ACM SIGUCCS 2025 Conference

The SIGUCCS Academy Customer Service microcredential is designed to equip higher education IT support professionals with essential skills and strategies for providing excellent customer support aligned to institutional values.

In an environment of shrinking budgets and increasing demand for technology and automation, effective customer service skills are critical for IT support professionals to build trust and deliver reliable support. This Academy workshop comprises three targeted sessions designed to equip participants with practical tools and strategies to take the quality and efficiency of customer interactions in your service organization to the next level.

Session 1: Mastering the Art of Exceptional Customer Care
Instructor – Heather Romanski

Session 2: Climbing the PEAK of Customer Service
Instructor – Becky Klein

Session 3: Elevating Customer Support with GenAI
Instructor – Miranda Carney-Morris

For more details, visit the conference website

The SIGUCCS Academy Project Management microcredential track equips higher education. IT professionals with essential project management skills focused on user-centered outcomes. This series covers core strategies in planning, developing user stories to prioritize needs, and applying practical tools to execute projects efficiently. Each one-hour session builds skills that enable participants to lead projects with clarity, focus, and effectiveness. Participants who complete the series will leave with a comprehensive understanding of project management, from planning and stakeholder engagement to execution and refinement.

Session 1: Project Management 101 for IT Managers
Instructor – Beth Rugg

Session 2: Gathering User Stories
Instructor – Elizabeth Young

Session 3: Breaking Down and Managing Tasks
Instructor – Mitchell Ochi

For more details, visit the conference website

The 2025 SIGUCCS Academy Student Supervisors microcredential track is designed to develop the ability of IT student worker supervisors to manage, train, and empower IT student employees while fostering their post-graduation career readiness. Each session builds on the last, creating a comprehensive framework for success.

Session 1: Crafting Career-Ready Student Tech Gurus
Instructors – Amy Kullgren and Tom Bohlke

Session 2: Leveraging LinkedIn Learning for Student Training
Instructor – Karl Owens

Session 3: Fun and Frames: Play-Based Project Management for Student Employees
Instructor – Reagan Chesnut

For more information, visit the conference website

Are you currently working in technical support, instructional technology, or other technical field, and interested in making a move into cybersecurity, or a technical field different than the one you’re in now? It's not always obvious how to translate your prior experience to different positions. Come learn about one Chief Information Security Officer's successful career transition from working in help desk and general IT roles to working full time in cybersecurity. Discover how to reframe your tech support or other experiences in ways that are relevant to roles in other areas, using actual resume and job description examples. Learn about the different cybersecurity-related roles and what they entail, and which certification or learning opportunities are most helpful for the roles you're targeting. Discuss methods and strategies for gaining experience in key areas that can help you advance.

In this presentation, two junior IT staff members will share their journey of learning and implementing advanced endpoint management systems, specifically JAMF Pro and Microsoft Intune, within a resource-constrained higher education environment. We will provide a look at our experiences, from initially being overwhelmed to growing competence, highlighting the unique challenges we faced and the strategies we developed to overcome them. We will delve into our process of self-directed learning and team knowledge transfer. We will highlight the mistakes we made and what we learned from them, along with the small victories that kept us motivated.
We will continue with a discussion with attendees to create a supportive space for professionals at all levels to share experiences, brainstorm solutions, and develop strategies for success in endpoint management. Whether you are new to the field, facing similar resource constraints, or an experienced professional looking to mentor others, our discussions will focus on providing insights and practical takeaways for navigating endpoint management.

This paper is an overview of a study that examines the integration of Learning Management Systems (LMS) to enhance accessibility in higher education, utilizing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the Social Model of Disability frameworks. The primary objective is to assess the current state of LMS accessibility and its impact on equity in learning opportunities within U.S. higher education institutions. Preliminary findings show significant variability in accessibility practices, influenced by institutional resources, faculty training, and administrative support.
Despite legal mandates, gaps in meeting accessibility standards persist, leading to unequal learning opportunities for students with disabilities. The complete results, presented at the SIGUCCS 2025 conference, offer recommendations for enhancing accessibility and inclusivity in higher education. This study aims to promote proactive and universally designed educational practices, contributing to more equitable academic environments.

Our panel will include students from various universities discussing what life is like seeking support for their IT needs on campus, in classrooms, and online.

Some students on our campus are not satisfied with the current campus map because it does not contain information that meets their needs. If the campus map can be easily edited and updated by users who are students, faculty, and staff, like a page of a wiki, it can become a map that contains information meeting their needs. We are trying to create a "living campus map" using an existing wiki, combining it with Wiki IoT/Bot Computing, which is an IoT system. The living campus map will be a map that contains information that represents users' needs and reflects the latest status of the campus.

