After three years, 2 million lines of converted code and over 140 new servers, the Next Generation Student Information Services (NGSIS) Platform Modernization Project is set to take centre stage this fall to enhance services for staff and students.

The refreshed system will allow 15,000 students to access the system via ACORN simultaneously, versus the current 700. It will also open up the potential for live integration between divisional systems and ROSI, and ensure U of T stays at the forefront of technological innovation.

“This project is set to revitalize the student information system and provide an improved student experience,” says Frank Boshoff, Senior Manager, Technical Solutions and Architecture with EASI. “We had reference architectures, but ultimately we had to decide on the hardware and how to integrate it with existing systems – this project has required a ton of creativity and hard work from a dedicated team.”

The project spans all of U of T’s Information Technology Services and includes Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI), Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS), and Information Security.

While the core team consists of seven staff, with three technical leads, the broader testing team extends to over 30 people.

So far, the team has completed the initial build, system testing, system integration and performance testing. They will be conducting dry run cutovers in late September and October and are planning to go live on November 19.

“We want the transition to the new system to be business as usual,” says Boshoff, who designed the architecture of the new system. “Having said that, all the power users and student system administrators across U of T over the next one to five years will start to realize the potential of the new system.”

Here’s what the technical leads have to say about making such a large-scale project come to life.

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To learn more about the project, visit www.sis.utoronto.ca/ngsis/

More than 900 students and hundreds of research activities and tests have helped to make ACORN and associated applications all that they are today. Now, U of T’s ACORN Student Advisory Team is recruiting new participants to continue to help shape the student experience.

When students join the team, they can expect to attend 45-minute sessions that include activities such as interviews and usability testing. The results will directly inform improvements to projects – from ACORN to applications like the Financial Planning Calculator and GPA Calculator.

“The user-centred design process that we follow is crucial,” says Michael Clark, Manager of User Experience & Process Design with Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI). “Students are part of the formative research, iterative design and post-release community engagement process. When they join our team, they’ll make a difference for their own experiences with U of T’s online services and for other students for years to come.”

Currently, the Advisory Team consists of approximately 150 participants, and organizers are hoping to increase engagement across all three campuses.

“Since starting in 2016, I’ve provided feedback on six applications,” says Melissa Ng, a fifth-year computer science and cognitive science student. “One usability test I did was for the user interface which allows students to find awards, grants and loans in ACORN. The team is really friendly and it’s great to know that my opinion has made an impact on important projects.”

Students like Melissa not only help to improve student life at U of T, but can also add the experience to their Co-Curricular Record, an official record of their co-curricular involvement at U of T. They can also gain practical project experience and build their resumes.

“We want to continue to build a community of students who are interested in improving student services,” says Laura Klamot, “This includes recruiting students from all divisions, years, programs, campuses and also students with accessibility needs.”

In the past, research and testing activities have improved usability, accessibility and have helped U of T to prioritize projects.

“We genuinely want to include students in the process,” says Clark. “Beyond caring about what they have to say, we want to give them a seat at the table to help them determine the strategic direction we plan to take with new initiatives, and to help make existing products and services even better.”

Are you interested in joining the ACORN Student Advisory Team? Sign up to make an impact on the student experience.

Why is ACORN slow on enrolment day? Can I automatically enrol in my courses? Can U of T buy better servers?

These were just some of the questions asked at this year’s University of Toronto Student Union Street Festival (UTSU). Held on September 12, the ACORN team, from Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI), interacted with close to 1,000 students for five hours.

“Our participation in the UTSU Street Fest is important because each year we hear from students about their needs, goals, issues and ideas relating to important initiatives at U of T,” says Michael Clark, Manager of User Experience & Process Design with EASI.

This year, the ACORN team fielded in-person “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) style questions, with representation from EASI’s business analysts, developers, as well as user experience and process designers. This allowed students to inquire about everything from long-term infrastructure improvements to the details of everyday course enrolment.

So, why does ACORN perform more slowly on peak enrolment days?

On these days thousands of students log into the system, but it can only handle 700 concurrent users. The new system, which will go live on November 19, features a new infrastructure and code base and will be able to handle 15,000 concurrent users.

