In the first issue of CIT Spotlights & Transitions, the division celebrates many accomplishments, awards, and milestones. This issue also coincided with the new President's Awards for Employee Excellence ceremony.

Spotlight: President's Awards for Employee Excellence - CIT Nominations

• Anthony Adinolfi, One Cornell Nominee (nominated twice for different projects!)
• Ayham Boucher, Mission-Possible Nominee
• David Cutri, One Cornell Nominee
• Tammy Dibble, Thoughtful Leader Nominee
• Beth Goelzer, One Cornell Nominee
• Devaki Ginde, Game Changer Nominee
• Sean Gnau, One Cornell Nominee
• Jane Henion, One Cornell Nominee
• Chuck Jessop, Thoughtful Leader Nominee
• Julia Leonard, One Cornell Nominee
• Leon Lilly, One Cornell Nominee
• Bob Rowe, Mission-Possible Nominee
• Dawn Sirois, One Cornell Nominee
• Melissa Sweeney, One Cornell Nominee
• Irina Zhankov, One Cornell Nominee 

More Spotlights

• Future-Ready WordPress Base: approximately 4,080 Cornell sites will benefit from a new WordPress base and theme. Custom Development designed the minimum viable product (MVP) to deliver consistency, efficiency, and a better user experience for future projects.
• Google Storage Reduction: partnered with Alumni Affairs and Development for a 90% reduction in four years, avoiding ~$716K in annual penalties set to commence January 1, 2026.
• Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) Launch: new core questions and system implemented in four colleges and schools, with four more lined up to launch in spring 2026. Driving that success is a tremendous amount of data integration support. CIT professionals behind the curtain:
  • Michelle Jackson
  • Preslava Staneva
  • John Udall
• Server Backup Modernization Completed: wrapped up multi-year migration, partnering with distributed IT teams and cutting virtual machine (VM) recovery time from days to minutes.
• Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Implemented: migrated 300 servers to Nutanix in just 14 weeks, retiring legacy VMware and SAN systems, saving $800K in licensing fees and positioning Cornell for scalable, cost-effective infrastructure.
• President's Awards AV Team Shines: our amazing AV teams flawlessly supported the first-ever President's Awards for Employee Excellence simulcast—connecting Ithaca, WCM at NYC, and Qatar celebrations and earning universal praise. Truly a One Cornell moment! Shout-outs to:
  • Chris Chichester
  • Kenny Christianson
  • Liam Fitch
  • Jeff Hodges
  • Gianni Renna
• Saving Space: working with the Center for Teaching and Innovation (CTI), CIT's Teaching & Learning Services team implemented the Video Retention Process first announced in 2024. Significant cost savings were achieved by deleting 18,593 files that had been unwatched for four years, freeing up 14,875 storage-hours and accelerating archival cycles.
• Taking External File Transfers Inside: partnering with Production Control and the Bursar's Office, the PeopleSoft Operations team moved external file transfers into CIT's TIDAL application, saving $21,000 annually in fees to the previous service provider, Innovate.
• Students and AI Boost Web Inventory: two Custom Development student developers tapped into AI tools to advance the initiative of cataloging and analyzing Cornell's entire web presence, then presented their solution to senior leadership. Bravo:
  • Lily Yang
  • Caroline Cheng
• Marketing Cloud Self-Service Options Take Flight: Cornell community members receiving messages through Marketing Cloud can now choose their subscription and frequency preferences in a streamlined, self-service preference center, reducing fragmentation and improving compliance across Cornell's enterprise communications.
• Protecting Payment Card Data: celebrate a colleague's new certification to better assess Cornell's cardholder data threats and compliance. P-C-I (Payment Card Industry) D-S-S (Data Security Standard) I-S-A (Internal Security Assessor) spells:
  • Tom Davko
• Share a Little Power BI with Your Friends: the launch of Power BI’s free version for all Cornell Microsoft customers means Pro users can now share interactive dashboards and reports across the university. Free users aren’t just viewers—they can start experimenting with connections to over 70 data sources, building their own visualizations and gaining insights without extra cost.
• Somewhere Over the Login: a common login is much closer than the rainbow's end, thanks to extensive work by a dedicated team demonstrating tangible progress in this CEMI Identity Management effort.
• Directory Touchdown and Extra Points: scoring a game-changing win, several security engineers secured Cornell's directory service (user identity and access management) and saved a fledgling migration project, completing the move to Oracle Unified Directory.
• TeamDynamix Times Ten: leveraging Cornell’s unlimited-use license, the support team partnered with five units across Ithaca and Tech campuses to launch 10 new apps—five ticketing and five client portals—streamlining operations in late 2025.
• Valet Service for Websites: three units handed off website maintenance and support to Custom Development, freeing staff to focus on their missions: PrimeSleep improves caregiver and patient sleep, the Center for Technology Licensing commercializes Cornell research, and Research & Innovation connects scholarship to societal impact.
• Prepared for the Unexpected: anticipating a possible work stoppage following graduate students' election of a bargaining representative, the Salesforce team and Project Management Office rapidly built a Workday-integrated attestation tool for accurate pay tracking. Though unused, the effort proved our ability to deliver under tight timelines.
• PI-Dash Gets a Design Boost: Custom Development partnered with Research Administration to deliver a clearer, more intuitive interface for Cornell’s PI Dashboard (PI-Dash), giving researchers direct access to project finances and award data.
• Conflict Compliance Made Simple: a new Salesforce-based process streamlined non-research Conflict of Interest, Conflict of Commitment, and Avoiding Nepotism disclosures—replacing paper forms with automated reviews and tracking for greater compliance and transparency.
• Accessibility Wins at Vet School: thanks to a close collaboration with the Vet School Communications team, the school's main website now complies with accessibility standards. Custom Development also introduced new tools and processes to make content easier for communicators to add and update.

