GW IT Year in Review
GW IT Year in Review
FY 2026
Our Mission
GW IT is a trusted partner, enabling the delivery of world-class education, research, and clinical care by providing an efficient, scalable, and secure digital experience to GW faculty, students, and staff.
A Letter from Anna Vakulick
Interim Vice Provost for
Information Technology
As I reflect on the past academic year, I keep coming back to a simple question:
Are we making it easier for the GW community to teach, learn, research, and work?
At its best, technology should fade into the background. The investments we made over the last twelve months were driven by a clear purpose: strengthening the technology foundation that enables the GW community to teach, learn, research, and work with less friction. By migrating to the cloud, enhancing our security posture, expanding our data capabilities, improving access to research technologies, and modernizing the Banner ecosystem, we are building a solid digital environment. These are not simply technical milestones. They represent meaningful progress toward reducing barriers and creating experiences that allow our community to focus on what matters most.
At the same time, we know our work is far from complete. While we have reduced friction in many areas, members of our community still encounter processes that feel too complex, systems that do not connect as seamlessly as they should, and tasks that require more effort than necessary. We hear that feedback, and we agree. Technology should make work easier, not harder, and we remain committed to working with our campus partners to address the challenges that continue to impact our constituents.
The foundational investments highlighted in this report are creating the conditions for the next phase of our journey. The priorities outlined in Raising Higher: OneGW's Path to Preeminence challenge us to move beyond modernizing technology and toward enabling the innovation, agility, and transformation that will shape GW's future. Our roadmap includes evolving learning spaces, strengthening our cybersecurity capabilities, expanding the use of AI, advancing business intelligence to support better decision-making, and growing our research technology portfolio to meet the ambitions of GW's research community.
Just as important as the technology itself are the partnerships behind it. The progress reflected in this report belongs as much to the faculty, students, staff, and researchers who worked alongside us as it does to GW IT. Their expertise, collaboration, patience, and willingness to embrace change made these achievements possible. Together, we can unlock new possibilities, accelerate progress, and ensure that GW remains a place where great ideas and the people behind them can thrive.
Thank you for your partnership, your trust, and your continued collaboration.
Building Capabilities for OneGW
The best technology experiences are often invisible. Students register for classes without interruption. Researchers access equipment and funding information when they need it. Advisors have timely insight to support students. Staff spend less time on manual processes and more time serving the university community.
Over the past year, GW IT focused on strengthening the foundational systems that power these experiences. Through major initiatives in cloud infrastructure, enterprise systems modernization, and data platforms, we are creating a more resilient, scalable, and intelligent technology environment for the university.
These efforts are laying the groundwork for the next phase of transformation: using automation, analytics, and AI to make university services simpler, faster, and more personalized.
FY26 Highlights
Banner Modernization
An important step in strengthening GW’s digital foundation is the Banner Modernization Initiative, which is transitioning GW’s Human Resources Information System (HRIS) and Student Information System (SIS) to Banner Software as a Service (SaaS). This multi-year transformation is modernizing the systems that support the student, faculty, and employee experience while reducing reliance on custom infrastructure and positioning GW to adopt new capabilities more quickly in the future.
By moving to a cloud-based platform, the university is creating a more secure, scalable, and resilient foundation for services that support student enrollment, academic records, human resources, payroll, and other essential university operations.
Supporting Registrar Planning for Student Demand
As part of this modernization effort, GW deployed Coursedog Course Demand Projection analytics, giving the Registrar’s Office new insight into student enrollment patterns and course demand.
Rather than relying primarily on historical trends and manual analysis, the Registrar’s Office can now use predictive analytics to make more informed decisions about course offerings, scheduling, and classroom utilization. The result is better planning that helps students gain access to the courses they need.
Enhancing Research Operations
GW IT partnered with the Office of the Vice Provost for Research to implement iLab, a web-based platform supporting equipment scheduling, service requests, billing, and funding management across multiple research facilities.
Researchers can now identify funding sources during reservations and service requests, while administrative teams benefit from automated workflows and significantly reduced manual effort.
Processes that once required weeks of manual spreadsheet updates, approvals, and billing reconciliation have been reduced to automated workflows completed in minutes.
70%
Efficiency Gain
Making Compliance Easier
The Grants and Contracts Accounting Services team relies on accurate documentation to support federal payment requests. Working closely with GCAS, GW IT developed solutions that centralized data collection, improved consistency, reduced invoice rejections, and strengthened compliance.
