About ITS
Technology plays a critical role at Lafayette, from streamlining business processes to innovating teaching and research practices. As such, our technology strategy provides us with a guide, ensuring that our resources are well-aligned to advance the College’s strategic direction. Whether deploying custom, open-source solutions, or best-of-breed cloud technologies, ITS is committed to a hybrid approach that best supports our community.
ITS is a scholarly and collaborative organization that innovates in service to the teaching, learning, and research activities of the institution. Our success is due in large part to our talented IT staff and their ability to imagine innovative and creative solutions to problems.
Mission Statement
Information Technology Services enables innovation in the academic, administrative, and residential life of the college by partnering with the community to deploy services and practices that support the College’s strategic priorities.
Get Help
ITS provides multiple avenues for getting help including the Help Desk, the Help website, and the Tech Lounge. Help is available for all manner of technology related issues such as software applications, connecting to the network, Gmail and Google Drive, and more. The Help Desk is available 24/7 and can provide real-time assistance for many technology-related issues by calling (610) 330-5501 or emailing help@lafayette.edu. The Help website provides help documentation on many College services and the Tech Lounge is located in 104 Skillman for in-person assistance and consultations. For more information, see the Get Help webpage.
Smart Classrooms & Labs
Information Technology Services maintains public labs in Pardee 104 and Farinon 208. A virtual lab experience is also available using Amazon’s AppStream technology. Additionally, ITS assists in supporting nearly 900 Windows and Macintosh personal computers across campus used for laboratories, academic, and research programs.
Learning and Research Technologies supports more than 200 spaces across campus with installed presentation technology ranging from simple displays to smart classrooms with touch panel control systems to collaborative labs and media creation studios. Many of these rooms have installed computers while others feature wireless screencasting of personal devices.
Training and Support
ITS supports teaching, learning, and administrative tasks at Lafayette through group training, individual consultations, and maintaining help documentation and video tutorials. Tools include Moodle, Panopto, WordPress, Google Workspace, Qualtrics, and Zoom. ITS welcomes conversations about how one can leverage these tools to help them accomplish their goals, whether in the classroom or in the workplace.
Research and High-performance computing
Research and High-Performance Computing (R/HPC) at Lafayette is an ecosystem of services facilitating research and pedagogical projects that would otherwise be challenging, or impossible, due to resource or temporal requirements. The R/HPC team delivers and supports a suite of hardware, web-based, virtualized, and consultation services targeted at relevant research and teaching use cases, which often necessitate specialized computational hardware and software platforms, environments, and capabilities. Our primary service is the computational cluster, while also supporting RStudio Cloud and JupyterHub.
Information Security
ITS helps ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of College data and systems through a comprehensive information security program and related services. The information security program includes providing policy, guidelines, and educational materials about protecting computing resources and sensitive data, information security risk assessment, vulnerability management, and computer security incident response and resolution. Related services include identity and access management, web single sign-on, and two-step authentication.
Application and Integration development
Application and Integration Development supports the College’s web infrastructure and integration between platforms. Department members serve on the teams that maintain WordPress, Moodle, the College Calendar, and the Portal, as well as many other College web applications. The department’s integration team members provide connections between a variety of College systems, including Banner, customer relationship management systems, and student support applications.
Technology infrastructure & operations
Network, systems support, AWS, and project management.
Campus management services
ITS in collaboration with various College offices provides access and support for services that enhance operational efficiency. These services include EMS for event management and room reservations; FAMIS 360 which provides online submission and monitoring of Facilities work orders; DocuSign which enables e-signature workflows; Marketplace online payment gateway for credit card transactions are just a few campus management services.