Messina College Move-in Support and Laptop Deployments
On Sunday, July 6, 2025, ITS welcomed over 100 new Messina College students, deploying and configuring their laptops to ensure they were ready for their academic journey from day one. In addition, to help ensure a smooth tech transition, ITS provided extra support staff during the first few days of Messina classes.
High Performance Computing Cluster Upgrades
In June 2025, ITS completed a substantial upgrade to the University’s High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, which is used by approximately 400 members of the BC community. This upgrade allows investigators to perform simulations that were not practical before due to long processing times. In some benchmarking examples, after the upgrade, computational times were improved by a factor of 10. The two-year effort included a file system upgrade, adding backup capacity, doubling the Graphical Processing Units (GPU) resources, and adding new high RAM CPU nodes. This project benefited from the advice of many faculty, including the Research Computing Committee. Learn more about ITS Research Services.
BC Talks AI Conference
ITS assisted with planning BC Talks AI: Innovate with Integrity, a conference held on-campus May 14, 2025. This faculty and staff event provided a collaborative space to explore GenAI through workshops and talks ranging from introductory to advanced levels. Sponsored by Information Technology Services and the Office of the Provost, the event emphasized responsible innovation rooted in Jesuit values. A new collaborative GenAI website was also launched in spring 2025, and features training resources, prompting tips, and information about BC-licensed AI tools. Learn about AI at BC.
BCPost Listserv Retirement
As of April 14, 2025, BCPost Listserv email service was retired, and all active mailing lists are now in Google Groups. Active BCPost lists were automatically moved to Google Groups, and new email addresses were assigned. Users can now email entire groups, manage memberships, and organize conversations more easily. This transition supports a more streamlined and user-friendly experience for departments, project teams, and student groups across the University. Learn more about Google Groups at BC.
Annual Disaster Recovery Exercise
ITS continues to strengthen its resilience through a mature, hybrid Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy that has evolved significantly over the past decade. The DR plan was fully tested from offsite April 7-11, 2025 during the annual Disaster Recovery Exercise. The DR plan now includes cloud-based environments, automated failovers, and remote recovery site methodologies. This robust infrastructure enables ITS to restore critical systems within 48 hours of a declared emergency.
Mainframe Retirement
As of January 3, 2025, ITS officially retired all mainframe (UIS) applications. For over 45 years, the mainframe supported critical operations, including transactions, jobs, and batch processes. This transition was part of a broader modernization initiative aimed at reducing reliance on legacy systems. Replacement services for these retired applications are now available through the Agora Portal and EagleApps. Leading up to this milestone, the ITS team worked closely with stakeholders from Production Services, Human Resources, and Student Services to ensure that all functionality was either successfully replicated in newer platforms, or retired.
EagleSpace Upgrade
In January 2025, after collaboration and testing with Facilities and Space Planning, EagleSpace was upgraded, and is now accessible via Single Sign On (SSO). EagleSpace (Archibus Web Central) provides BC faculty and staff space-related data and reports based on buildings, GIS, CAD drawings, and employee office locations. Learn more about EagleSpace.
EagleApps
EagleApps is a program sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Information Technology Services. This multi-year, multi-project effort will result in a next generation suite of flexible applications that will enhance the experience of current and future students, faculty, and administrators. Learn more about the development of EagleApps.
Email Scam Protection Implemented
Boston College ITS has implemented a new email filtering service to better protect students, faculty, and staff from malicious emails such as phishing scams and malware. Integrated with BC Gmail, the system uses AI to detect and remove threats automatically. Most suspicious emails are sent to Spam, while more serious threats go directly to Trash. Learn more about this additional security service.