During Street Fest, ACORN staff also recruited students for the ACORN Student Advisory Team for research activities and tests. When students join the team, they can expect to attend 45-minute sessions that will directly inform improvements to ACORN and applications like the Financial Planning Calculator and GPA Calculator.

“We want to continue to build a community of students who are interested in improving student services,” says Laura Klamot, a user experience designer with EASI. “This includes recruiting students from all divisions, years, programs, campuses and also students with accessibility needs.”

In the near future, the student team will test improvements to ACORN’s mobile experience, U of T Map integrations within ACORN, live chat support with registrars and other U of T advisors, and integrating U of T’s Timetable Builder tool within ACORN.

“The input we received this year was consistent with previous research we’ve conducted with students, and will help keep us on course towards realizing improvements to U of T’s online student experience,” says Clark. “As well, it will help inspire future new initiatives, leveraging the latest capabilities that EASI and the Next Generation Student Information Services Program will have to offer.”

From user experience process and design to information management, business analysis and machine learning – the four co-op students who joined Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) this past summer gained a wealth of experience and contributed a wealth of knowledge.

“Not only do our co-op students benefit from their experience with EASI, we also benefit from their skills,” says Cathy Eberts, Executive Director of EASI. “We have a lot of projects on the go and we always look forward to the extra help.”

The program included students from U of T’s iSchool and Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and George Brown College. While it officially ran over the summer, several of the students will continue with EASI over the coming months.

Learn about their wide range of projects and the impact of their experiences.

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Name: Andrew Magnaye
Position: User Experience Designer
Program/School: Second-year Master of Information student at U of T’s iSchool.

As part of the User Experience and Process Design team at EASI, I’ve had the opportunity to wear many different hats. On projects like ACORN and the Course Information System, I’ve worked as a designer, researcher and developer. I’m currently working on a web app that helps students sign up for usability tests and research activities with the UXPD team. This application streamlines a cumbersome process for our participants and makes it much easier for the team to keep track of these participants.

Through collaboration and critiques, I’ve seen the quality of my work grow by leaps and bounds. Being a part of the team has helped me gain a greater sense of creative confidence in everything I do. I’m incredibly grateful for this experience!

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Name: Randy Samsoondar
Position: HRIS Specialist
Program/School: First-year Information Systems Business Analysis, George Brown College

I’ve had a fantastic four months with EASI and have contributed in several capacities. I supported the implementation of Kronos, a time and attendance system, in a number of departments by participating in demonstrations, trainings, configurations and testing.

It has been very interesting to gain a better technical understanding of the human resource information systems used at U of T and to see their role in the various stages of the employee lifecycle. Furthermore, I’ve had the opportunity to observe and apply various project management and business analysis techniques that I learnt during my academics, which will be invaluable experience as I move forward with my career.

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Name: Jessica Viau
Position: Information Management Analyst
Program/School: Second-year Knowledge Management and Information Management, U of T iSchool

I’m currently studying innovative theory and practical solutions for Information Management, Knowledge Management, User Experience Design, and Information Governance. I’m four months into my eight-month co-op position at EASI as an Information Management Analyst and designated SharePoint Online Ambassador.

Currently, I am working with the Document Management Team to facilitate the migration of content from Blackboard, Confluence, and network drives to SharePoint Online. This includes consulting with and providing expertise to IT professionals across U of T’s many departments on the implementation of SharePoint Online. I have had the chance to build portals for the Faculty of Nursing, Office of the Vice-President International, and many more.

The level of guidance and mentorship I have received in this role has been exceptional, and the skills that have I have acquired will provide an excellent primer for continued learning and achievement as I go forward in my career.

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Name: Gilbert Zhu
Position: Machine Learning Engineer
Program/School: Second-year Master of Engineering at MIE, U of T

I made use of some HR data and built a predictive model using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques that can help HR professionals make certain decisions faster. I found that modern techniques like machine learning can really help improve efficiency in business processes. Through this co-op, I have gained experience with a complete data science project life cycle, which made me more confident about my future career in this area. It was a very pleasant and useful experience at EASI!

 

It was a tense day full of careful monitoring, communications and coffee consumption. On August 3, over 35,000 Faculty of Arts & Science students logged in to ACORN during the largest enrolment day for U of T.

