IT Staff Convention 2025

Event Overview

 Registration

Penn’s 19th annual IT Staff Convention will be held on Thursday, May 22, 2025, at the Nursing School's own Fagin Hall. The IT Staff Convention offers an outstanding opportunity for networking, peer-to-peer education, gaining insight into what other groups at Penn are doing in the Information Technology space, and creating connections that extend well beyond the event. Prepared is a spectrum of content that will appeal to the entire spectrum of IT professionals at Penn.

In addition to in-person sessions, this spring’s IT Staff Convention will be presented virtually, using Zoom Events. 

The IT Staff Convention is part of a series of programs organized to facilitate information sharing and collaboration across campus.  We highly recommend looking through the Events Calendar for other upcoming events hosted by our various Special Interest Groups (SIGs) on all varieties of topics.

Schedule Overview

The day's events will take place in Fagin Hall, with our Keynote taking place in the Ann L. Roy Auditorium on the Lobby (L)/Mezzanine (M) floors. Zoom options are provided for remote attendees. 

Join us for coffee starting at 8:30 on the Lobby (L) level outside of the auditorium. 

Lunch will be available on the Lobby (L) level outside the auditorium. Feel free to grab & go outside or anywhere else you find space. Additional seating will be opened on the Mezzanine (M) level overlooking the lobby. This year we are excited to announce lunchtime gathering spots; see the Bonus Features section for more information. 

The reception will be on the Lobby (L) level outside the auditorium. It will be a condensed version, including food and non-alcoholic beverages.

Scheduled events for the day are as follows:

  • Check-in Opens, Breakfast and Coffee/Tea Available: 8:30am
  • Smartsheet Reps: 9:00am - 4:00pm, Room 116 (See the Bonus Features section for more information)
  • Session 1: 9:00am - 9:50am
  • Session 2: 10:00am - 10:50am
  • Session 3: 11:00am - 11:50pm
  • Lunch: 12:00pm - 1:30pm
  • Keynote Presentation: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
  • Session 4: 3:00pm - 3:50pm
  • Reception: 4:00pm - 6:00pm

Presentation Details & Sign-up

There is one Keynote Presentation and 4 Session times. See below to review and sign up for the presentations available during each session.

Session 1 (9:00 - 9:50)

Faculty First: Reimagining Semester Starts Through SPLAT

Register

Speakers: Kenneth Davis, Katie Watkins

Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at how Wharton Computing's Semester Planning Leadership Academic Team (SPLAT) has transformed the start-of-semester experience through a faculty-first lens. This cross-functional group has reimagined the class start process enhancing classroom readiness, improving the Faculty Teaching Technology Preparation Survey, and deepening year-round engagement with faculty. We’ll share how SPLAT has matured over the past three years, highlight key lessons learned, and outline our vision for future improvements and cross-team collaboration that continue to support teaching innovation and excellence.

Rm 114 or Zoom Link

State of Generative AI at Wharton

Register

Speaker: Brandon Lafving

The presentation will discuss the forays into generative AI that Wharton has taken over the last year. Last Summer, we signed an agreement with OpenAI, and rolled out ChatGPT EDU to faculty, staff, and students in many of our core Programs. We began to work extensively with the OpenAI API in facilitating research, and we also experimented with two custom course chatbots, one of which went to pilot in Spring. The presentation will reflect on use cases, usage statistics and approaches, detailing what Wharton Computing has learned about implementing Gen AI. There will be a brief,  technical demo of our Lecture Recall chatbot at the end with time for Q&A.

Rm 203 or Zoom Link

Hard Problems: No Experience Necessary

Register

Speaker: James Mason

A discussion about hard problems in computational mathematics (such as P and NP problem, difficult problems for AI and Quantum computers), Philosophy (ex. hard problem of consciousness) and general mathematics.

Room 213 or Zoom Link

Workflow improvements using Smartsheet

Register

Speakers: Stuart Benoff, Smartsheet Representatives

Smartsheet representatives will be onsite to answer questions and present on a variety of Smartsheet-related topics.

