Strategy

Strategy Principles & Themes

The Information Services & Technologies (IST) Division has developed an ambitious strategy focused on enhancing the digital experience for our academic, research, and business partners. 

This strategy is closely aligned with NJIT Makes: An Innovation Nexus, the university's 2030 Strategic Plan, which recognizes digital transformation as a cross-cutting priority that supports learner advancement and success; faculty success; research, innovation, and entrepreneurship; and an engaged community. 

Principles of Transformation

As a R1 polytechnic university, the following principles will serve as a guide for our digital strategy:

  • Technology provides the foundation on which our community teaches, learns, interacts, collaborates, and works.
  • Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, are leveraged to enhance our operations while maintaining an ethical, human-centered focus.
  • Human-centered design principles are prioritized to ensure that seamlessly integrated solutions meet our campus’ needs without sacrificing the user experience.
  • Strategic partnerships with external experts, vendors, and innovators accelerate digital transformation and allow an agile response.
  • Data will be accessible across organizational boundaries in order to enable informed decision-making, foster collaboration, and drive innovation.
  • Continuous improvements will be made based on feedback from our campus community. 

Updates will be made available on this site as we make progress.

Themes

Theme 1: Scaling a Data and Analytics-driven Culture

Objectives:

  1. Continue to create underlying data and analytic platform capabilities, processes, frameworks, and best practices to further enable university insights.
  2. Implement data-driven decision making across campus through predictive analytics, complex statistical models, and other analyses.
  3. Advance data governance, data literacy, and related data management efforts across the university.
  4. Implement data integration and advance business intelligence (BI) capabilities across the university.

Improvements:

  • Establish a Data Analytics team that creates predictive models and provides in depth data analysis to our academic partners.  
  • Develop a BI framework and all associated tools, including a data warehouse (Snowflake) and reporting (MicroStrategy).
  • Deploy an automated machine learning tool (DataRobot) that uses artifical intelligence (AI) to analyze aggregated data from multiple departments across the university.
  • Create admissions and enrollment dashboards to provide access to real-time enrollment management data.
  • Improve data governance by re-establishing a Data Governance subcommittee.

In Progress:

  • Expand access to data models and dashboards with an emphasis on ensuring the academic partners have the insights needed to make data-informed decisions. 
  • Engage with administrative partners to model HR and Finance data in the warehouse.
  • Further strengthen data governance through appropriate policies, processes, and procedures.
  • Finalize an interactive calculator for use in “what-if” scenario planning that shows the impact of enrollment growth on space, staff, and fiscal stewardship.

​Key Partners:

  • Invoke
  • Mattilion
  • MicroStrategy
  • Snowflake
  • Technomax

Theme 2: Improving Research Infrastructure and Support

Objectives:

  1. Provide research IT infrastructure that enables our faculty to apply for and receive related grants.
  2. Establish a function within the IST division to support faculty in leveraging advanced research computing resources.
  3. Develop and implement a secure research computing environment.

Improvements:

  • Partner with DataBank to replace the legacy on-premises data center with a modern, state of the art co-location facility.  
  • Deploy “Wulver”, a 4.5 million dollar High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster with 16,000 cores, 100 GPUs, and 1 PB of storage.
  • Establish a HPC support team dedicated to supporting and increasing HPC adoption at NJIT.  
  • Integrate the Nividia GH200 Grace Hopper seed unit into the Wulver cluster for testing.

In Progress:

  • Partner with academic colleagues to identify opportunities to incorporate Wulver as part of the curriculum.
  • Support faculty making the transition from dedicated to shared HPC nodes. 
  • Develop comprehensive, practical, and sustainable plans for support of large-scale research storage. 

Key Partners:

  • DataBank
  • Dell
  • Nvidia

Theme 3: Enabling the Secure Modern Digital Workplace

Objectives:

  1. Provide access to tools, infrastructure and support that advances collaboration.
  2. Improve the functionality & reliability of the audiovisual technology in campus-wide classrooms and meeting/collaboration spaces.
  3. Provide access to innovative tools and technologies that increase productivity/effectiveness
  4. Enable easy access to computing resources/services from any location.
  5. Provide reliable and secure access to a modern robust network.
  6. Implement additional tools, processes, and infrastructure that can help protect the integrity and availability of NJIT’s systems and services.
  7. Develop a robust information security program in support of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) requirements.