The system successfully handled the massive number of logins during the Faculty’s “priority drop” enrolment period. Now, a day that was previously known as “Black Friday,” when the system crashed in 2015 and 2016, has become “Grey Friday”, with more planned improvements to come.

This year’s peak enrolment day became brighter due to the efforts of staff from Information Security, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS), and Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) at Information Technology Services.

Let’s take a look at how the day played out:

Pre-Enrolment Preparation

Laurel Williams preparing for the big day

“Look! There’s a squirrel on my coffee just for ACORN. I was up at 5:30 a.m. and decided to pick up my favourite coffee. It’s such a big day that it’s important to stay fueled,” said Laurel Williams, Information Technology Analyst with EASI. “All of the teams involved are critical to this process. I’ve been working on this project for three to four months and each year we enhance our preparation.”

9 a.m. – First Round of Enrolment

Within the first five seconds of enrolment, 1,000 fourth-year students had logged in.

“I would like to be in the same room as the mainframe to see it smoking!” said Williams.

The mainframe, which looks like a giant, black refrigerator, weighs 1,014 kg and has been working hard since 2012.

In November, the Platform Modernization Project will replace the mainframe with faster and more secure Linux servers and a new code base. It will be able to handle 15,000 simultaneous logins compared to the current 700.

“The new platform will be a lot faster – we’ve removed major bottlenecks in the design and we’re expecting a much better experience next year,” said Frank Boshoff, U of T’s Enterprise Architect.

Twenty minutes after students started enrolling, ACORN was back to normal with near instantaneous login.

“It’s great that we’ve cleared the first round with lots of time to spare. This session was easier to handle because there were fewer students applicable to login, but wait until 11 a.m. – when we have our largest round of enrolment,” said Sarosh Jamal, Project Manager/Analyst with EIS.

Part of the team assembled at 215 Huron Street included Frank Boshoff, Sarosh Jamal, Andre Kalamandeen, Gerry Lindo, Paul Day, Laurel Williams, Titus Hsu, Mike Clark, Miki Harmath and Parani Vinayagamoorthy. 

10 a.m. – Second Round

“Wow, we have 3,390 third-year students logged in already at 10 a.m!” said Williams.

By 10:30 a.m. that wave of students had luckily decreased to 1,695, and fifteen minutes later the system had recovered and was ready once again.

While answering students’ questions on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, Mike Clark, Manager, User Experience & Process Design with EASI, enrolled in his own courses.

“We’ve made more important improvements to ACORN and its underlying infrastructure for this year, and our goal is that the system will perform even better than last year because of those changes,” said Clark. “This day is always a huge load on the system though, so we’ll have to see how things go, especially with ROSI-SWS no longer being around.”

These improvements included optimizing Weblogin to better handle the large volume of login requests, as well as a ‘webload management day’ waiting page where if students tried to log in to ACORN before their scheduled start time, their session would be kept active and prevent Weblogin from having to process repeated login attempts. This further improved the system’s overall performance.

The team also increased the duration and volume of cached registration information in the system to improve performance. And if an individual student made an unusually rapid number  of requests, they would be automatically prompted to prove that they were a human via a “captcha.”

How did these improvements help students?

“Compared to last year, we see that more users are spending a longer time actually logged in the system with fewer logins overall, rather than more time spent attempting to login as in previous years, so that’s a really good sign.” said Jamal. “This year Andre Kalamandeen and the larger developer and test teams helped tune the system so that students enrolled approximately a minute faster.”

Just before the third, and most intense, round of enrolments for second-year students, the team welcomed a surprise visitor.

“I used to have to line up for hours to enrol in classes,” said Bo Wandschneider, U of T’s Chief Information Officer. “Things have really changed since then, and we hope that next year will be even better.”

11 a.m. – Third Round

As expected, the third round of enrolments pushed the system to its limits.

“To prepare for the heaviest loads, we run tests to simulate student logins,” said Williams. “Every time something breaks we try to mitigate the issue.”

The team used live data to monitor the load on the system, as well as its performance

The User Experience & Process Design team was on-hand to assist students, via email and social media support. The team had also produced pre-enrolment information to help set students’ expectations and provide best practices on such a busy day.

