OIT Annual Report 2025-2026

Current OIT Projects

4.80

Avg. customer rating out of 5

43

Total Projects Completed

13,780

Customer Requests Resolved

411

Operational Changes Completed

80%

OIT positive review of culture

The staff of OIT gathered in a ballroom for their all staff meeting

Create Clear Pathways
Serving Minoritized Students
Empower our Employees and Ops
Drive Portland’s Resurgence

OIT Mission

We empower students, faculty, and staff through technology

This report highlights select accomplishments that OIT has led or been a significant contributor to during the 2025-26 academic year.

OIT Strategic Priorities and PSU Strategic Imperatives help us focus our energies on the work that will provide the greatest benefit for PSU. They act as guiding stars as we make decisions, plan, and prioritize our work.

OIT Strategic Priorities

Operational Excellence

Supporting end users and maintaining infrastructure and information systems critically impact the quality and equity of the PSU community's technology experience. We define, measure, and celebrate operational excellence, driving ongoing improvement by embracing best practices and leveraging shared expertise.

People First

Everything we do in OIT begins with our people. We place a high value on work-life balance, employee growth, and a culture of inclusion. We aim to foster an environment where all people with diverse backgrounds and lived experiences feel a sense of belonging and are provided opportunities for community, mentorship, and professional growth.

Secure, Private, and Equitable by Design

Security, privacy, and equity are fundamental when we select, design, and implement information services. By using proven practices in cybersecurity, data management, and inclusive design, we build a culture of shared responsibility which recognizes that technology can reduce barriers while respecting and protecting individuality, privacy, and confidentiality

Service and Organizational Evolution

We take an intentional and iterative approach to the evolution of our operations and organizational structure, focusing on the value of the services we provide to the PSU community. We strive to be the University’s trusted partner, offering sustainable solutions and services that build on equitable and scalable practices.

Student Success

We enable student success by using technology to remove barriers to access, increase engagement, and improve retention. We design our systems and services for students, actively seeking and embracing student feedback to inform our collective understanding of how technology can enhance the student experience.

Portland State University (PSU) Strategic Imperatives

Create clear pathways for our region’s learners to achieve their educational goals and provide a strong return on investment.
Lead the Pacific Northwest in serving minoritized students and boosting the college success rate.
Support and empower our employees and operations.
Drive Portland’s economic, social, and cultural resurgence.

Letter From PSU’s Chief Information Officer

Dear PSU Community,

Reflecting on the 2025-26 academic year, I am incredibly proud of the journey we have shared. This past year brought both significant challenges and remarkable achievements, and I want to thank our dedicated Office of Information Technology (OIT) staff and our invaluable campus partners for making it all happen.

Through all of this hard work, our commitment to OIT’s People First strategic priority has remained our anchor. We know that everything we do in OIT begins with our people, which is why we place such a high value on work-life balance, employee growth, and fostering a culture of inclusion and belonging. Because of our intentional effort to support employee excellence and wellbeing, I am proud to acknowledge that OIT was named one of Computerworld’s Best Places to Work in IT in 2026 for the 10th consecutive year.

As you read through this report highlighting the select accomplishments that OIT has led or contributed to, I hope you share my pride in what we have built together. I am looking forward to continuing our momentum in the year to come as we continue to empower faculty, staff, and students through technology.

An award that reads "ComputerWorld best places to work in IT 2026"

Sincerely,

Ryan Bass
Chief Information Officer
Portland State University

Create Clear Pathways for our Region’s Learners

At PSU, technology serves as a vital engine for student success. OIT is driven to build clear digital pathways that help students achieve their educational goals. Through modern, accessible digital systems and maintaining computing environments, cloud platforms, and collaborative tools, OIT enables the campus to serve its community. We are proud of the ways campus technology empowers research-based, engaged learning experiences that prepare PSU students to step forward as the world’s next problem solvers and aims to create a space where all students can thrive.

Slate for Student Success

In partnership with Advising and Career Services and the Office of Student Success, OIT has replaced the current software for student advising and support by migrating from EAB Navigate to Slate Student Success. This change provides PSU with a much more flexible system, and has resulted in cost savings and operational efficiencies by consolidating into fewer tools. By May 2027, OIT will migrate additional student-supporting units like the Registrar’s Office, Student Financial Services, and others into Slate for Student Success as part of sunsetting the legacy CRM, CampusNexus. OIT will also be supporting the Student Lifecycle Communications project by developing additional Banner data integrations for Slate.

Transition ID Card Operations to OIT

In partnership with Student Financial Services (SFS), OIT has moved ID Card Services operations from SFS to OIT. We focused on creating a seamless transition to new tools, processes, and team, providing a better ID card experience for the campus community.