This poster tells the story of the development of our community stop-motion animation stand and its use in anchoring the Animation-a-Thon, a recurring event that invites members of the Mount Holyoke College community to engage in an act of collaborative storytelling and storymaking that has both physical and digital components, and a digital output. This ongoing community-engaged digital humanities effort has opened up the ability to access and use a form of technology that was previously unavailable or restricted to art studio majors on our campus. We will also showcase examples of the animation stand’s use in various disciplines, with an emphasis on its applicability in an interdisciplinary First Year Seminar environment. Join us to explore how bringing in one new piece of technology can become a means of democratizing pedagogical and creative development across departments and communities. The audience of this poster will gain insight into the potentially outsized impact of a project with a small budget, while also cultivating an understanding of the creative potential that an analogue/digital hybrid animation stand can bring to a variety of courses.

The recent CrowdStrike incident was a challenge for many institutions and IT departments across the globe. While this certainly presented a difficulty for Lehigh University, the outage also exposed opportunities for improvement in our support infrastructure and communication strategies. This presentation will explore how the inability to push remote solutions led to an intensive, in-person resolution process, revealing both the challenges and opportunities inherent in managing client services during a crisis. By examining the complexities of this situation, we will illustrate our dual focus on enhancing client communication and refining security best practices. The incident not only highlighted the importance of maintaining transparent, proactive client interactions but also underscored the necessity of balancing robust security practices with operational efficiency. Through this lens, we will discuss the lessons learned, the improvements made, and how these insights have strengthened our overall approach to client support and data protection.
One of the significant difficulties encountered was maintaining effective communication with clients throughout the crisis, which included faculty and staff but not students. During the rollout of our solutions our approach to each group was identical, but there does seem to be room for future optimization by catering the approach to each client group. Transparent and timely updates were crucial in managing client expectations and demonstrating our commitment to resolving the issue. We implemented a structured yet dynamic communication plan, providing regular progress reports and outlining the steps being taken to address and rectify the situation. This proactive engagement was vital in maintaining client trust and demonstrating our dedication to both service and security. Our goal was not only to provide updates but to explain why the outage, while inconvenient and disruptive, illustrated how these services were pivotal in protecting our clients.
Furthermore, the incident underscored the importance of encryption as a critical security measure. While the encrypted hard drives contributed to the complexity of the repair process and precluded a remote solution, they successfully protected client data from unauthorized access, reinforcing the value of stringent security practices. In the immediate aftermath, this experience allowed us to illustrate to clients the inherent balance between robust security and responsive support while creating a touchstone experience for future communications.
In summary, the CrowdStrike interruption serves as a case study in balancing necessary security measures with effective client service and communication. The experience has underscored the importance of integrating client support considerations more fully into our security strategies, ensuring that we not only protect data but also maintain seamless service delivery in times of crisis. This presentation will explore these dimensions in detail, offering insights into how our security framework can evolve to better support both our clients and our operational resilience.

This paper presents our ongoing research in identifying use cases, developing plans, and evaluating the effectiveness of measures taken
to ensure our network meets the needs of Fukuoka University use cases, focusing on our work to transition to IPv6 next-generation
networks and enhancements to network security.
Against the backdrop of the rapidly evolving era of ultra-high- capacity communications, the number of devices connected to cam-
pus networks is rapidly increasing in terms of the number of Wi-Fi device connections at Fukuoka University. As a result, the prob-
lem of IPv4 address space exhaustion, here is an urgent need to review IPv4 operations and migrate IPv6, the next-generation In-
ternet protocol. This smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will be discussed in detail based on our case study in Part 1[1] and our
plans for the future.
In addition, university network security has become increasingly important in recent years as cyber attacks have become more
sophisticated and diversified. Therefore, from the viewpoint of network security, we will analyze more deeply how the introduction
of Web Content Filter Service and ProtectiveDNS contributes to improving security, following Part 1[1], and clarify its effective-
ness and challenges.
This presentation of our research will provide attendees with information and examples of real-world applications of cutting-edge
technology, and IPv6 deployment and network security technologies, along with clear guidelines for what to consider when implementing similar strategies in complex networking environments.

Customer service is a key performance indicator (KPI) and a core value in our department; so how can we make it enjoyable? Join us to discover how we leverage Customer Service Week to transform customer service training into an experience that is fun and inclusive. In this session, we will present a low-cost, in-house solution that combines food and fun to enhance customer service training. By leveraging themed activities, games, and culinary treats, we create an environment where learning customer service skills becomes an enjoyable and memorable experience. Throughout the year we also use a satisfaction survey that was developed in-house. The results help us to give timely feedback to our staff and identify areas where we can improve.
Participants will learn how to implement these strategies in their own departments, fostering a culture of excellence and enthusiasm. Our approach not only improves customer service skills but also boosts team morale and engagement, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. Come and explore how you can make customer service training a delightful and effective part of your team’s development.