A second phase introduced AI-assisted invoice consolidation, reducing processing effort by more than 70% while improving stewardship of sponsored research funds.
Transforming Academic Technology, Collaboration & Communication
Whether teaching a class, attending a meeting, hosting an event, or working remotely, the GWcommunity expects technology to be simple, reliable, and available wherever work happens. Through our multi-year investment in Zoom as a unified platform for communication, collaboration, and learning, we are creating a more consistent experience across classrooms, meeting spaces, and devices. Replacing aging technology with standardized, one-touch solutions makes joining a class or meeting as simple as a single click, allowing faculty, staff, and students to focus on connecting, collaborating, and engaging rather than managing technology.
FY26 Highlights
71 academic classrooms refreshed
Creating More Flexible Learning & Event Spaces
Working in partnership with GW Law, we modernized technology in four key classrooms and event spaces to better support today’s hybrid teaching and engagement needs. By creating a pilot environment and testing solutions alongside faculty and instructional technology staff before deployment, we ensured the new spaces aligned with real teaching and operational requirements.
The result is a more reliable and flexible experience for instructors, students, and event organizers, with technology designed to support seamless in-person and hybrid learning today while adapting to future needs.
“With the creation of the new Media Network and the leveraging of AV-over-IP technologies, the newly renovated LawSchool spaces are equipped to provide the flexible, reliable, and scalable technology infrastructure needed to support the Law School’s current and future room technology requirements.”
— Instructional Technology, GW Law
Enabling Hybrid Learning
GW IT partnered with Libraries & Academic Innovation (LAI) to modernize one of Gelman Library’s most-utilized teaching and meeting spaces. By implementing GW’s Zoom Room standard and providing training and support, the team helped create a more reliable and intuitive environment for classes, meetings, and hybrid collaboration.
he refreshed space now supports seamless classes and meetings while aligning with the growing number of Zoom-enabled rooms across campus.
"...GW Classroom Support stepped up as true partners. Recognizing the urgency, they fast-tracked a technology overhaul to install a new Zoom Room. From deep troubleshooting to staff training and proactive follow-up, their sustained effort was exceptional."
— Student Success & Scholarly Technology, Libraries and Academic Innovation (LAI)
Staying Connected from Anywhere
We are modernizing university communication to be more flexible and reliable for your daily work. By transitioning to Zoom Phone, we are moving away from traditional, desk-bound hardware to a cloud-based solution that allows you to take your university office line with you. This shift ensures you stay connected whether you are at your desk, on the go, or working remotely, providing a consistent experience across all your devices.
2300+
Phones successfully transitioned to Zoom Phone.
(1865 user lines and 482 classroom)
43%
The effort reduced the university’s deployment of physical phones by 43%, simplifying support operations while reducing electronic waste.
Together, these initiatives are creating a more connected and consistent digital experience across GW. By bringing classroom technology, collaboration spaces, instructional video, and university communications into a unified ecosystem, we are making it easier for faculty, staff, and students to teach, learn, meet, and work from anywhere. The result is less time spent navigating technology and more time focused on collaboration, engagement, and the work that matters most.
Building a Trusted Data Foundation for Smarter Decisions
With the GW Data Lake, departments across the university now have faster access to trusted information, self-service analytics, and reporting tools that support better decision-making. One of the most impactful examples this year focused on student success.
FY26 Highlights
631 business intelligence reports in production: Providing leaders and departments with timely insights to support planning, operations, and student success initiatives.
55 new reports delivered in FY26: Increasing access to actionable information across the university while reducing reliance on manual reporting.
17 data sources unified into a central Data Lake: Bringing information together from across the university to support more informed decisions and a more connected campus experience.
Creating a Smoother Academic Journey
In partnership with the Student Success team, GW IT developed a Financial Health Metrics Dashboard that helps advisors identify students facing financial aid requirements, registration holds, or other barriers that could disrupt academic progress.
By replacing manual data collection with real-time visibility, the dashboard enables proactive outreach and intervention across all undergraduate cohorts.
Previously, this level of tracking was only available for first-year students.
"...“Prior to this dashboard, we were only able to track these financial health metrics for first-year students. The BI Team’s report has expanded that capability to all student cohorts, which has been a tremendous improvement and significantly strengthened our outreach efforts!"
