Over the last weekend in February 2020,  a dedicated group of Information Technology team members from multiple departments, working with many other areas across campus, completed a major project: the upgrade our campus-wide Oracle database environment. As you may know, Oracle is the back-end database that powers our entire ERP and many other campus systems. Since so many systems rely upon Oracle to function, changes to the environment require a great deal of planning and attention to detail. There are hundreds, if not thousands of “moving parts” and disruptions can be significant if upgrades are not well planned and executed.

Along with the high level of technical expertise, the most important element in making an upgrade of this magnitude successful is the open communication and teamwork of those involved. The success we experienced required coordination and participation from many areas across campus, including Business Affairs, Enrollment, Financial Aid, Institutional Research, and several others.

Although this was a major project, you may not have even noticed the change. The entire operation went smoothly, and all of our university systems were back up and operational well within the planned maintenance window. That the team completed such a significant undertaking with so little notice underscores just how successful it was.

These are the folks who made this project such a success—who gave up their weekend to be here on campus, or who were on call, or who spent some long days and weeks preparing for this work.

    • Angie Boyle, Purchasing Systems Coordinator
    • Brandon Campbell, Assistant Director of Unified Technology Support
    • Chris Cahoe, Director of Unified Communications
    • Chuck Gin, Enterprise Application Specialist
    • David Clark, Associate Director of Financial Aid Operations
    • David Hussain, Database Administrator for Enterprise Systems
    • Derek Bowen, Enterprise Data and Systems Specialist
    • Greg Durbin, Project Manager, and Enterprise Systems Release Coordinator
    • Jamie Shelton, Financial Reporting and Systems Analyst
    • Jeff George, Director of Financial Information Systems and Technology
    • Jon Weiss, Senior Unified Communications Technology Engineer
    • Leah Conley, Production Control and Automation Coordinator
    • Mark Watters, Director of Enterprise Project Support Office
    • Mark Wolfe, Distributed Systems Programmer Analyst
    • Missy Adkison, Data and Intelligence Architect
    • Nathan Rinard, Enterprise Application Specialist
    • Phil Shaffer, Director of Enterprise Information Systems
    • Robert Seaton, Enterprise Systems Engineer
    • Samantha Rowe, Assistant Director of Accounts Payable
    • Sherry Barlow, Assistant Controller
    • Todd Meister, Assistant Vice President, and Chief Enterprise Architect
    • Todd Phelps, Director of Enterprise Systems and Operations
    • Tom Shafer, Database Administrator for Distributed Databases

Please join me in thanking the team for their hard work and congratulating each of them for their efforts in contributing to a job well done!