Room 116 or Zoom Link

Session 2 (10:00 - 10:50)

Piloting the Future: ChatGPT Edu Staff Training at Penn Engineering

Register

Speakers: Sarah Joseph, Dylan Fenton, Elizabeth Gillstrom

The Office of Academic Innovation (OAI) at Penn Engineering launched the ChatGPT Edu Pilot to explore how generative AI can enhance staff workflows and support university operations. The pilot began with 52 participants completing a custom-designed Canvas course covering foundational AI concepts, ChatGPT Edu features, university-specific data privacy practices, and effective prompting strategies—enhanced with actual use cases submitted by staff. After completing the course, participants received access to ChatGPT Edu and joined a live Zoom workshop to identify challenges, brainstorm AI solutions, and create personalized plans for integrating the tool into their work. To support ongoing learning, a dedicated Slack channel was created for sharing prompts, resources, questions, and small wins. During this presentation, we’ll walk through the pilot’s structure and training elements, highlight participant feedback and key use cases, and offer a practical blueprint for building staff AI training programs that support adoption, skill-building, and long-term impact.

Room 114 or Zoom Link

Green IT at Penn | Supporting the University’s Climate & Sustainability Action Plan

Register

Speaker: Noah Swistak

Sustainability Manager Noah Swistak leads a conversation about recent efforts and what's ahead for the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee's Green IT Working Group. The Working Group first convened in fall 2023 with an aim to make Penn's IT operations more sustainable. Current focuses include surplus end-user devices and standardized pricing.

Room 203 or Zoom Link

Managing PennO365, or How Do I Support Email at Penn?

Register

Speaker: Christopher Lake

An overview of PennO365 for LSPs: covers user eligibility for the service, the use of ARS (account licensing, primary aliases, delegation, etc.) and Penn Email Routing (querying and understanding the results), email sanitation, and other topics. Ideal for new IT staff who support email at the University or those who need a refresher on the specifics.

Room 213 or Zoom Link

IAM Transformation: What's Your Role?

Register

Speakers: Mandi Witkovsky

The session is an overview of the Identity Lifecycle Management journey we are embarking on, with a call for IT professionals to identify the role they can and should play in this transformation.  I will give a high level overview of how IAM works, the goals, and where we need contributors to be part of an IAM community of practice.

Room 218 or Zoom Link

Session 3 (11:00 - 11:50)

What happens when you put an LLM in a chatroom? Using theories of human communication to build LLM systems

Register

Speakers: Matt O'Donnell, Tom Boccuto, Richard Cardona, Etienne Jacquot

As researchers and technical staff from the Annenberg School of Communication, we are interested in how theories and methods from Communication, which have been developed primarily in terms of human to (an)other human(s), can be applied to the development of LLM-based systems. Moving beyond the dominant chat paradigm which has a single user request-response cycle, we discuss a project under development to integrate LLMs into multi human user chatrooms. In such a communicative context it is inappropriate for the LLM to respond at every turn and requires an understanding of how groups or two or more speakers collaborate and follow the rules and norms of conversation. We demonstrate a prototype designed for group collaboration in developing health behavior messages with the assistance and collaboration of an LLM. We will also briefly discuss some of the broader implications we see for building other systems with LLMs.

Room 114 or Zoom Link

Building Websites in 2025: Lessons from the ISC Site Refresh

Register

Speakers: Rick Ward, Kara Gaulrapp, Kevin Schueller

ISC's Web Hosting Team will present an inside look at their process for building the new ISC web site. Topics covered will include selecting and working with a design vendor, the process of translating design deliverables to functional web components, and the challenges of content migration in a team with a large number of contributors.

Room 203 or Zoom Link

Securing your macOS Environment: Using MDM and Security Compliance Project (mSCP) to achieve CIS Level 1

Register

Speakers: Brian Kravitz, Paul Doherty

Hear how SAS Computing has leveraged Jamf and the Security Compliance Project to take their 1000+ install base to CIS Level 1 in 4 months, giving them parity with their Windows machines, which use Microsoft Security Baselines.

Room 213 or Zoom Link

Attribute-Based Access Control for Automatic People Selection in Grouper; ISC’s Current Posture on ABAC

Register

Speaker: Chris Hyzer

Penn’s Identity & Access Management (IAM) team will discuss ISC’s plan for Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). ABAC is a way to simplify population selection using Grouper, delegate the management and troubleshooting, and have real-time updates for complicated policies. This session will present how ABAC works, the data dictionary, security, creating/adjusting policies, troubleshooting data, and provisioning the data for your application.

Room 218 or Zoom Link

KEYNOTE (1:30 - 2:30)

The Evolution of the Universe

Register

Speaker: Masao Sako

Photo of Masao Sako

Bio:

Masao Sako is the Arifa Hasan Ahmad and Nada Al Shoaibi Presidential Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania and the faculty co-director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CETLI). He is renowned for his innovative teaching methods and has received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching from the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Sako's research focuses on observational cosmology with supernovae to study dark energy. He is involved in large-scale optical surveys like the Dark Energy Survey and the upcoming LSST and Roman Telescope projects. His work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA. Professor Sako has authored over 200 articles in scientific journals.

