Monthly Archives: May 2020

Technology has been a critical part of Baruch College’s strategy to continue its educational mission despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. When instruction became fully online with short notice we used resources already in place and acquired new resources to support the faculty.  When staff were required to work from home we provided them with equipment, remote access to their desktop computers, and additional communication tools to enable them to keep the College’s operations running.  When students were faced with taking all their courses online we supplied them with the equipment they needed and remote access to support services.

Fortunately, we have have received tremendous support from the University, which has supplied hundreds of devices, shipped devices to students at home, negotiated free access to a wide range of IT services from vendors, negotiated deals on new licenses, and kept the network running smoothly during a period of escalating demand for access.

Here are some of the numbers associated with our tech deployment:

• Zoom meetings held: 35,991
• Actively Used Zoom Accounts: 11,081
• COVID-19 Related Help Desk Requests: 1,411
• Active VPN Users: 889
• Active Blackboard Users: 6,818
• Laptops Loaned to Staff and Faculty: 133
• Equipment Loaned to Students (As of June 5, 2020)
  • • Chromebooks (provided by CUNY): 328
    • iPads (provided by CUNY): 553
    • Laptops, tablets, and MacBooks (provided by Newman Library, private donors, Undergraduate Student Government and Graduate Student Assembly): 306
    • Peripherals (Keyboards, styluses, graphing calculators, etc. provided by private donors): 410