Staff standing next to sign that reads "Technology Help Desk and ID Services"

Integrated Course Scheduling for Departments

In collaboration with campus partners, OIT is implementing new course scheduling features with Ad Astra. This will support optimization and streamlining of academic course scheduling, including reducing duplicative, manual work that was previously done between departments. This implementation also provides real-time class registration monitoring for academic programs in a single system, identifying courses that need additional sections, or courses to consider for cancellation making it easier for departments to meet student needs and demands.

Self-Service ID Card Creation

To improve the overall experience and efficiency of getting a PSU ID card, OIT has added selfie photo upload and pre-printing of ID cards to shorten lines and get students on their way. Piloted successfully during Summer Orientations, nearly 55% of students uploaded a photo and grabbed their IDs during check-in. This has resulted in the elimination of extremely long lines during summer orientation and the beginning of fall term.

Degree Planner for Students

In coordination with campus partners, OIT is in the early data integration phase of implementing a Degree Planner for Students. Expected in 2028, this strategic initiative will deliver accurate, personalized degree maps while providing students greater agency to monitor graduation progress and adjust course loads or term schedules

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Lead in Serving Minoritized Students

Technology supports and enables educational equity, continuing our mission to lead the Pacific Northwest in serving minoritized, low-income, and first-generation students. We leverage modern digital infrastructure, robust research network drives, and responsive technology-driven practices to build clear pathways that improve persistence, retention, and graduation rates. By delivering accessible, culturally engaged digital tools and maintaining collaborative environments, we foster a sense of belonging for our broad campus community.

A group of students posing for a picture all smiling

Respond to PSU Digital Accessibility Regulation Changes

In light of recent updates to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), PSU employees must ensure digital accessibility compliance for our services, programs, and activities. In support of this effort, OIT engaged with campus partners to establish an institutional Digital Accessibility Maturity Roadmap, implement a variety of new training and support resources, and procure critical software to support the employees who are doing this work. Employees currently have access to Foxit PDF Editor+, Panorama Accessibility Checker and Remediation Tool for Canvas, and Grackle, in addition to a number of other specialized tools that support accessible design, validation, and remediation. For more information, including links to additional resources, please visit the Advancing Digital Accessibility at Portland State University Blog Post.

Foxit PDF Editor Pilot for PSU Employees

In support of PSU’s response to digital accessibility, OIT offered a one-year pilot of Foxit PDF Editor+ to all PSU employees at no cost to departments. A professional PDF editing software like Foxit is required to validate and remediate most PDFs for digital accessibility. PSU has provided an investment to support the long-term funding for a number of digital accessibility tools, including Foxit, to ensure employees have the tools they need to make digital resources accessible to the PSU community.

YuJa Panorama for Faculty

OIT partnered with the Office of Academic Innovation (OAI) to make Panorama available to instructional staff. Panorama is an accessibility checker and remediation tool that works within an instructor's Canvas course. To support accessible course design, Panorama completes an accessibility evaluation, provides guidance to faculty on how to remediate accessibility issues, and provides access to alternative formats for students.

Grackle for PSU

OIT partnered with OAI to implement Grackle for the PSU community, offering an accessibility checker for Google Workspace tools. The checker is available to integrate with Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets, and can identify accessibility issues that need to be addressed to ensure accessible design for digital resources.

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Support and Empower our Employees and Operations

In OIT, our employees and operations are the foundation of everything we achieve. We are driven to build efficient and transparent administrative structures that eliminate barriers; allowing our team to focus fully on their core mission: serving our students, faculty and staff. By investing in our people we are able to continuously elevate our academic and functional operations.

Two women talking and laughing at and event with food

Centralized Atlassian Service Expansion

To empower departments and enhance cross-unit collaboration at PSU, OIT has invested in Atlassian’s suite of knowledge, project, and service management tools—establishing central discovery, implementation and support pathways for departments in need of workplace collaboration solutions. Supported products include Confluence, Jira, and Jira Service Management, which are designed to streamline knowledge sharing, project management, and support interaction (or issue) tracking.

Centralizing customer support pathways and internal support workflows into a single ecosystem allows service providers to better collaborate and track issue progress in real time—ensuring quicker and more consistent customer support. OIT partners with PSU departments in evaluating their current business processes and determining how best to implement Atlassian tools. This includes service design consultation, centralized systems administration, robust onboarding, hands-on training, and ongoing support.