Topic Description:

The universe is a surprisingly dynamic place. It began in a hot, dense state nearly 14 billion years ago, and it has been evolving ever since. In this talk, we will explore the dynamic history of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets as well as the ultimate fate of the universe. We will trace how tiny fluctuations in the early universe grew into the vast cosmic structures we see today, and how the lives and deaths of stars have synthesized the elements essential to life. We will look at how astronomers use telescopes to uncover how the universe came to be and its deepest mysteries.

Ann L. Roy Auditorium (accessible via Lobby (L) and Mezzanine (M) levels) or Zoom Link

Session 4 (3:00 - 3:50)

Scaling Support with LLMs: How “Jean” is Transforming the Online Student Experience

Register

Speakers: Drew Hopkins, Edward Tao, Diane Hoffstetter, Alex Savoth

As online programs grow, so does the demand for scalable, high-quality student support. In this talk, we’ll share the story of Jean, our custom-built, student-facing chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o and deployed through Azure’s AI Foundry. Jean currently supports eleven master’s-level courses at Penn Engineering Online.
We’ll walk through the full development lifecycle, from ideation to deployment, including how we’ve collaborated closely with TAs and faculty to fine-tune Jean’s role in the learning experience. You’ll learn how we’ve integrated Jean into the learning environment via Ed Discussion, and how this thoughtful approach to AI augmentation is improving student support, streamlining Q&A, and helping teaching teams quickly surface relevant materials.

Room 114 or Zoom Link

Who Needs Enterprise GPT? Deploying Open-WebUI with Pennkey SSO

Register

Speaker: Etienne Jacquot

In this presentation, I will share insights gained over the past year from providing an alternative to UPenn's Enterprise GPT options using the Open Source Project Open-WebUI. The discussion will cover the configuration and deployment of Open-WebUI both on-premises and on AWS, focusing on how it supports AI model chat bots for local communities.

Room 203 or Zoom Link

Understanding Ransomware and CrowdStrike

Register

Speaker: Doug Cawley

This session will cover the basics of ransomware, a type of malicious software that encrypts data and demands a ransom for its release. We will also introduce CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity company known for its advanced threat detection and response capabilities.
The highlight of the talk will be a detailed timeline of a ransomware attack at the University of Pennsylvania, which was successfully interrupted and prevented mid-attack thanks to CrowdStrike's proactive measures.
Additionally, we will discuss the financial impact of ransomware, the cost-effectiveness of investing in CrowdStrike, and address concerns about the privacy implications of monitoring user activity.

Room 213 or Zoom Link

Welcome Aboard: Navigating the GSE Onboarding Journey with FreshService

Register

Speaker: Linda A

GSE-IT has partnered with the HR team to redesign the employee onboarding process. We have used the Employee Onboarding module in Freshservice for three years. In this presentation, I will share the workflow and configurations we made in Freshserivce and discuss the benefits and lessons we have learned from stakeholders and users.

Room 218 or Zoom Link

 

Bonus Features

Smartsheet Reps, 9am - 4pm, Room 116

This year we are excited to have Smartsheet representatives join us for the full day. Their specific schedule is still TBD; there will be presentations and time for staff to come talk to them about their specific Smartsheet use cases. Reps will be in room 116 all day.

Focused Lunch Rooms, 12pm - 1:30pm

We are excited to announce lunchtime gathering spots. These are unstaffed rooms where participants can gather with others with interest or experience around certain topics:

  • Room 114: Support providers
  • Room 116: Smartsheet
  • Room 118: Instructional technology
  • Room 203: Networking
  • Room 213: AI
  • Room 218: Information security & systems administration

Venue Information

Getting to Fagin Hall

Accessibility

Elevator Information:

A floor level must be selected on the elevator touchpad before the elevator will open. The floor guide for this event is:

  • L (Lobby) - For food and auditorium access
  • M (Mezzanine) - For additional seating and auditorium access
  • 1, Front - For classrooms in the 100s range
  • 2 - For classrooms in the 200s range
  • 3 - For universal restrooms
  • 4U - For universal restrooms and lactation room (Please contact us via the IT Staff Convention email if you need use of the Lactation Room so we can facilitate that with the space.)
  • 4L - For universal restrooms

Additional Questions:

Please reach out to the IT Staff Convention email with any accessibility needs, questions, or concerns.