On the weekend of Sept. 21, Fairfield’s Information Technology Services launched Terminal Four Platform ontowww.fairfield.edu, causing students to lose connectivity with important websites.
Although the downtime was expected by ITS and publicized through email, not all were prepared for it.
The downtime began around noon on Sept. 21, with the Terminal Four System displaying outdated information. Instead of the current My.Fairfield link, the old student portal “StagWeb” was shown with outdated headlines.
“If someone had used a bookmark tomy.fairfield.edu or simply entered that into their browser it worked throughout,” said Fairfield’s Chief Information Officer Paige Francis.
Because many students access their My.Fairfield and blackboard account through thefairfield.edu address, they were not able to successfully connect during downtime.
Freshman Katherine Dalton was one of the students who found the situation difficult.
“I couldn’t get onto My.Fairfield to access my Blackboard account to do my homework,” said Dalton.
During the downtime, Dalton and many other students were thrown off and unsure about how to proceed.
However, according to Francis, “the transition was scheduled and communicated to students, faculty and staff. We also supplied contact information to communicate any lingering issues.”
With this new update, ITS expects minor issues and broken areas in the first weeks of operation. However, the team is prepared and ready to help repair any issues.
Some students such as Jessica Bouche ‘17 were concerned with how quickly these issues will be resolved.
“I really hope all the issues are worked out soon because it is confusing and hard to plan things when downtime is constantly occurring,” said Bouche.
The transition to the Terminal Four Platform has been in development for over a year now, with the students in mind. It has benefits over Fairfield’s old web system, such as mobile capability, audit trail, content access control, user rights and integration with other systems, and better performance, according to ITS.
While students might find the Terminal Four Platform new to their online experience here at Fairfield, as of Sept. 30 students, along with faculty and staff, experienced a shift to new wireless networks.
In an email to the student body, ITS told students, “As announced earlier this summer and approved through the ATC, your network team is providing a more secure wireless network for faculty, staff and students.”
Francis explained the shift to the new secure networks as an answer to students’ requests.
“More bandwidth and improved wireless seems to be a steady request from Fairfield University students via a variety of channels,” said Francis.
Francis added that “direct messages from Fairfield Turkeys” aided the progression to the new secure networks.
ITS explained that while these are the newest additions to Fairfield’s internet services, work is done every day to provide “a more secure working environment for faculty, students and staff.”
As a tip for students and teachers for the future, Francis said, “Keep an eye out for communications coming with a subject line of ‘Technology Announcement’ and know that, when there is downtime, we will get everything back running smoothly as soon as possible. Also, always feel free to let us know the minute you experience anything odd technology performance-wise.”
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