Wilkes University has recently encountered several power outages and network challenges on campus. There have been numerous e-mails from the ITS dpeartment stating that there is a power outage in one building and Internet failure in another. While Wilkes hoped to start the academic year off strong in the IT department, the recent flooding has impeded this goal.
Wilkes faces a situation that involves students, faculty and professors, as they all rely on Wilkes’ Internet and web portals each day. This lack of power causes frustration among those who depend on using the computers. This seems to be an ongoing issue and many are wondering: What is the reason for these technical difficulties?
Gloria Barlow, chief of Information Technology Services, sent out numerous e-mails to the campus, notifying the community that  the ITS department is “aware of the issues at hand and are working hard to fix each issue.”
The recent flooding and evacuation has impacted Wilkes’ ITS department. Within the past month, the campus has experienced interruption in telephone service caused by regional circuit failures with our telephone provider during Hurricane Irene. A quick shut down of Wilkes’ systems  also occurred in the face of a flooding threat caused  byTropical Storm Lee and hardware failures occured and network systems were forced to be restarted.
“Restoring our network following the storms and hardware failure provide us with the opportunity to repair some of these past technical challenges and will allow for better reliability and sufficient use in our systems and campus infrastructure,” Barlow said.
Since the entire campus constantly connects to the Internet to access e-mail, contacts, photos, videos, coursework and other services at Wilkes, the interruptions that occur are not favorable.
“Wilkes’ system is complex and all information and resources are stored on servers, computers and equipment throughout campus buildings and other locations,” Barlow said. “However, no data has been lost on the University’s academic or administrative buildings.”
Dr. Paul Adams, vice president of Student Affairs said that it is a community effort to restory Wilkes’ networks to its full capacity.
“Despite the many hardships our campus has recently been dealing with, working together with the campus community, vendors and service providers, additional network enhancements are being planned for quicker service continuity, easier access, and improved dependability as efficiently as possible,” he said.
Technicians, contractors and service providers are making the necessary repairs and adjustments to each of these networks and systems.
“We are making progress, but we are working carefully and incrementally since networks and systems have interdependent components,” Barlow said.
While progress is being made to alleviate the issues at hand, Dr. Adams is confident Wilkes will work through it.
“Please know that we understand and share your frustrations with these outages,” he said. “We are committed to a satisfactory outcome for the short and long term.”
The ITS department will send out e-mails if any other issues arise.