— Student Success, Academic Leadership
Supporting Important Student Milestones
The same data foundation also improved the commencement experience. By creating a centralized, trusted source of graduation data, GW IT partnered with University Events to streamline validation processes across schools and programs. By centralizing disparate records from across the university into a single, validated dataset, we reduced the silos that previously risked registration delays or errors in registering for events. This foundation now ensures accurate, timely information for Tassel, allowing students to focus on celebrating their academic achievements with a smooth and stress-free registration experience.
8,164 GW Graduates Supported
Empowering University Advancement Through Automation
FROM 4 HOURS TO MINUTES
Automated contact report processing
In partnership with University Advancement, we created a user-friendly tool that allows staff to submit contact reports more efficiently. An integrated AI assistant helps review submissions for accuracy, improving data quality while reducing manual effort. Previously, entering 100 contact reports was a manual, four-hour process that created significant administrative overhead. By automating this workflow, large volumes of data can be processed automatically, ensuring greater consistency and fewer errors. This streamlines data management, allowing staff to spend less time on routine entry and more time focused on building meaningful relationships that support the university's mission.
Ai in Action
As foundational modernization work continues, GW is beginning to realize the benefits through practical applications of artificial intelligence that improve learning, service delivery, and operational efficiency.
Supporting Future Healthcare Professionals
Faculty in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences partnered with GW IT to create AI-powered patient role-playing agents that help students practice difficult conversations involving serious medical diagnoses and end-of-life care.
Because opportunities to practice these conversations are often limited, the AI agents provide students with additional, realistic learning experiences between classroom instruction and simulated patient encounters.
“Over 90% of students felt that the curriculum improved their ability to discuss serious medical news and goals of care with patients, and over 80% felt that the AI agent responses felt emotionally authentic and that the feedback provided by the AI tool was actionable."
— Faculty member, GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS)
The School of Nursing launched a similar initiative using AI role-playing agents focused on therapeutic communication, patient education, and clinical decision-making. The project also supports ongoing academic research into AI-enhanced learning experiences.
“The project also supported an IRB-approved research study examining the effectiveness of AI-based simulation experiences. Student feedback was collected through surveys, and the findings will be presented at an upcoming professional conference. This collaboration demonstrates how AI can enhance nursing education by creating engaging, scalable, and evidence-based learning experiences that better prepare students for real-world patient interactions.”
— Faculty Member, GW School of Nursing (SoN)
Improving Student Services
The Division for Student Affairs is launching a new AI-powered web assistant to help students and families quickly find answers across university websites.
“The Division for Student Affairs is excited to launch a new AI chat feature on our primary website in July. Our goal is to minimize the volume of calls and emails to our teams with questions that have answers readily available across our multiple DSA-owned sites. We are starting with a “parent” agent on our main site and one “child” agent on our secondary health center website. Users on our parent site will get a smooth handoff to the child agent for any topic-relevant questions. Long term we hope to have child agents on all our secondary sites working together for increased user experience, and to significantly reduce, if not totally eliminate, spending on similar third-party services.”
— Division of Student Affairs
Expanding Efficiency & Accuracy in GW Invoice Management
GW IT partnered with Financial Shared Services to modernize invoice management and reduce administrative burden across a high-volume business process. By introducing AI-enabled document processing and workflow automation, the team helped streamline how invoices are reviewed, organized, and routed for approval.
The result is a faster, more efficient process that improves accuracy, reduces manual effort, and allows staff to focus on higher-value work. To date, more than 10,000 invoices across 200+ vendors have been processed through the new solution, helping accelerate approvals and strengthen operational efficiency across the university.
Modernizing Financial Compliance Through AI
A partnership between the Controller’s Office and GW IT transformed a complex regulatory reporting process by integrating AI into the workflow. Tasks that once required extensive manual effort are now automated, from identifying key information and validating records to organizing reporting materials. The result is faster, more accurate reporting that helps ensure compliance with federal requirements while enabling financial staff to focus on analysis, decision-making, and strategic financial stewardship.
Accelerating Technology Delivery
As part of the Banner SaaS migration, GW developers partnered with AWS and Ellucian to implement an AI-assisted development workflow that dramatically accelerates the conversion of legacy integrations.
A migration task previously estimated at 60 hours was completed in 4 hours. This approach has attracted industry attention, including a feature in the AWS technical blog and EDUCAUSE podcast highlighting GW’s innovative use of agentic AI to modernize enterprise systems.