Improvements:

  • Improve staff access to secure endpoint computing devices by launching a staff computer distribution initiative.
  • Implement a five-year lifecycle refresh for classroom audio visual (AV) technology to ensure continuous compliance with current NJIT standards. 
  • Implement Zoom as the standard video conferencing platform across the university.
  • Improve campus-wide wi-fi availability and reliability. 
  • Implement Splunk Synthetics and Application Performance Monitoring to ensure performance and availability of enterprise applications.
  • Improve email hygiene by implementing Proofpoint Email Protection.
  • Enhance security by protecting students, faculty, and staff with Duo multi-factor authentication. 

In Progress:

  • Modernize the AV technology in NJIT’s meeting/collaboration spaces and implement a five-year lifecycle refresh.
  • Deploy a contracts management tool (Aavenir) that uses AI to improve the contract lifecycle.
  • Develop a mature Identity and Access Management (IAM) program capable of supporting digital transformation.
  • Conduct a total cost of ownership comparing Network-as-a-Service to the traditional in-house networking model.
  • Launch a student-run security operations center (SOC) that provides students with real-world experience while protecting NJIT's systems and data.  

Key Partners:

  • Cisco
  • ProofPoint
  • Splunk
  • Zoom

Theme 4: Investing In the Student, Faculty, and Staff Digital Experience  

Objectives:

  1. Improve service delivery by simplifying and automating processes and systems.
  2. Formalize knowledge management practices in support of service delivery.
  3. Improve the digital user experience in support of NJIT’s student, faculty, and staff success strategy.
  4. Identify new opportunities to provide employees, students, and alumni with information about service availability/entitlements.
  5. Develop a framework for increasing inclusiveness in the digital experience.
  6. Develop the capability to deliver consistent websites for use by faculty and students.

Improvements: 

  • Launch Highlander Nexus, a portal that provides the NJIT community with a central location to access all ServiceNow requests, workflows, and knowledge articles.
  • Deploy the ServiceNow HR Service Delivery (HRSD) module to improve and streamline the intake, management, and resolution of incidents, service requests, and knowledge.
  • Establish a ServiceNow governance structure to provide a framework for departments interested in using the platform. 
  • Partner with Higher Digital to conduct a digital user experience study. 
  • Update the look and feel of the my.njit.edu portal.  
  • Deploy a new staff directory tool.

In Progress:

  • Identify and plan the deployment of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for Finance and Human Resources. 
  • Enhance, in collaboration with Human Resources, NJIT's HR Talent Management platform.
  • Improve adoption of DegreeWorks by optimizing the tool, and work with our academic partners to improve the quality of the data.
  • Continue to formalize best practices surrounding knowledge management to improve how knowledge is captured and shared across the organization. 
  • Prioritize accessibility considerations in all digital initiatives, ensuring inclusive design practices and equitable access to information and services for all individuals.
  • Provide faculty access to web-based profiles to highlight and promote their research and expertise.

Key Partners:

  • Evolutra Campus
  • Ferrilli Consulting
  • Higher Digital
  • ServiceNow

Theme 5: Leveraging the Transformative Nature of Emerging Technologies

Objectives:

  1. Develop a framework for deploying emerging technologies.
  2. Identify and deploy emerging technologies in ways that can benefit teaching and learning, research, infrastructure, and operational efficiency.

Improvements:

  • Publish guidelines for instructors on using AI.
  • Establish, in collaboration with NJIT’s Provost, an AI working group charged with:
    • Advancing NJIT’s understanding, adoption, and responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the areas of curriculum and instruction. 
    • Enhancing NJIT’s instructional framework with AI to propel transformative initiatives in curriculum, instruction, and student learning experiences to better meet the needs of the changing learner and the evolving technological landscape.
  • Launch an extended reality (XR) lab to enhance teaching and learning. 
  • Enhance NJIT’s digital learning offerings by incorporating generative AI tools (Harmonize Learning, ZOOM AI Companion, and TurnItIn AI Writing Detector).
  • Further pilot emerging technology tools such as Google Gemini (previously known as Bard) and Poll Everywhere.

In Progress:

  • Define strategies for leveraging AI to benefit academics, research, infrastructure, and operational efficiency. 
  • Publish a framework for deploying emerging technologies; the framework will include guidelines to protect people’s privacy and data as well as increasing awareness.
  • Publish a framework for deploying emerging technologies; the framework will include guidelines to protect people through the application of data protection measures, privacy, and accessibility.
  • Establish programs that encourage and support faculty interested in leveraging emerging technologies.
  • Promote lifelong learning by continuously innovating our in-person, online, and professional/continuing educational experiences based on emerging skills and technologies. 
  • Implement WalkMe, a tool that provides personalized guidance, into Canvas in order to increase adoption and engagement.

Key Partners

  • Amazon
  • Meta