FAS Information Technology

Mission Statement

Our mission is to enable the faculty, students, and staff of FAS to accomplish their work in a way that makes optimal use of the resources FAS dedicates to IT. As the core IT organization in the FAS, we are dedicated to serving the IT needs of our customers. We seek to continuously innovate solutions that augment teaching and learning, provide computing resources to fully enable world-class research, support the administrative needs of the community, and efficiently maintain a secure and reliable infrastructure that helps to enable those we serve to be the best in the world at what they do.

Groups within FAS IT

Academic Technology

The Academic Technology Group (ATG) supports technology-enhanced teaching and learning and academic workflow throughout Harvard FAS via the following:

• Multimedia teaching materials (academic web pages, interactive software and custom courseware, digital video, podcasts)
• Technology and classroom support for a variety of pedagogical models (e.g. lecture demonstrations, online tools for collaboration, mobile devices for activity-based learning, learning space design)
• Visualization and simulation tools (3D, virtual worlds, biocomputation)
• Academic administration software (course selection, placement, and evaluation; online testing)

ATG welcomes questions and comments from faculty, teaching staff, department administrators, or students about any aspect of educational technology in FAS. We also welcome input, suggestions for collaboration, and general inquiries from colleagues at other institutions. Contact us at atg@fas.harvard.edu

Research Computing

The research computing group focuses on enabling research by providing advanced computing services across FAS. Our staff maintains expertise in constantly changing computing technologies, but can also "speak the language" of the researchers, to use computing most effectively in a given research area. Our goal is to provide researchers access to professional IT staff and computational support, so that researchers may in turn focus on their areas of expertise rather than computing systems.

The research computing group comprises four groups, focusing on different research areas: High Performance Technical Computing, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Humanities. Our services range from sequence analysis, microarray and programming assistance to multi-terabyte storage arrays and high-performance clusters. In addition, we offer training classes.

Services and Support

The Services and Support Group (SSG) provides support to the community of FAS faculty, staff and students. SSG is staffed by employees and students. The employees include desktop technicians, help desk technical staff, and specialized IT professionals. The part-time student computing technicians (SCTs) provide technical and user support in the basement of the Science Center, as well as residential houses and satellite locations around campus.

Administrative Computing

Working in concert with FAS and University administrative offices to create an integrated enterprise of administrative and business systems, the Administrative Computing Group builds applications, manages web and application servers, and provides customer support for their applications focused primarily on making administrative processes in FAS work. Some applications are student facing like electronic registration and study cards; others are geared toward staff such as Asperin and EReq. Finally, some are geared towards the community such as My.Harvard or the Electronic Directory. They handle webmaster support for www.fas.harvard.edu, and help design and implement key websites including www.fas.harvard.edu and www.college.harvard.edu.

Human Resources and Administration

The Administration Group helps FAS Information Technology staff to organize their work experience as well as offers support services for employees. The team handles the financial matters of both internal and external customers, processes all FAS IT billing, payroll, recruitment, human resources, travel, office administration, and any fiscal related needs.

Information Security

The Information Security group is responsible for developing and implementing IT Security controls and standards for FAS in a manner that is consistent with Harvard's Enterprise Information Security Policy.  It does this through a three-part model: governance in defining standards for securing FAS systems and data; risk assessment in the evaluation of security controls as measured against industry best practices; and compliance in the measurement of network, server, and application vulnerability.

The Information Security group conducts vulnerability scans, provides reports to system owners, builds quarterly audit reports for senior leadership, fosters and tracks remediation efforts, and performs security reviews.  It also develops processes, documentation, outreach and training on security topics most relevant to the FAS community.

IT Systems

The IT Systems Group supports systems and systems utilities and services for central host machines throughout the FAS. The IT Systems Group is in charge of three separate, but related sub-groups which cover different areas. The Systems Group has three sub-groups: Macintosh and Windows system support, known as the "Micro Group" which manages the key-server and software servers, server hosting, and server based applications; Unix systems which handles the e-mail and the central file storage system and the database group which manages centralized databases.

Network Operations

The Network Operations Center provides services and support for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences network infrastructure. This includes wired and wireless access in most FAS buildings, network monitoring, and jack activation and repair.

Information Technology Services

The mission of this group is to conduct outreach to faculty, students, and staff to better understand and meet their technology needs.  Information Technology Services includes the Services and Support Group, Academic Technology, Humanities Research Computing, Administrative Computing, Data Applications and Architecture, and the Program Management Office.