In the spring of 2023, Anne Arundel Community College implemented a new student and employee portal while transitioning from ADFS to Azure SSO for authentication. This change required users to log in using their full institutional email address instead of a username, which was a significant adjustment for faculty, staff, and students. Initially, AACC planned to retain its existing password policy, which required a minimum of 8 characters, and a combination of three out of four elements: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. The policy also enforced a 90-day password expiration cycle for employees, with reminder emails sent beginning 14 days before expiration.
After several months of using Azure SSO, AACC’s IT division discovered that Azure was not enforcing Active Directory (AD) password expiration rules as ADFS had done. This issue allowed employees to continue accessing services with expired passwords through Azure, while access to services tied directly to AD, such as wired network connections, would prompt users to change their passwords. As a significant portion of employees worked remotely, many were unaware that their passwords had expired and continued to use them without interruption.
To address this oversight, the IT security team collaborated with the service desk to develop a solution to restore the 90-day password reset cycle. However, after assessing the complexity of enforcing this change, which would require extensive support and cause disruptions, AACC opted for a different approach. The situation presented an opportunity to realign the college’s password policy with the latest National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines. According to NIST, frequent forced password changes are no longer recommended when strong password requirements and multi-factor authentication (MFA) are in place, as periodic changes can lead to poor password habits like reusing or slightly modifying old passwords, making them vulnerable to breaches.

In spring of 2023, the renovation of our IT department office at Hope College was completed. It was our first office renovation since the 80s. The renovation took almost 3 months to complete. During the renovation, most staff members either worked remotely at home or another location on campus. Our help desk support staff had two locations on campus for walk-in and drop-off help. We have a separate technician space for our A/V techs that was renovated separately so those staff persons were unaffected and our main help desk person worked from there. We emphasized the importance of keeping Google Calendar updated, extra diligent work ticket notes, being contactable via phone, and availability on messaging apps like Google Chat and Slack.

We converted our department from a maze of hallways and enclosed spaces to an open office with all desks in a communal area. There are 5 separate meeting rooms for phone calls, virtual/hybrid meetings, meeting with each other, and hosting external meetings. We have also tested the cultural impact of white noise machines around the office, as well as music in the customer service walk-in area. Most of our staff is able to work remotely 2 days per week, so the majority of our desks are hotel-like (meaning no permanent assigned desks; just a communal workspace with a USB-C monitor).

The meeting rooms have room reservation tablets on the door that are connected to our campus room reservation system. Each room can be reserved on the tablet itself or on our campus room reservation website. There is a 1-person private room, 2-person “project / work room”, two 5-person rooms, and an 8-person room. The three 5- and 8-person rooms have a large-screen TV. Our previous main entrance was not handicap accessible, so we completely changed on which side of the building our front entrance was located. This was also an opportunity to improve both the IT department office and dormitory by now having automatic door openers. Another improvement by moving the front entrance is greater visibility of our department from persons walking past outside.

Osaka Kyoiku University provides a Wired and a Wireless LAN Network on all campuses called “GRAPES” to students, faculty, staff, and university guests. We completed a major upgrade of our wired and wireless networks by March 2024. This upgrading included a large-scale replacement of floor switches and Wireless LAN Access Points in user areas to improve the performance and reliability of the network. At this point, the latest multi-gigabit-capable switches and access points were deployed, resulting in significantly improved data transfer speeds and connection stability. In addition, this updating included the system to monitor and check the health status of the network equipment installed, as well as the network itself. This system has helped to reduce operational costs by providing a real-time understanding of the network's operational status, and has enabled a quick and efficient response for troubles that have occurred. When this system is deployed, it is necessary to shut down the network when equipment is to be replaced. However, there are only a limited time to perform the network shutdown. In order to replace efficiently, careful scheduling is necessary. During the replacement process under these circumstances, a variety of problems also occurred. For example, connection problems due to misconfiguration and lack of switch ports. By conducting these actions, we learned various knowledge in the step of completing the renewal work smoothly. In addition to the large-scale renewal, the network configuration of eduroam, which is the Wireless LAN Network for university guests, was also improved through September 2024 by making changes to the network configuration. In particular, bandwidth was increased by changing the configuration of the upstream network, and the network itself was strengthened and made more robust by replacing the equipment in use. This presentation will introduce the network configuration and the various issues that occurred during the network replacement, as well as the troubles that encountered when the network was replaced and when it became operational. The presentation will also provide information on the current status and challenges of campus network operation at our university. This will clarify the campus network of small and medium-sized universities in Japan, and share the configuration, operational status, and issues of the campus network not only with Japanese universities but also with universities in the SIGUCCS community. In addition, by exchanging information on campus networks with the community, we would like to discuss what the future of networking in universities looks like.

