the “Update Your 2019 NCSAM Toolkit With Ideas That Work” panel discussion for the Educause IT Communications Community Group’s Coffee Shop. 
• Katie McInerney and Louise Flinn presented “The Road to Required Cybersecurity Training” at UNC CAUSE 2019.
• Sarah Noell served as past president for the UNC CAUSE organization. She also presented “Taming the Wild West of Third Party Apps in G Suite” at the NC State Fall 2019 IT Community Event.
• Connie Reitfort and Krishnan Iyer served on Oracle’s Identity Management Customer Advisory Board.
• Walt Turner presented “Systems Design Made Easy” at SpeedCon 2020.

Staff Diversity

The Office of Information Technology launched an internal team to explore and improve the division’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) efforts. The 18-person team with representation from each of OIT’s units, includes: Mardecia Bell, Rennie Bidgood, Gerald Cobb, Caffie Darden, Lauren Etheridge, Brandon Garrett, Gwen Hazlehurst, Karen Horne, April Jones, Tom Karches, Kristina Kelly, Stan North Martin, Chris Maxwell, Jennifer McFarland, Jill Phipps, Connie Reitfort, Henry Schaffer, and Crystal Tenan.

The team drafted a statement to affirm OIT’s commitment to create and foster an inclusive, equitable and welcoming environment built on a foundation of mutual respect where all are treated fairly and with dignity.  The team is also developing a set of goals to help improve DE&I in our workplace. 

Workforce

OIT’s current workforce consists of 207 men and 88 women ranging in age from their 20s to 80s. See related charts regarding our work culture:

IT Staff (As of May 1)	FY 2019-20	FY 2018-19
American Indian/Alaska Native	1	3
African American	38	36
Asian	27	24
Hispanic	3	6
White American Indian/Alaska Native	3
White Asian	2
White Hispanic/Latino	4
White Hispanic/Latino Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island	1	1
White	199	205
No report	17	20
Total	295	295

Age Group	Number of Employees	Percentage of Workforce
20’s	21	7.12%
30’s	55	18.64%
40’s	90	30.51%
50’s	98	33.22%
60’s	26	8.81%
70’s	4	1.36%
80’s	1	0.34%
Total	295	100%