2024 At a Glance

Enhancing Technology Resources

In 2024, University of Kentucky Information Technology Services (UK ITS) continued to enhance and provide technology resources that empower the UK community, including students, employees, patients, visitors, researchers, and more. In a year of transition, teams primarily serving the academic campus and UK HealthCare came together more than ever before to think about the future of technology for our University community.

“I’m amazed and honored to join an incredible team of individuals and professionals focused on delivering state of the art technologies while continuously fostering an environment of collaboration, education, and ultimately improving the experience for patients across the Commonwealth. The collective work of our teams impacts all aspects of UK Healthcare and we’ve been afforded opportunities to expand this across the state and into our affiliates and partners.”

Katie Dickens
Chief Digital & Information Officer

Providing a Foundation for Academic Innovation

Throughout the year, numerous UK ITS employees dedicated themselves to significantly enhancing the student experience. Teams in Enterprise Applications and Outreach made enhancements to student-facing apps in the myUK portal, which improved advising, registration, and the financial aid processes. Additionally, teams installed new network infrastructure and AV equipment in new and renovated buildings, ensuring state-of-the-art resources for all that use UK facilities. UK ITS supported cutting-edge student initiatives like UK Invests by automating payments and developing complex integrations. To better equip students with the technology resources needed at the beginning of the academic year, many teams collaborated to develop the Student Tech Checklist and distribute iPads to new students. Teams interacted with over 6,000 new students as they picked up their iPads—handing out the Student Tech Checklist— with the goal of removing any technology barriers before the first day of class.

“We saw well over 6,000 students in three days at The Cornerstone. To think about that many students getting to interact with the human side of IT, our employees, is really special to me.”

Marci Adams
Assistant Director of Communications & Strategic Engagement

One of the unique and special opportunities at the University of Kentucky is having several UK HealthCare facilities, including the Albert B. Chandler Hospital, on our contiguous campus in Lexington. Developing, enhancing, and supporting technology resources at UK HealthCare provides an opportunity for our next generation of physicians and healthcare workers to learn in our diverse teaching hospitals and clinics. Our teams continue to support the future of Kentucky through technology advancement in our UK community.

Enhancing Patient Care

In 2024, UK ITS teams collaborated to install and implement essential technologies for patient care across the Commonwealth. The new ICU floor at UK HealthCare’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital was equipped with advanced remote electronic monitoring capabilities, ensuring seamless integration of patient-centered medical technology. Numerous projects executed by our teams function seamlessly in the background, ensuring optimal and effective operation of our healthcare services. For example, the Project and Portfolio Management (PMO) team supported replacing aging medication carousels at the Chandler Central Pharmacy to maintain efficient and safe medication dispensing.

"Despite tight deadlines, competing priorities, and complex requirements, the PMO ensured that our projects were delivered utilizing solid methodology, meticulous planning, effective risk management, and excellent team collaboration. The Project and Program Managers demonstrated their capability to consistently meet and exceed stakeholders' expectations, continuing to show we are the team to engage for successful project delivery."

Lynn Robinson
Executive Director of Project & Portfolio Management

Meanwhile, the ITS Performance Analytics Center of Excellence (PACE) gathered and validated data sources to enhance decision-making, workflow efficiency, and user experience across UK HealthCare systems. Through data-driven insights, PACE was able to deliver a tool to screen for social factors affecting health, connecting patients with resources and tracking data through the Health Disparity Dashboard. Throughout the year, these teams and many more UK ITS employees and partners completed numerous efforts to ensure patients could easily access the care they needed.

Fortifying Cybersecurity and Showing Resilience

In a complex institution like the University of Kentucky, securing our digital footprint is no easy task. Through efforts in monitoring, tooling, compliance, and education, the Enterprise Cybersecurity team, alongside members of other teams including Networking & Infrastructure and Enterprise Systems, executed various initiatives to keep our systems and information safe. Completion of assessments like the HIPAA Security Risk Assessment and contributions to disaster recovery efforts supported UK and UK HealthCare with resilient systems and processes. Employees at UK were put to the test through phishing simulation exercises aimed to demonstrate the dangers of phishing attacks.

With awareness and education at the forefront of proactively defending against cybersecurity threats, UK ITS hosted the largest CyberCon event ever. With more than 500 attendees hearing from leading cybersecurity experts in the public and private sectors, UK ITS was able to spread cybersecurity knowledge to the UK community. In collaboration with many stakeholder groups across the UK enterprise, cybersecurity is and will continue to be a major priority for UK ITS.

“Across our University and HealthCare enterprise, I am grateful for the significant strides we’ve made to improve our security posture. The contributions from our team members and the Joint Task Force are meaningful.”

Stephen Burr
Associate CIO & CISO, Enterprise Cybersecurity

Resiliency is an essential component of a mature cybersecurity operation. One event that put resilience to the test was the global CrowdStrike outage in July 2024. The outage heavily impacted UK and UK HealthCare, resulting in thousands of UK computers workstations crashing. UK ITS teams mobilized quickly to restore critical systems and manually reboot computers. UK HealthCare and IT employees from across the enterprise, including many who had never provided desktop support before, collaborated to restore functionality to computers affected by the global outage.

"It was such a great and fun experience, knowing that I am helping with a bigger part of research, and continuing to help medical facilities. It was cool to know I was part of the team helping with the global CrowdStrike outage — an experience I will never forget.”

Ayah Abdeldayem
Student Cybersecurity Analyst Assistant

Expanding Technology Resources to Serve Our Mission

Providing a strong network is at the foundation of our mission to support the UK enterprise with technology. To do this well, networking infrastructure must be constantly refreshed and upgraded. Projects aimed to enhance cellular coverage around and off-campus, upgrading network connectivity in academic and healthcare facilities, and ensuring new buildings are equipped with adequate infrastructure continued in 2024. Teams also executed an ongoing effort to decommission legacy analog telephones and launch a brand-new contact center to make and receive calls from various departments at UK.

“The connectivity, communication, and collaboration services we provide form the backbone of the university’s technology ecosystem. My team’s unwavering commitment to excellence drives our success and ensures we consistently meet the evolving needs of the university.”

Hector Rios
Associate CIO, Enterprise Networking & Infrastructure

Engaging the Community in Technology

Engagement cannot be successful without generating awareness and understanding of technical services and systems. This often requires translating the work of UK ITS into things commonly understood by anyone. To highlight the innerworkings of campus technology and expertise of ITS employees, the team started a podcast — TechKnow — sharing knowledge from students, employees and experts from the local tech community.

“An AI tool could look at 10 million x-rays and figure out what's similar or what's different about them and find patterns in those x-rays. That may lead to cancer diagnoses or it may help the radiologist find those differences faster and at a lower cost.”

Adam Recktenwald
Associate CIO & Enterprise Chief Technology Officer

The Communications & Strategic Engagement team lead several engagement initiatives in 2024—reviving community groups that had been inactive since the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in several years, Women in Tech and the IT Community of Practice (IT CoP) groups met in person. Formed to engage IT professionals across campus, IT CoP continues to meet monthly to ensure all IT professionals at UK are informed of upcoming initiatives and available resources. UK ITS continues invest in our community, participating in local K-12 Career Fairs and STEM nights to help educate students about careers in technology.

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