Brendan Nary
Brendan is a class act. He returned to campus a little earlier than the rest of ITS and there was a day when I needed help with an external department who was utilizing our space, so I contacted Brendan to see if he’d be able to help in a pinch. It was a last minute ask and he didn’t think twice before agreeing and jumping into action. Brendan is continuously looking out for members of the team and always instills a sense of camaraderie, further solidifying the notion of One ITS. If you haven’t had the pleasure of working or conversing with him yet, you’re in for a real treat. Just don’t be too alarmed by his incredibly dry and witty sense of humor. Thanks, Brendan, for setting such a great example!
Whitney Sublett
John Hanks
I wanted to thank John Hanks (the DNS Wizard)
After Mason-Secure went to the eduroam network the Apple Content Caching server was no longer able to serve that network, which accounts for a huge amount of traffic and a large number or clients (thousands daily). While it’s not a mission critical service it does reduce a lot of bandwidth and greatly reduces peoples’ time for installing macOS, iOS, macOS updates, iOS updates, and any apps or app updates.
John was very helpful and quick to look into the issue and reapply the TXT record, when that didn’t fix the issue he offered to look at the packet capture which I sent and he was able to determine the issue in what seemed like no time at all.
Again thank you John Hanks for being great to work with.
-Jed Frye
Ginnie Mahoney
Ginnie assisted with our office, Enterprise Collaboration, in the vendor replacement of a monitor on the web conferencing equipment in her Aquia suite. If it was not for Ginnie’s flexibility, I would have had needlessly come in-person to only swipe my ID and “babysit” the vendor. Because Ginnie rearranged her schedule, she was able to do all of the above, and much much more (including having chocolates on hand when I am near!). Thanks Ginnie! I owe you more than one.
Matthew Berlejung
Julia Tungli
During the Blackboard Webinars for the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and Groups Tools, she showed great energy and passion during the webinars. Even though I raised many questions during the webinars, she willingly provided solutions to my questions. After webinars, she sent me recordings of webinars via mail, too. She would share her time and efforts for supporting my courses at Mason Korea. Thanks to her, I could create and run effective and efficient classes with the knowledge about the Blackboard utilization.
Leo Jung
Lauren Reese
Lauren continues to be a rock star in ITS. While balancing heavy communications for our MasonLive to Office 365 Student migration, she spent her Sunday updating all the web pages related to the release of the 2FA functionality within the password.gmu.edu site. This ensured that all our knowledge capital was up to date and correct for when customers and the support center look for information. Then, Lauren turned around and completed an additional request this week to develop the web page for the new Projects Dashboard. Lauren built the dev site on Monday night, received feedback, and by Wednesday night, had the production site up and live in time for multiple governance meetings on Thursday this week.
John Prette
S. Lee & David Rajaobelina
Due to defective equipment and short staffing, Cherie and I asked for Lee and David to assist me with the installation of a very large monitor in one of the classrooms. Lee arranged to take delivery of the freight, David and Lee assisted in installing the monitor, and Lee is arranging the return shipment of the freight. We have quite a few more warranty repairs on the horizon and as our office learns how to do this, Lee’s assistance during this growth stage has been invaluable. Thanks, Lee! Thanks, David!
Matthew Berlejung
Ying Dang
After releasing a major change to the Password.gmu.edu site to include all the two-factor authentication elements, a bug was found by users with expired passwords attempting to access the site and update their information. Customers were under a time crunch because they had already missed the deadline to upload their Covid Vaccine information and they had let their passwords expire and hadn’t enrolled in 2FA when previously prompted. Ying jumped in and was able to troubleshoot the issues in less than 30 minutes and within two hours had a workaround to solve all the open ITS Tickets as well as a patch implemented in the production environment to resolve the issue. This lead an immediate decrease in calls to ITS Support and improved the overall success of the site and its associated enrollment.
John Prette