93%
reduction in development time
Looking Ahead
The cloud, data, and enterprise modernization efforts underway today are creating the foundation for tomorrow’s digital campus. As these investments mature, GW will continue focusing on the experiences that matter most: helping students succeed, enabling discovery and research, supporting employees, and making technology simpler, more intuitive, and more impactful for the entire university community.
Accelerating Research & Discovery
Groundbreaking research increasingly depends on powerful computing, secure data storage, and specialized technology environments. From artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing to biomedical research and data-intensive science, GW researchers rely on the computing power, storage, and expertise Research Technology Services (RTS) provides to move ideas from concept to discovery.
In FY26, RTS continued to expand and modernize the university’s research computing ecosystem, supporting faculty, researchers, and students through high-performance computing resources, cloud-based research environments, advanced networking, and research data storage.
A major milestone was the modernization of the Pegasus High Performance Computing (HPC) environment. By redesigning how computing resources are allocated, RTS dramatically reduced wait times for researchers running computational jobs. Tasks that previously waited hours to begin can now start in minutes, enabling researchers to spend less time waiting for resources and more time advancing their work.
Research Impact
Faster Access to Pegasus HPC Resources
277 min <3 min
CPU-based research jobs
(Median wait-time reduction)
81 min <3 min
GPU-based research jobs
(Median wait-time reduction)
204 Active researchers used advanced computing resources
84 Research groups supported
1.29 Million computing jobs executed, helping researchers analyze data, run models, and test new ideas
44.8 Million Hours of computing power delivered
Researchers from CCAS, SEAS, SMHS, GWSPH, GSEHD, SON, and GWSB rely on Pegasus to support work ranging from artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing to biomedical and public health research.
“I just recently received a research grant from DOE and we will continue to pursue this work and benefit from the technical support of Research Technology Services. Their dedication is incredible, and I appreciate all the members of the team very much.”
— GW Faculty Researcher
Beyond Campus Boundaries
This year, GW expanded its research capabilities by:
- Enabling researchers to extend compute workloads into AWS cloud environments
- Contributing CAAREN computational resources to OSPool, Open Science Grid's national pool of shared research computing capacity — the first nationally to run IPv6-only
- Upgrading critical network infrastructure supporting research computing
- Deploying Grace Hopper superchip GPU nodes in Pegasus, accelerating a growing range of research, from AI modeling and genomics and biomedical pipelines to computational art, giving GW researchers access to some of the most advanced computing architecture available today
As GW's research ambitions grow, RTS is scaling to meet them. GW's ongoing investments in strategic on-premise infrastructure power its research today, while extending computing power into the cloud and across the national research network.
Connectivity Becomes a Catalyst for Learning
Whether a student joins a Zoom class, submits an assignment, accesses research data, connects to Wi-Fi in a residence hall, or collaborates with peers in the library, the university network makes that experience possible.
This year, that foundation became a catalyst for innovation in the classroom. When the School of Engineering and Applied Science needed connectivity for dozens of student devices, standard network configurations could not fully support the specialized learning environment. Working directly with faculty, GW IT designed an Internet of Things (IoT) network solution that eliminated connectivity challenges while maintaining university security standards.
The result was a more seamless experience for students and faculty, allowing them to focus on experimentation, collaboration, and problem-solving rather than technical limitations.
The same network that supported this classroom experience is also the infrastructure behind thousands of daily interactions across GW.
FY26 by the Numbers
189,000+ UNIQUE DEVICES
Connected to GW networks
(This includes laptops, phones, tablets, and gaming consoles to research equipment, classroom technologies and more!)
6,300+ WIRELESS ACCESS POINTS
supporting teaching, learning, research, and campus life
61+ Million Gigabytes
of Data transferred across GW’s wired and wireless networks
If you assume an average book size of 20 MB, converting 61 million gigabytes gives you 3.05 billion books. That’s roughly 1,500 times the size of GW’s Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library collection
Where Students & Faculty Connect Most
(Top Locations by Unique Users)
- Student Center — 73,304
- Academic Center — 72,7643
- Gelman Library — 67,674
- 2000 Penn — 59,597
- Ross Hall — 54,787
Safeguarding the GW Digital Experience
Strengthening Our Digital Resilience
Cybersecurity is most effective when it enables students, faculty, and staff to learn, teach, research, and work with confidence. In FY26, GW IT strengthened security through threat monitoring, modern security technologies, and expanded community education programs that help users recognize and respond to evolving cyber risks.
The GW community is playing an increasingly important role in protecting university systems and data. Through awareness campaigns, workshops, and personalized learning opportunities, faculty, staff, and students are becoming active partners in identifying and reporting potential threats.