Ibraheem Aziz, fourth-year Rotman Commerce student, on U of T’s Instagram giving tips to students on how to use ACORN

“On the morning of, we were online from 8:30am until mid-afternoon responding to urgent student questions, as well as engaging in broader discussions about the overall experience that students had,” said Clark. “This is a critically important day for students and staff. Luckily, we didn’t see any outright crashes this year and came away with an objectively improved system from previous ‘priority drop’ days.”

At 11:26 there were 3,608 active users who needed to clear the system to accommodate the next round at 12 p.m.

“How low can we go? There are a lot of pending enrolments and we have to clear this session before 12 p.m.” said Vik Chadalawada, Senior Manager of Student Information Systems with EASI.

At 11:41 a.m., there were still 2,975 users, but everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the number of active users dropped to 1,688 by 11:53.

12 p.m. – Fourth round

With the nail-biting part of the day over, the fourth round was a breeze.

“Phew! It’s over!” said Williams.

After an intense four hours, the team gathered for a celebratory lunch.

“Way to go everyone! We all worked really hard to make this happen,” said Chadalawada. “We had a plan, we came prepared and it was well executed. We stayed collected as a team throughout the whole process, doing everything we could to mitigate any issues while tackling social media at the same time.  Hopefully the next year will see us evolve from a Grey Friday to a Blue Sky Friday.”

Thank you to everyone on the Grey Friday team, including Client Services Representatives and registrars across the University:
Frank Boshoff
Mike Clark
Paul Day
Zunan Dong
Paul Fardy
Miki Harmath
Matt Hendrickson
Titus Hsu
Sarosh Jamal
Andre Kalamandeen
Gerry Lindo
Jose Parada
Ian Scott
Ted Sikorski
Ken Tsang
Parani Vinayagamoorthy
Matt Wilks
Laurel Williams
Mike Wiseman
Mike Wyers

Feather boas, fantastic pitches and fiery competition – that’s how U of T’s first Data Dragons Competition played out. On July 5, Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI – ITS) and Planning & Budget welcomed over 120 attendees to watch six dragons critique five business intelligence presentations.

For a tense ten minutes the presenters pitched their ideas, and the panel questioned them about each proposal’s University-wide impact, proof of concept and stakeholder involvement.

“This event was a chance for staff and faculty to bring their innovative, data-driven ideas to the forefront – advancing the overall mission of the University,” says Cathy Eberts, Executive Director of EASI. “I want to thank the team for their hard work in pulling off this event, and all of the contestants who were brave enough to face the panel of judges.”

U of T is quickly becoming a leader in business intelligence, which is the process of analyzing and visualizing data to make fact-based decisions. In addition to the competition, staff can tap into the power of business intelligence through the Institutional Data Hub – a rich repository of data relating to teaching, research and service activities.

The event’s proposals ranged from studying how space is used on campus, what programs of study students are pursuing, how to use artificial intelligence to respond to email, and how to measure faculty members’ impact in clinical teaching and course design.

Andrea Armstrong, Senior Policy Advisor at Enrolment Services, won the competition and is now the proud owner of the 3D-printed dragon’s head trophy. Her proposal was to use internal data to evaluate existing University policies for English language proficiency. Her pitch will be sponsored by EASI and Planning & Budget.

“I’ve always wondered about the fact that our English language proficiency is mainly based on external inputs, and I thought that we could use our extensive in-house data to make sure that the requirements we’re using to admit students are the best fit for the institution,” says Armstrong.

The event was hosted by Robert Jordan, Manager of Business Intelligence and organized by Jordan and Michael Green,  Institutional Data Hub Training & Project Specialist.

“It is incredible to see so much interest and engagement in data-driven decision-making, and to hear such innovative ideas from our colleagues about ways to improve our service to faculty, staff, and students,” says Trevor Rodgers, Assistant Vice-President, Planning & Budget. “I’m already looking forward to hearing more of these great ideas next year.”

And contestants are looking forward to next year as well.

“The experience was great. It was a bit nerve wracking to present to such a large audience, but it was exciting to share what I think is a really great idea that would benefit a lot of students as well as a lot of people across the University,” says Armstrong. “It was great to meet the other pitchers, and I encourage others to take part in the future!”

