There are several articles this week about the recent Canvas Ransomware event.  For our campus, it occurred during the week before the last week of the spring term.  That week is a big deadline week – usually writing assignments are due.  We were disrupted – for a day.  Canvas contacted all of the campus IT and Distance Learning administrators with the guidance to not have anyone try to log in.  Our president also sent out a campuswide message.  And we waited.  I sent a campus email message to each of my classes to reassure – I’m not a deadline guy and my students already know that, but many indicated they appreciated the reaffirmation that all of my dropboxes are open until the last day of the class.  Turned out, that worked very well and reduced any angst.

Many of us are on Canvas – it has 41% of the market share in higher education with over 9000 individual institutions.  Plus some 3000 K-12 schools as well.  And the sad reality is that any of the LMS solutions – as well as our various enterprise services on our campuses – are vulnerable to this type of an attack.  In fact, with the arrival of AI, the risk of ransomware attacks has increased.

As you know, ITC has offered an outstanding Leadership Academy for the past eighteen years.  We have now had nearly 300 complete the training, and have offered the Academy from St. Petersburg FL to Milwaukee, Wi; from Asheville NC to Portland, ME; from Reno, NV to Costa Mesa, CA; from Minneapolis, MN to Buffalo, NY;  from Portland OR to Ft. Worth TX; and from Glassboro, NJ to Charlottetown PEI Canada. 

This year, the ITC Leadership Academy will be hosted at Lane Community College in Eugene, OR.  The three-day training has a robust schedule of sessions designed to prepare the next generation of leadership.  Over the years, we have had a wide variety of participants with a wide variety of backgrounds.  Certainly, we do include Distance Learning and Technology, BUT we prepare leadership to lead ANY program or department. 

The recent Federal Government announcement that Title II Accessibility compliance was being delayed for a year was quite a surprise.  I know so many of you had been working so hard this past year to ensure you would be ready by the original deadline – I actually heard more frustration than relief.

Why?  For those who work directly in the world of accessibility compliance, it has often been hard to get others on campus to buy into what is needed to comply.  The Federal deadline had finally gotten everyone on the same page – and the unexpected delay, may now be counter-productive to the progress made.   There can be no expectation that the new deadline for next year will be extended, so it remains “all hands on deck” in identifying deficiencies and framing a set of solutions most appropriate for your institution.  

At this year’s ITC National Annual Conference, Ian Coronado and I presented on the results of the 2025 national survey.  For any of you that have been members for any length of time, you know that the ITC has conducted an annual survey since 2004 – focused on Distance Learning, it surveyed consistent data points to build a longitudinal understanding of the challenges and successes of Distance Learning at America’s community colleges.  We missed a beat during the first year of the pandemic – we were all very distracted at that time – but have otherwise annually reported the seemingly continuous growth of Distance Learning.

Our membership has repeatedly expressed appreciation for the data – our survey results have been used extensively at many campuses to improve budgets, staffing and/or adoption of key practices to improve the quality and success of Distance Learning.  Our membership also pointed out that completing the annual survey was becoming a struggle – so many questions!!

When I served as our campus’ dean of WebCollege, I was able to enshrine a set of “Standards for Teaching Online”.  Honestly, it was edgy for the time.  And the proposal met with headwinds from those that wanted as limited set of expectations as possible.  Nonetheless, the Online Standards were adopted and have provided a baseline of quality for the past several years.

Fast-forward to this semester, and the WebCollege Committee – now a standing committee of the Faculty Senate – has been developing a set of updates and timely improvements to the original document.  I had the opportunity to review their draft – and was very pleased to see how they had further strengthened – and expanded the document.  It still has to go before the Faculty Senate for approval, but keeping my fingers crossed.

For those of you that joined us in Austin, Texas for the ITC Annual National Conference – thank you!!!  It was a wonderful conference – and represented the ITC’ return to staging our annual conference on a community college campus.  A major “tip of the ITC hat” to our host, Matt Evins, the director of Academic Technology at Austin Community College. He, and his wonderful staff, made everything work and flow so well. The tech support was wonderful, the food and refreshments were wonderful, the Highland Campus (one of twelve campus locations) was gi-normous but worked well for our conference.  As you can imagine, most of the board members were immersed in selecting session applications, arranging for keynote speakers, coordinating the Grand Debate or the Awards Ceremony, hosting/participating in our “power panel session, recruiting exhibitors, creating awards and give-aways, planning receptions and facilitating sessions.   And the ITC board leaders were “everything, everywhere, all at once” for the entire conference.  All deserve a hale and hearty “Hizzah!!” for a fabulous job!

There were many highlights at the conference, but some of our best news concerned the introduction of our new ITC management team as well.  No surprise here – you’ve been interacting with our team:  Craig and Holly, as they helped with membership renewals and conference registrations over the past eight months – as well as fielding any questions or needs from our membership. But to make this sound official, we formally introduce: