What We Accomplished
2025 Annual Report
This section highlights ITS’s major projects and achievements that advanced the university’s priorities in 2025.
ITS focused on making online test-taking more secure, giving instructors better ways to engage students, and improving the tools that support everyday coursework.
Via ITS’s collaboration with vendor Enghouse Systems, automated captioning is now a standard, no-additional-cost feature for all lectures, meetings, and events recorded in Mediasite. This enhancement, which used to be limited to a handful of events, expands access for all users, supports diverse learning styles through multimodal content delivery, and strengthens engagement and comprehension. With more than 257,142 on-demand views of Mediasite recordings in 2025 alone, this capability will be a true game-changer for students and event attendees going forward.
Virtual Office Hours
- Hosted monthly virtual office hours for faculty and staff in partnership with vendor, offering live support and professional development
- Supported more than 2,000 course shells for all six colleges and 2,448 students
Easy Syllabus Creation
- Implemented Simple Syllabus to standardize and streamline syllabus management, enhancing the student experience and accreditation reporting
Master Courses
- Implemented Master Courses to streamline course management and ensure consistency across sections
Better Video Storage
- Transitioned Blackboard Ultra video content to My MediaSite to address storage constraints and save money; developed and implemented a video posting policy
Improved Mobile Experience
- Collaborated with vendor to explore mobile enhancements
ITS maintained approximately 300 devices across five computer labs, supporting 1,713 unique users in 30,542 sessions. This included replacing 22% of machines and upgrading others as needed to ensure reliability and a consistent experience, particularly for student testing. While proactive improvements are critical for security and business continuity, we also know that a smooth testing process means less stress for our students.
University Council for Academic Technologies (UCAT)
- Established UCAT as a cross-functional committee to guide academic technology strategy, foster innovation, and align IT efforts with institutional goals
ITS expanded student printing services to the Knoxville area to ensure Audiology and Speech Pathology students have the same service as their Memphis peers. In 2025, Health Science Center students printed 408,231 pages on 25 stations, paid for by their technology fee.
ExamSoft/Examplify
- Supported 2,383 students and 375 faculty/staff in completing scheduled exams both in-person and virtually
- Supported all six colleges and specific programs such as Physician Assistant, Pharmacology, and Dental Hygiene
Poll Everywhere
- Provided ongoing support for 489 active users
Supported 15 teams, enabling daily polls for lectures, assessments, GME Grand Rounds, and audience engagement - Facilitated training sessions to increase tool adoption, including use within Blackboard Ultra
ITS co-led the Health Science Center’s effort to increase generative AI awareness and literacy, delivering 16+ forums, workshops, and presentations to 600+ attendees. Key initiatives included “AI Excellence and You” hands-on workshops, campus-wide digital signage promoting UT Verse and Microsoft Copilot assistants/agents, weekly AI usage tips, and direct support for 30+ AI-related support tickets ranging from tool requests to more complex agentic AI questions. Data protection, academic integrity, and responsible use were central themes.
ITS also played a central role in developing the Institutional AI Policy while co-leading the Institutional AI Strategy Task Force, ensuring ethical, secure, and compliant AI adoption aligned with IT standards and the university mission.
Self-Service Banner, which allows users to manage applicable student and course records, moved to version 9 to ensure continued security, viability, and compliance with mandatory vendor requirements. For students and other university members who log into Banner, v9 provides improved usability and a more mobile-friendly interface for actions such as class registration, grade review, financial aid checking, and more.
In conjunction with Parking Services, ITS supported the successful upgrade of parking garage and lot gates to allow access without an ID badge swipe. Those with assigned parking now can pull up to their lot’s gate, and it will open automatically thanks to new hang tags that contain radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. There also now is a portal where parking requests and purchases can be made. The result is more reliable and efficient parking operations and an improved daily experience for university members as they come to the Memphis campus.
In conjunction with Campus Recreation, ITS enhanced the capabilities of that unit’s main management system in a number of ways. This included moving the application to the cloud to improve service stability and security, restoration and strengthening of fitness center card readers and turnstiles for greater access control, and implementation of a mobile app that enables students to easily view and manage their campus recreation options.
ITS implemented ITSbusiness.uthsc.edu (aka PCR-360) to improve financial transparency and operational efficiency for paid services. This site simplifies billing workflows and provides a centralized platform for managing charges. One of the most impactful features is its self-service capability, which allows departments to independently review and audit bills in real time without waiting for DASH approval. ITSBusiness empowers customers to better understand expenses, validate charges, and make informed decisions. It also enables ITS to manage departmental cross-charges more effectively by eliminating outdated and expired charges.