Most recently, OIT has successfully onboarded the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science (MCECS) to facilitate departmental purchasing, and University Financial Services (UFS), to support the new Fiscal Service Center. OIT is actively working with the Office of Human Resources (HR) to implement Jira Service Management in 2027.

Implement New Access Control and Video Surveillance Platform

OIT partnered with the Capital Projects & Construction team and Campus Public Safety to modernize PSU's physical security infrastructure. We have consolidated access control and camera management into one integrated system, simplifying ongoing maintenance, expanding core functionality, and achieving reduced cost of ownership.

Google Security Configuration

In collaboration with key university partners, OIT updated PSU’s Google Workspace settings to mitigate risks due to overly permissive link-sharing. This initiative established a more secure, reliable framework that helps prevent accidental public file exposure.

Expand Campus Cybersecurity Awareness Program

In alignment with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) ongoing “Secure Our World” initiative, the Information Security Team is expanding campus cyber literacy through campus-wide and targeted communications, annual cybersecurity maturity self-assessments, and participation in campus-wide events for both employees and students. This proactive outreach helps mitigate the elevated risk facing PSU due to cyberattacks happening more frequently in higher education than any other industry. This ongoing and evolving educational framework empowers the university community with essential digital safety skills that extend across professional, academic, and personal domains.

Endpoint Inventory Exploration and Selection

OIT evaluated and selected Jira Assets as our IT asset management (ITAM) solution to enhance overall visibility into endpoint devices across PSU. Slated for implementation over the coming year, this platform will replace shadow IT systems and spreadsheets while streamlining support workflows. By centralizing persistent asset records, OIT will remove the need for manual cross-system checks during hardware procurement, imaging, device migration, deployment, and software distribution.

Generative AI Training and Enablement

In collaboration with OAI and Research and Graduate Studies (RGS), PSU’s InnovAIte Academy was launched. This faculty and staff development program empowers faculty and staff with the knowledge, skills, and resources to integrate generative AI thoughtfully and effectively into their daily work. Through these efforts, the initial cohort had 74 participants and awarded 56 microcredentials, advancing institutional AI literacy across campus. Cohort 2 completed with 74 participants and awarded 54 microcredentials. Cohort 3 kicks-off this 2026 Fall term.

Audience members gathered in a hall sitting in chairs facing the stage

Improve OIT Culture & Wellbeing

OIT places a high value on work-life balance, employee growth, and a culture of inclusion. Empowering employees enables us to deliver high-quality services and solutions to the PSU community. As a part of this commitment, we conducted our third annual Culture and Belonging Assessment to gather employee input on OIT culture and employees' sense of belonging. This input informs OIT priorities and ensures intentional planning to support employee wellbeing; which over this past year has included planning, support, and scaffolding to address workplace stress and enhanced communication and connection across the organization.

Critical System Maintenance

OIT has completed several key lifecycle projects, including upgrading managed endpoints to Microsoft Office 2024, migrating compatible PCs to Windows 11 before Windows 10 support ends, phasing out devices running end-of-life macOS 13, and upgrading the legacy CRM, CampusNexus. These initiatives proactively address critical vendor end-of-support deadlines to protect the campus network from security risks associated with unpatched software. Additionally, to ensure smooth transitions and assist campus departments with budget planning, OIT is providing self-service upgrade options, publishing hardware replacement projections, and coordinating directly with technical leads across PSU.

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Drive Portland’s Resurgence

OIT delivers the modern digital infrastructure, collaborative spaces, and tech-driven networks that unite PSU researchers, students, staff, and faculty to tackle complex urban challenges. Enabling seamless virtual and physical environments for experiential learning, mentorship, and creative innovation, we position PSU as an accessible gateway and tech-forward hub for talent, and re-establish Portland as a vibrant model for urban renaissance.

Technology in the Art Building

OIT participated in the design and construction of PSU’s new Art Building. By partnering with both Capital Projects and Construction (CPC) and the College of the Arts (COTA), we designed and installed high-performance networking, telecommunications, and audio-visual systems, establishing a state-of-the-art technological foundation tailored to the facility's needs. This included developing a new custom workdesk teaching station design for classrooms; which has led to OIT now able to integrate these advancements into future AV system designs for classrooms.

PSU Campus Map

OIT has continued to work with partners in the Planning and Sustainability Office to improve the quality and features of the PSU Campus Map. Coming in the winter of 2027, OIT plans to release a content management system for the map that will allow photos and metadata for buildings to be updated by logged-in admins throughout campus. This will help provide more timely updates to the names, features and occupants of each structure. In addition, we will release the first interactive indoor maps that will allow students to get directions beyond just the building front door, all the way to the correct classroom.

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