GW IT Year in Review Clone
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 we reflect on the past fiscal year, we’ve measured our progress against a guiding question:
Have we made work at GW simpler, more secure, and easier to navigate?
The investments we made over the last twelve months were designed with a clear purpose: to strengthen the technology foundation that empowers the GW community to teach, learn, and research with less friction. By migrating to the cloud, enhancing our security posture with role-based access control, and modernizing the Banner ecosystem, we have replaced barriers with a more reliable and intuitive environment. These aren’t just technical milestones, they represent a fundamental shift in how our community experiences technology, minimizing disruptions and clearing the path for the important work you do every day.
These investments are now driving practical improvements in how our community connects and collaborates. Through meaningful partnerships across campus, we have begun to streamline workflows, connect systems, and apply targeted automation, including AI, to reduce manual effort and sharpen accuracy. The digital experience at GW is becoming more seamless, ensuring that our technology supports, rather than interrupts, the complex, thoughtful work of our faculty, staff, and students.
With these essential pieces in place, we are now turning our energy toward extending services that enable innovation. Our focus is shifting toward simplifying and aligning core digital experiences to create more flexible, consistent environments. This includes evolving our learning spaces, modernizing how instructional content is delivered, and unifying our communication tools. For our researchers, we are expanding access to high-performance computing, providing the tools necessary to tackle complex, data-intensive projects.
This is our moment to build on this momentum—refining, scaling, and innovating in ways that make a real difference. Realizing this potential depends on our continued collaboration. We invite you to partner with us as we expand these new capabilities to generate insights and adapt to our university’s evolving needs. Together, we can unlock new possibilities, accelerate progress, and ensure that GW remains an environment where great ideas and the people behind them can truly thrive.
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 modernizingthe 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.
Helping the Registrar Plan 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.
Supporting 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
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."
— 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+
B1,865 user lines and 482 classroom phones successfully transitioned to Zoom Phone.
43%
Reduced the hardware by more than 2,300 devices, lowering maintenance needs and 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 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."
— SMHS Faculty
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.”
— SON Faculty
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
Supporting Future Healthcare Professionals
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
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!)
16,300+ 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
- Student Center — 73,304
- Academic Center — 72,764 3.
- 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
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
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!)
16,300+ 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
- Student Center — 73,304
- Academic Center — 72,764 3.
- Gelman Library — 67,674
- 2000 Penn — 59,597
- Ross Hall — 54,787