UTHSC’s cybersecurity program focuses on keeping teaching, research, and patient care running without disruption. In 2025, despite a rise in phishing and foreign login attempts, strong security controls blocked most threats before they reached users or systems. Expanded training and phishing simulations significantly reduced successful attacks, while HIPAA assessments, improved risk management, and standardized vendor oversight strengthened governance. Together, these efforts protected sensitive data and reinforced trust across the campus community.
Over the past year, the Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) team updated 51 security standards, advancing HIPAA, FERPA, and AI governance, and improving audit readiness. The team delivered system security plans, high‑impact technology and vendor risk assessments, and robust risk processes—work that has since been adopted as a model by other UT campuses.
As the university expands its footprint across Tennessee—with new pharmacy programs, dental clinics, and local community Health Hubs—ITS has played a key behind‑the‑scenes role by delivering reliable, high‑quality connectivity. To support growth, ITS rolled out a modern network across the state that improves reliability, simplifies management, and gives teams better visibility into network performance. Built‑in 5G backup connections also help keep services running smoothly in areas where traditional connectivity can be limited. Together, these improvements have delivered more consistent service, greater flexibility, and meaningful cost savings, while giving the university a secure, resilient technology foundation to support continued growth across the state.
ITS supported patient care and clinical teaching for the College of Dentistry (CoD), University Health Services (UHS), and the College of Nursing (CoN), improving access to their essential systems, supporting key partnerships, and expanding technology that facilitates modern healthcare delivery.
- Clinical Partnerships
- Infrastructure to support shared clinical services between the College of Dentistry and the Memphis Veterans Affairs Medical Center
- Updates to Key CoD Patient Systems
- Implant planning and surgical guide design
- Oral surgery department patient record system
- Deployment of new x-ray sensors
- Endodontics patient record system
- Secure student access to the general dentistry patient record system
- Orthodontic 3D scanning system
- Dental hygiene X-ray scanning system
- Telehealth and virtual visits capabilities
- Server upgrades and enhancements
- Support of the UHS and CoN patient record system (NextGen)
Over an 18‑month period, ITS led a major technology transformation at the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Simulation (CHIPS), transitioning the program from a fixed, on‑site audiovisual system to a modern, cloud‑based platform. The upgrade improved recording quality, storage, system performance, and integration with assessment tools, while also expanding CHIPS’ reach beyond the Memphis campus—allowing students to record and submit simulations from anywhere in the world. These enhancements reduced faculty workload, improved the learner experience, and positioned CHIPS as a more accessible, scalable, and future‑ready simulation facility.
ITS prioritized streamlining project intake, strengthening self-service, and modernizing service delivery through TechConnect, a single place to request assistance and access the knowledge base. Through TechConnect, users can find help for a wide range of supported services and applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Zoom, FileMaker Pro, Qualtrics, Adobe Creative Cloud, Banner, Blackboard, LinkedIn Learning, RingCentral, classroom and lab support, file storage and sharing, DASH, equipment issues, project requests, security concerns, guest Wi‑Fi, and much more.
Give our new chatbot, TechTriage, a try from the TechConnect home page!
ITS’s collaboration with vendor partner Cisco enabled us to advance the campus network in several key areas. Through targeted hardware refreshes and configuration updates, we improved network stability, strengthened security, and expanded the technical foundation needed to support future high‑performance connectivity initiatives. These efforts ensure students, trainees, faculty, and staff experience faster, more reliable, and more secure access to university resources.
By working closely with our Dell partners, ITS completed important upgrades to the university’s core compute and storage systems. These improvements boosted performance, expanded capacity, and made our datacenter environment more resilient. As a result, our team can provision services more quickly, recover more effectively from disruptions, and manage enterprise systems more efficiently.
ITS refreshed more than 40 auditoriums, classrooms, conference rooms, and lobby areas in 2025, transforming them into HyFlex (hybrid + flexible) spaces equipped for both in-person and virtual learning. Among these upgrades was Pharmacy 101. With more than 275 seats, this state-of-the-art room now boasts three laser projectors, three large viewing screens, four audience displays, a lectern touch-screen interactive display, a confidence monitor, and audience microphones with camera tracking. It also is fully equipped to support remote learning, ensuring a seamless experience regardless of location. Other key spaces, such as the Student-Alumni Center’s O.D. Larry Dining Hall and Schreier Auditorium, received this same cutting-edge technology. And it’s not just in Memphis – ITS’s work extended all the way to Knoxville with upgrades in Audiology and Speech Pathology and the College of Pharmacy.