IT Governance Update
September 15, 2025
The Academic Technology Advisory Committee guides technology decisions to support the University's academic mission for teaching, learning, research, and scholarship. The committee is happy to share the following updates:
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Membership Update: After 5 years of ATAC productivity, we recently made some committee changes, centralizing executive sponsorship to the Provost and streamlining membership to coincide with the reformation of the schools across Brandeis. The following folks were welcomed to the committee:
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Director, Center for Teaching and Learning: Adam Beaver
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School of Social Sciences and Policy (SSP): Sara Shostak
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School of Arts, Humanities, and Culture (AHC): Harleen Singh
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School of Business and Economics (SBE): Linda Bui
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School of Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET): Susan Birren
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Rabb School, Faculty Representative: Scott Stanley
- See the full committee list at the ATAC website under the “Committee Membership” dropdown.
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The new “LMS Subcommittee” of ATAC was launched, which reports to the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC), makes recommendations regarding the features, procedures, and policies related to Moodle, the University's LMS. The Subcommittee ensures that Moodle's features meet the campus' evolving needs while maintaining stable and efficient performance.
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LMS Subcommittee Meeting Minutes may be reviewed here.
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The “Research Computing Subcommittee” was instrumental in working with senior leadership, ITS and various stakeholders on campus on the recently announced data storage changes on campus. Thank you to everyone involved in the process for helping finalize this long-running project.
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ATAC has finalized the deprecation of IBM’s SPSS Statistics, working closely with the Library on the transition from that platform to other similar products such as R/R Studio, STATA, and Python. ITS has worked closely with some members of the community to retain a small number of SPSS seats specifically for ongoing projects that were unable to make the shift at this time.
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ATAC is responsible for the acceptance and review of new technology requests, along with the renewal of existing academic technologies. The following list was approved for renewal prior to the start of the new fiscal year: Airtable, ArcGIS, Atlas TI, Chemdraw, Compilatio, eLabFTW, EndNote, Gradescope, Mathematica, Matlab, MNovA, Overleaf, Graphad Prism, Qualtrics, Sketchfab, Stata, and Voicethread
The IT Advisory Committee reviews, evaluates, and approves recommendations regarding IT proposals, priorities, policies and technology investments supporting the University’s objectives. The committee is happy to share the following updates:
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Membership Update: After 3 years of ITAC productivity, we recently made some membership changes, centralizing school representation in the provost's office and streamlining membership for other university areas. The following folks were welcomed to the committee:
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University Marketing and Creative Strategy Representative: Sheila Georger
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Enrollment Management Representative: Jen Walker
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Provost's Office, Faculty Affairs Representative: Haley Rosenfeld
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Full membership can be found here: https://www.brandeis.edu/its/
governance/itac/index.html
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Over recent months, several projects have been evaluated and prioritized by ITAC.
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Workday Compensation Framework
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Timeclock for student workers
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Network switch replacement
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Brandeis Online-Microcredentials
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AED and Bleed Kit Maps
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Admissions AI
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For a full list of completed and ongoing projects, review the ITS PMO Portfolio - ITAC
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The Workday Advisory Committee has been reformed into two separate committees including the Workday Operational Advisory Committee and the Workday Initiatives Advisory Committee.
The Workday Operational Advisory Committee (WOAC) provides oversight and direction for the Workday enterprise system, including business processes, system configuration, security roles and changes stemming from Workday product releases.
The Workday Initiatives Advisory Committee (WIC) provides oversight, direction, and prioritization of Workday initiatives, setting the vision of how Workday can significantly impact the campus community of faculty, students, and staff in the next several years. The WIC provides recommendations to the Executive Sponsors regarding Workday strategic initiatives and their relative priorities. WIC is currently working on the prioritization of 12 strategic initiatives for a 3-5 year Workday roadmap.
In addition, the following are some notable updates surrounding Workday:
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We would like to welcome all of the new members from both of these groups. As the lists are rather extensive, please review the updated committee membership on each respective website through the available “Committee Membership” dropdown
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Incoming Student Enrollment Checklist - Incoming undergrad students can now view an individually curated list of all tasks they must complete prior to their arrival on campus, including an updated-daily status for each task.
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Public Safety Time Tracking and Payroll – Public Safety staff are now able to enter their time directly into Workday. This allows the Workday system to then calculate payroll, largely reducing manual effort within both the Public Safety and Payroll departments.
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Faculty Course Tracking – This newer application allows the Faculty Affairs office to audit full-time faculty teaching loads to ensure that contract requirements are monitored and met.