EASI and Planning & Budget would like to thank all Data Dragons participants:

Dragons
Judith Chadwick – Assistant Vice-President, Research Services
Cathy Eberts – Executive Director, Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration
Heather Kelly – Senior Director, Student Success
Richard Levin – Executive Director, Enrolment Services and University Registrar
Susan McCahan – Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education and Vice-President, Academic Programs
Trevor Rodgers – Assistant Vice-President, Planning & Budget

Contestants
Andrea Armstrong – Senior Policy Advisor, Enrolment Services

Anita Chooraman – HR Assistant, Integrated HR, Strategic Initiatives, Division of HR and Equity
Paul Nakonechny – HR Analytics Consultant, Division of HR and Equity

Dr. Kulamakan Kulasegaram – Assistant Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine
Dr. Risa Freeman – Associate Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine and Clinician Educator Researcher, Wilson Centre

Joseph Peter McNamara – Resource Planning and Analysis Officer, University of Toronto Scarborough

Mari Motrich – Manager, Systems and Data Analysis, University of Toronto Scarborough

Is a student registered, enrolled in a particular course and succeeding academically? In the past, academic advisors would have to consult multiple computer systems as well as ROSI, U of T’s official student information database, for any recent changes.

Now a new solution, called web services, provides staff with real-time data to help create a seamless student experience.

The solution, introduced by Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI), provides an instant, secure link to ROSI for specific student information. Currently, U of T divisions rely on large data downloads called batch downloads.

“These batch downloads lead to out-of-date information, a huge duplication of data, and security vulnerabilities – as soon as the download is completed, the data starts becoming stale,” says Frank Boshoff, U of T’s Enterprise Architect. “When divisional applications use web services, they help provide accurate information to students and decrease the number of calls, emails and face-to-face meetings.”

The new approach is based on RESTful services – Representational State Transfer – which is used to build lightweight, maintainable and scalable web services. It allows other authorized systems to access pertinent ROSI data, and authorized systems can update ROSI, potentially saving significant administrator effort.

Batch jobs have to download all records – sometimes thousands – to determine which records have changed. web services works on a record-by-record model and only retrieves necessary records.

While this technology won’t replace batch downloads entirely, it will help when real-time transactions are a priority.

EASI recently introduced web services to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, and plans to roll them out to other divisions in the near future.

“We wanted to more tightly integrate our local systems with the data from ROSI and other local and institutional systems of record to improve the user experience,” says Dan Pettigrew, Director of Administrative Systems and Associate Registrar at the Faculty. “In the past, staff sometimes had to consult ROSI and other systems manually because the downloaded ROSI data they were seeing was potentially out of date. We really needed a holistic, real-time view of the student experience.”

On the front lines, web services are already making an impact.

“This has been a dream of mine – it makes our jobs easier and the student experience so much better,” says Leslie Grife, Assistant Director, First Year Academic Services with the Faculty. “Now the Faculty’s Academic Advising system connects directly to the ROSI database. And soon several of our other online services will as well. We can advise students with accurate data, helping them to make better informed decisions.”

In the future, the team will work with U of T’s Information Security and Enterprise Architecture to add an extra layer of security, called OAuth 2.0.

“It comes down to getting the right data to the right person at the right time with minimal effort from the user,” says Boshoff. “Web services enable real-time access to data, which improves the user experience, reducing annoyances and irritation for students, staff and faculty. Things work better when they are designed to work together.”

It will save U of T instructors and administrators hundreds of hours of work, and is projected to save the University over $280, 000 annually. The new Course Information System (CIS), with core functionality set for completion by the end of 2019, will streamline syllabi and exams processes for instructors and administrators, and help students to make better-informed decisions about their education.

The system, created by Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) in partnership with the Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education, is currently being piloted in three divisions on two campuses.

“In the past, the decentralized process of creating, collecting, reviewing and approving syllabi and exams was paper- and pdf-based,” says Mark Johnston, CIS product manager. “This online system streamlines several disparate processes for instructors and departmental staff, and ensures accuracy and security. Overall, it will free up faculty and staff for more important activities.”

The system is a new product developed by the Next Generation Student Information Services program, which creates technological solutions to provide students, faculty and staff with a supportive educational environment.

