Employees from the UNLV Information Technology (IT) team shared their improved work processes with leaders from education, government, and healthcare sectors around the world.

From March 10-12, members from UNLV IT’s digital enablement team and information security office traveled to New Orleans to attend HEUG’s Alliance Conference. The event is held every year for global industry leaders to learn practical skills and knowledge from other experts in the industry. This year, a handful of our IT experts gave presentations showcasing some of the services they have improved at the university.  

Information Security Analyst Jill Theroux teamed up with some of our digital enablement experts, including Business Systems Analyst and Functional Architect Raven Sumner. Together, they delivered a presentation on UNLV’s WorkCenters implementation for financial aid teams. They shared details about their work on creating a dashboard that not only boosted productivity for financial aid employees, but also included enhanced security features to prevent data exposure. Attendees were able to hear from both experts as they shared how they transformed this digital workspace.

“The presentation was designed to equip financial aid offices with strategies to enhance both productivity and security, making WorkCenters a game-changer for financial aid professionals,” Sumner said. “HEUG has always supported institutions sharing best practices and the Alliance Conference was a perfect venue to present our journey in creating a robust financial aid WorkCenter.”

Theroux also co-presented with Business Systems Analyst and Functional Architect Aysun Atici, in which they discussed  their journey on redesigning admissions security on Peoplesoft. Their efforts on this redesign transformed admissions security from a person-based security model to a more streamlined and scalable position-based model. During their presentation, Atici and Theroux discussed how a position-based security model can be beneficial to admissions office staff from other higher education institutions. 

“Redesigning admissions security was a topic we wanted to present so other schools could see our process for handling that project and how it helped us to better maintain and control the access we grant to our employees,” Theroux said. “It's really about knowledge-sharing with schools across the country so we can all help each other in finding new and unique ways to assist our students and staff.”

Associate Business Systems Analyst/Functional Architect Lisa Bossert also represented the digital enablement team at the conference. With help from Atici, she delivered a presentation on duplicate student IDs and the customizations her team have built to manage this problem. During the session, Bossert, Atici, and the attendees had the opportunity to discuss and explore what other institutions have tested. 

“The presentation developed into a discussion with the entire group, sharing ideas and solutions that other schools have tried,” Bossert said. “Since I work on preventing this issue, the conference was great to get more input and ideas from other schools and give them ours as well.”