Memorandum

To: University of Toronto community

From: Professor Alison Gibbs, Director of the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation and Bo Wandschneider, Chief Information Officer, Information Technology Services

Subject: Academic & Collaborative Technologies department (ACT) changing to enterprise
Academic, Research & Collaborative (ARC) technologies group

Date: October 26, 2022

Effective October 25, 2022, the Academic & Collaborative Technologies department (ACT) department will become the enterprise Academic, Research & Collaborative (ARC) technologies group.

ARC will continue to be a successful and valued partnership between the Office of the Chief Information Officer, Information Technology Services (ITS) and the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI). The change reflects the increasing support ARC will provide to research activities at the University of Toronto, primarily although not exclusively through its continued close working relationships with the Centre for Research & Innovation Support (CRIS) and the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL).

Over the past several years, the ACT team has taken on more responsibilities for the provision and operation of researched-focused services such as the REDCap data collection service and the enterprise JupyterHub service. This re-naming from ACT to ARC is meant to reflect and formalize that evolution and growth, and to highlight our joint commitment to further supporting scholarly research at the University. Vinita Haroun, Director of CRIS recently shared that her team  is excited to be building on their relationship as ARC continues to expand its support for scholarly research at the University.

While ARC will continue to look for opportunities to support research, it should be noted that support for research administrative tasks will continue to reside with ARC’s internal ITS partners, the Enterprise Administrative Solutions & Integrations team (EASI), including support for the Research Information System (RIS).

With the changes, ARC will be reconfiguring its internal team structures. As before, support for teaching and learning will continue to be provided by the Teaching, Learning & Technology (TLT) team, headed by  Tamara Bahr, Manager; the majority of TLT staff are appointed through CTSI. On the operations side, Jeremy Graham, formerly Senior Operations Manager, will  assume the role of Assistant Director for ARC Operations within the ITS side of the portfolio. Marco Di Vittorio becomes Senior Manager for Academic Applications & Analytics. In addition to the Academic Applications team, ARC Operations will also have a new team for Research & Collaborative Applications, and a team for Application Development (formerly the Projects & Development team in ACT).

High-level team structure for the new enterprise Academic, Research & Collaborative technologies group (ARC) 

Operations (ITS)

• Academic Applications & Analytics team
• Research & Collaborative Applications team
• Application Development team

Support (CTSI)

• Teaching, Learning & Technology team

Avi Hyman, currently Director of ACT, will continue to serve as Director of ARC, reporting jointly to the University’s CIO and the Director of CTSI, and working closely with the Director of CRIS and University’s Chief Librarian. For questions about the change reach out to Avi directly at a.hyman@utoronto.ca.

Best regards,

Professor Alison Gibbs, Director CTSI

Bo Wandschneider, CIO, ITS

Academic & Collaborative Technology (ACT) is a partnership between the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation and Information + Technology Services (Office of the CIO) at the University of Toronto. ACT provides strategic and tactical leadership in the development and implementation of information technology services that support the academic mission for the university as a whole. ACT works with instructors, academic administrators, librarians, students, and professional staff (including teaching support units, instructional technologists and IT staff) to advance the University’s academic mission and in particular, its commitment to teaching.

ACT is responsible for seven enterprise (university-wide) service areas:

• Academic Toolbox (Technologies for Teaching & Learning)
• Content Management and Website-hosting Services
• Video-Mediated Communications (including video-conferencing and webinar solutions) – Read more about institutionally supported video-meeting solutions
• Client-facing Email and Related Productivity Solutions
• Course Evaluation Technologies
• Pre-incubator Spaces for Mobile Development and Classroom Technologies
• Open U Toronto Support