It is divided into three modules for instructors to submit syllabi-related materials, pre-exam and final exam details.

When creating syllabi, instructors can immediately see whether they are meeting divisional and University guidelines. They can also select from a list of pre-written, standardized policies and statements, or use them as the basis for personally crafted statements, and the system will help instructors schedule important course milestones around holidays and important University dates.

Instructors can also submit details for their exams, including logistical information, duration and required equipment.

“This system is especially useful for new instructors,” says Johnston. “They might have to submit syllabi and exam details soon after being hired, and just as the term starts, and we’re helping them to quickly navigate the process.”

For final exams, instructors can upload their exam and printing instructions and either submit them for divisional approval or to an approved print location.

The project has been in production for 18 months and has been piloted with the Faculty of Arts & Science, the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the University of Toronto Scarborough.

“Our goal is to make the administration of courses easy for instructors,” says Professor Susan McCahan, Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education, and project co-sponsor. “The information needed to set a final exam or create a syllabus will flow through an integrated system. We anticipate that this will allow instructors to spend less time on logistics.”

Beyond streamlining processes, the system will help local academic administrators collect and analyze data to make evidence-based decisions.

“We want to provide divisions and units with a suite of tools that will help align course-related business practices, and help them to better understand the academic activity within their units’ courses and programs,” says Julian Weinrib, Special Projects Officer with the Office of the Vice-Provost. “We believe this will help spur important conversations locally, and ultimately help students to better understand and curate their academic experience.”

Similar to the process of building the student information system, ACORN, the team began the project with extensive interviews across the three campuses.

“We’re basing our development on a user-centred approach,” says Johnston. “It’s important to research, build, test, launch and then start all over again to ensure we’re developing an intuitive and informative system.”

In the future, the team will continue to build out functionality while onboarding new divisions. New functionality will include a detailed class list with students’ names, year, programs of study and photos. It will also include tools for an instructor to create their course syllabi directly on CIS and a syllabus archive and repository. In addition, the system will streamline over 18,000 accommodated tests per year at the St. George campus, and will link to Quercus, eMarks, ACORN and Degree Explorer.

“The promise of CIS is to build out useful, usable tools for instructors, departments and divisions from a centrally supported platform that integrate well across our three campuses and the complimentary systems surrounding CIS.”

You might have heard about the Data Dragons Competition – an event filled with fun, scorching ideas and opportunities to learn.

Join Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (ITS) and Planning & Budget on July 5 as six staff and faculty pitch their data science and business intelligence ideas to a panel of judges. The winning pitch will become a sponsored project.

U of T is quickly becoming a leader in business intelligence, which is the process of analyzing and visualizing data to make fact-based decisions. In addition to the competition, staff can tap into the power of business intelligence through the Institutional Data Hub – a rich repository of data relating to teaching, research and service activities.

See who will win this 3D printed trophy!

Here’s how some of the competitors are preparing:

Anita Chooraman – HR Assistant, Integrated HR, Strategic Initiatives, Division of HR and Equity
Paul Nakonechny – HR Analytics Consultant, Division of HR and Equity

In preparation, we’re taking time to watch Rocky II to Rocky V because those are the movies where he wins. We’re also studying who’s on the panel, scoping out our competition and practicing our delivery on how our project reflects the needs of the University as a whole. This will be an exciting experience because it’s the first event like this, and we’re ready for whatever will come at us!

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Mari Motrich – Manager, Systems and Data Analysis, University of Toronto Scarborough

This is a really busy time for the registrar’s office because we’re preparing for both fall and winter courses. I’ve been preparing after work and picking my co-workers’ brains during the day. We have a rehearsal at UTSC at a data analytics meeting, and I’m hoping to get some great feedback there. I’m really excited for the event – to receive feedback on my presentation and to hear the other proposals.

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Joseph Peter McNamara – Resource Planning and Analysis Officer, University of Toronto Scarborough

I’ve been preparing by going through dry runs and bouncing ideas off of colleagues. I’ll also be presenting at the same data analytics meeting as Mari – we’re very supportive of each other at UTSC. Overall, I’m going to try to make sure the event is fun, and I get a kick out of answering the tough questions. I like the adrenaline rush and having to think on my feet, and I’ll be sure to have done my homework before facing the fire.