2,222
Suspicious emails reported by users
65 cybersecurity awareness events reaching 536 community members
1,085
Unique attack campaigns investigated
Supporting OneGW
The OneGW Strategic Framework calls on the university to strengthen student success, expand its research enterprise, and build a foundation for institutional excellence. Behind each of these priorities are real interactions that help students learn, faculty teach and conduct research, and staff support university operations.
Whether helping a student access course materials, supporting a researcher with technology resources, assisting faculty before class, or guiding staff through a system transition, GW IT helps ensure technology doesn’t stand in the way of progress.
FY26 Highlights
76,623 Technology support requests submitted
9.25 / 10 Customer satisfaction rating: Based on nearly 2,000 survey responses.
37,499 Remote support sessions delivered: Bringing assistance directly to users wherever they work or learn.
286,000+ Knowledge base article views: Helping community members find answers on their own schedule.
1,885 In-Person Classroom
Support Visits
Did you Know?
286,000 knowledge article views equal nearly 800 self-service answers every day, allowing students, faculty, and staff to solve problems without waiting for assistance.
Supporting Community Health and Wellness
When GW launched the Cancer Prevention and Wellness Center in The District, GW IT partnered with center leadership to design and deploy the technology needed to support daily operations, staff collaboration, educational programming, and community engagement. From staff devices and shared workstations to public kiosk and printing services, the team helped create an environment that enabled the center to begin serving the community.
“The upstart of the GW Cancer Prevention and Wellness Center was significantly enhanced by the responsive support of the IT department...”
—— Assistant Director, Community Outreach, Engagement, and Equity, GW Cancer Center
Simplifying Technology Updates
Due to the end of Windows 10 support, GW IT completed a transition Windows 11 for 6000+ GW-managed devices. Through proactive planning and transparent change management, potential compatibility issues were identified and addressed before they could impact users. Enhanced knowledge resources, clear communications, and dedicated support channels helped users navigate the change with confidence while enabling faster resolution of issues when needed.
What could have been a major technology disruption turned into a seamless transition. It provided the university with a more secure, modern, and sustainable device management foundation. Ultimately, this paved the way for a new annual update process that makes future updates more predictable and allows for greater transparency.
6,000+
GW-managed devices upgraded to Windows 11
Service at the Scale of OneGW
Providing great service means meeting people where they are. During FY26, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and affiliates connected with GW IT through multiple channels, ensuring support was available whenever and however they needed it.
How the Community Reached Us
24,559
Phone interactions
24,547
Email requests
18,857
Web form
5,589
Walk-in visits
The variety of support channels and the ways they are used demonstrate the different preferences and needs of the GW community, reflecting our commitment to providing support that is accessible, flexible, and user-friendly.
Unlocking the Future of OneGW
Raising Higher: OneGW’s Path to Preeminence charts an ambitious course in a rapidly changing higher education landscape. As we look ahead, GW IT is committed to aligning our technology roadmap with the university’s highest aspirations. By serving as an active strategic partner, we will help shape solutions, challenge conventional limits, and ensure technology acts as a true catalyst for institutional excellence.
To build an agile, future-ready digital campus, our focus in the coming year centers on driving key strategic initiatives including:
Partnering on AI & Innovation: AI is being explored across campus, and it presents both opportunities and risks. We will be preparing our data to be AI-ready, which includes data governance and security; establishing sandbox environments for the safe evaluation of emerging technologies; and partnering on how to provide the right tools and training to campus.
Scaling High-Performance Research Infrastructure: The strategic framework outlines the university’s aspiration in the areas of interdisciplinary research and multi-institutional initiatives and becoming a global convener. We will collaborate with our research partners to define the future of High-Performance Computing at GW and build a technology roadmap to support that vision.
Advancing Business Intelligence: Trustworthy data is the foundation of smart decision-making. We will partner across campus to bring disparate data sources together to establish a clear, single source of truth that empowers campus leaders and supports student success.
Modernizing Core Enterprise Systems: Modernizing enterprise systems remains critical to our long-term resilience and reducing enterprise risk. This next year, we will transition to Banner SaaS, elevate our Advancement CRM capabilities, and upgrade our Budget tool in support of the Foundational Excellence Initiative.
The coming years will be defined by strong partnership, continuous innovation, and a shared commitment to building a digital ecosystem where great ideas and the people behind them thrive without friction.