SIGUCCS Affinity Groups are virtual spaces where the SIGUCCS community can connect to explore topics of interest, share insights, and learn from one another throughout the year. Connect with colleagues interested in like-minded topics anytime in Slack and real-time in monthly online meetings. Started to stay connected between our in-person conferences, group meetings have covered everything from navigating management challenges to tackling user support challenges and leveraging new technologies such as Generative AI.
Stop by our poster at the SIGUCCS conference to learn more about the Affinity Group program, share your ideas, and get involved! We are looking for input on topics you would like to see covered in the 2025-2026 series and invite you to volunteer as a session facilitator or join the planning committee. Your feedback will help us continue creating engaging, relevant programming that serves the needs of the SIGUCCS community.
Whether you’re a first-time attendee or a long-time SIGUCCS member, the Affinity Groups offer opportunities to build connections, exchange ideas, and grow professionally year-round. Visit our poster to help guide the future of SIGUCCS Affinity Groups, share your expertise, and ensure this program continues to evolve with the ever-changing landscape of IT support.

Higher education IT departments face a critical challenge: efficiently onboarding new student employees with limited time while ensuring accessibility and engagement. This presentation introduces a practical approach to training using Arcade Software, combining microlearning principles and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines. Arcade is an interactive demo platform that allows users to create engaging, personalized product demonstrations quickly and easily, requiring no coding skills. We'll showcase how this method tackles common issues such as time constraints, information overload, and the need for accessible, engaging content.

A poster advertising the 2026 Conference and opportunities for volunteerism for the conference.

Learn how you can participate in the SIGUCCS Academy. While SIGUCCS has a long and proud history of unique career development, networking, and personal growth, we recognize our community has an opportunity to provide practical, skills-based learning that will help nurture the next generation of technology service professionals.

We recognize that professional development is often connected to the development of practical skills. The Academy program is SIGUCCS effort to fill this need. We do that by providing a unique opportunity for experienced SIGUCCS professionals and leaders to use their knowledge and expertise to equip the next generation of technical support professionals.

The SIGUCCS Academy represents an exciting evolution in our approach to professional development in user support services. We invite you to come and discuss how you can participate in learning or as a trainer sharing your knowledge and expertise with your peers.

Over the last two years, I have created a central hiring portal for my department's four student employee teams using Asana, a project management software. This hiring portal includes an online application for students interested in working for one or any of our teams, and allows the candidates to attach their résumé, indicate their team of preference, and apply for any or all teams. Additionally, it has automated much of our correspondence with candidates and streamlined our application review and interview process.

Prior to this project, each of our four student teams received emails from interested students to their respective team inboxes. As a result, students often applied to multiple teams simultaneously, causing confusion among the hiring managers. Additionally, many potential student workers didn’t even realize our department had four different groups, leading some of our less student-facing teams to experience application and employee shortages.

Aside from the central application, I integrated Flowsana into this project to automate much of our initial communications with interested student candidates. Upon any application submission or notice that a team is not actively hiring, candidates receive an email notification with any updates or action items, all at the press of a button by the hiring manager. These automations are coded into the project by ensuring specific criteria are met with each candidate and sending the appropriate information based on the editable templates we made. As a result, this project has saved our hiring managers hundreds of emails each quarter and streamlined the hiring process.

In addition to increasing efficiency, this project has created a repository of all students who apply to work for our department and indicates teams of interest. For certain quarters where a team might experience a shortage of applicants, a hiring manager can review any previous applicants for other teams and easily review if the candidate may be interested in their team and is qualified based on their application and résumé. This has resulted in less student employee shortages across our four teams and allowed our teams to easily re-route a student candidate to a more appropriate team as needed.

Finally, this hiring portal has expanded into a management tracker of the status of each active student employee. Once a student is hired, they move into each team’s management project, where someone can see the status of an employee’s onboarding, reference their labor codes and HR paperwork, or determine what access and privileges specific employees have been granted. All of this information is easily editable for the hiring managers based on our templates and has provided a drastic increase in transparency with our department leadership on student employee data.

Join us in the Crystal Lobby to toast our 2025 SIGUCCS Award Winners!