Awesome accomplishments!

Celebrate 18 Recent Cybersecurity Successes

Beyond a single team, unit, or platform, Cornell's cybersecurity and risk mitigation successes depend on every community member doing their part. Here are 17 of the initiatives you've helped achieve this year: 

• Awareness & Compliance
  • Cybersecurity Training & Attestation: Professionally developed and delivered by a cross-divisional team spanning the experts in the IT Security Office, Communications & Documentation, Customer Relationship Management, Human Resources, Office of the General Counsel, and Data & Analytics groups. Achieved near-100% compliance for employees—a rare accomplishment for a private R1 institution.
  • Phishing Simulation: Implemented Cornell’s first institution-wide phishing simulations with five campaigns completed, providing critical insight into human vulnerabilities.
• Infrastructure & Threat Monitoring
  • Crowdstrike Extended: Negotiated $1.2M in free services for 24/7 threat monitoring and mitigation for three years.
  • Security Operations: Managed a challenging year of cyberattacks, including phishing-related password compromises and urgent life-safety requests—often after hours.
  • Splunk Consolidation: Increased efficiency and visibility by consolidating disparate instances across CIT and distributed units.
  • Endpoint Vulnerability Management: Implemented Cornell’s first institution-wide tool (Tenable) for proactive endpoint security.
• Identity & Access Security
  • CUWebLogin Enhancements: Improved resilience and performance for Cornell’s most-used system.
  • Password Standards: Raised minimum requirements to support best-practice passphrases.
  • Duo Security Enhancements: Removed SMS and phone options to strengthen authentication—supported thousands of users through this transition.
• Email & Communication Security
  • DMARC Enhancements: Enabled anti-impersonation protections to reduce spoofing and safeguard Cornell’s reputation. The acronym stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, an email security protocol.
• Research & Compliance Support
  • Regulated Research Enclave: Delivered a secure, extensible environment for social sciences research—the first on the Ithaca campus.
  • Human Subject Research & Grants: Provided security and compliance expertise for Research Administration, including support for the new Export Compliance and Security Officer.
  • GLBA & HIPAA Assessments: Completed external compliance assessments in partnership with Internal Audit, Privacy Office, and Enrollment Management. Both laws concern data protection. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires organizations handling financial data to safeguard customer information. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act governs the privacy and security of health information.
• Enterprise Systems & Innovation
  • Secure Connect Dashboard: Enabled units to monitor Passkey adoption—over 4,000 users protected and 14 units are already meeting FY26 goals.
  • Enterprise Directory Upgrade: Fully upgraded LDAP with zero disruption to mission-critical authentication systems.
  • Entra Discovery & ARS Upgrade: Partnered with Patriot Consulting to advance Entra discovery and administrative model planning while completing a long-overdue ARS (Active Roles Server) upgrade for identity and access management.
• Exercises & Preparedness
  • Largest Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise: Partnered with Verizon to host Cornell’s biggest virtual exercise yet—100+ attendees, with positive reviews and valuable lessons learned.
  • Expanded E-Discovery: partnered with multiple working groups to tackle a demanding year of e-discovery requests.

New Frontiers

Cheers to these team members on transitions to new supervisors, roles, and directions:

• Ayham Boucher – Assistant Program Director for AI, reporting to Ben Maddox
• Abe Canfield – IT Service Desk Level 2, reporting to Bob Rowe
• Jason Eldridge – Security Operations Engineer, reporting to Tim Bradish
• Erica Ellis – Assistant Director for Strategic Business Enablement, reporting to Becky Joffrey
• Ryan Engels – Acting Tech Lead, AV Engineering & Project Management, reporting to Mike Allmendinger
• Christina Hopkins – Primary Windows Support Engineer, reporting to Scott Sorrentino
• Chris Manly – moved to Internet2 after 20 years in CIT
• David Nelson – Strategic Business Enablement Project Coordinator, reporting to Erica Ellis
• Dan Paolangeli – Acting Tech Lead, AV Installation & Support, reporting to Mike Allmendinger
• Ester Soriano – Assistant Director for Strategic Engagement and Business Systems Integration, reporting to Stephen Burke
• James Vanee – Service Manager of Apps on Demand (part-time), reporting to Kris Barth
• Sean Walsh – Interim Assistant Director for Cloud and Infrastructure Services, reporting to Sarah Christen
• Fang Xu – Assistant Director for Finance, reporting to Daniel Splitgerber

Your journey inspires us all!

Recommend Monthly Kudos

Shout out a team or colleague.

• Open a Comm & Doc team ticket.
• Choose "Recognition."
• Add a comment with the person or team name and 3-10 words capturing their recent kudos-worthy moment.