Academic Information Services

The Academic Information Services (AIS) team supports a continuum of individual faculty requests and campus-wide IT initiatives focused on meeting the College’s ever-evolving teaching and research needs. Members of the AIS group serve as consultants, collaborators, and integrators, helping faculty with issues of design, innovation, curriculum support, and troubleshooting.  Under the direction of Gene Roche, we collaborate with faculty, administrators, and other groups within IT to help strengthen teaching, enhance student learning and promote faculty and student research.  To better leverage our personal strengths and diverse experience, the AIS team is organized into three groups – Academic Technology Specialists, Academic Engineers, and Classroom Support.  You can reach Gene by email at earoch@wm.edu or by telephone at 757-221-1879.

Academic Technology Specialists

Academic Technology Specialists (ATS) bring a breadth of knowledge from their own personal experiences as teachers, researchers, educational planners, and project managers.  The ATS group is loosely organized around the disciplinary clusters—humanities, social sciences and sciences—with strong connections to the professional schools.  Our work is highly individualized and focused on helping faculty members grow in their understanding, technology proficiency, and self-reliance across the entire spectrum of information technologies.  In addition to work with individual faculty, we conduct focused research on both established and emerging technologies, ranging from helping a new professor with course materials for Blackboard, or using tablet computers to discovering ways for improving interaction during lecture.  In short, our Academic Technology Specialists serve as consultants who help faculty discover and implement technologies and strategies to improve teaching and research.

AIS Engineers

AIS Engineers also come from diverse backgrounds but they all bring deep specialized skills in hardware, software, networking and storage.  With a strong dynamic for customer service, our engineers understand the special demands of academic life and are dedicated to helping resolve issues, exploring new technical solutions and troubleshooting problems.  In addition to supporting the daily needs of desktop and notebook computing support within academic departments, they work with other IT engineers to maintain specialty servers with exotica names, such Opinio, WMBlogs and WMWikis.  In their spare time, they manage the near impossible: carefully and quickly exchanging old computer systems with new, as their leases expire.  They understand deadline pressure and are skillful in meeting challenges.  AIS Engineers are the installers and fixers who address problems as they arise, as well as sharing best practices for greatly reducing system issues.  John Drummond is the lead engineer for the team.

Classroom Support

Classroom Support has the challenge of ensuring that the educational technology in over 100 classrooms is ready, reliable, consistent, and easy to use.  The classroom support team works closely with department chairs and facilities planners to design classrooms that enhance a variety of learning styles and they provide both preventive maintenance and emergency service.  Should a problem arise during class, they promptly attend to system issues reported by faculty.  (Given the speed of response, it’s been thought their golf carts are jet-fueled.)  Additionally, they assist faculty with video conferences and distance learning environments.  When it comes to managing and maintaining classroom technologies, the Classroom Support team is a valued partner of W&M faculty and students alike.  Myron Hall is the manager of the Classroom Support Team.

Excellence is a shared goal of all three AIS teams.  To learn more about us and our role at William & Mary, we invite you to explore the resources and information within this website.  Additionally, feel free to contact Gene Roche with your questions and comments.