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See about IT Creating the Gift of “More Time”
This year’s annual review marks a significant milestone in our journey toward operational excellence. We’re not just reporting on another year of progress; we’re celebrating a year defined by strategic efficiency gains, fueled by the innovative spirit and tireless efforts of our teams across the University community, particularly within our Information Technology (IT) division. This review will highlight some examples of how we’ve leveraged technology to streamline existing processes and unlock entirely new avenues for productivity and growth.
The past five years have witnessed a fundamental shift in our approach to resource allocation and productivity enhancement. We’ve moved beyond simply maintaining our technology infrastructure; we’ve transformed it into a strategic engine driving our overall success. This transformation wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication and forward-thinking strategies implemented by our IT division.
Our IT team has consistently exceeded expectations in optimizing our technology landscape. Their efforts have resulted in substantial improvements across multiple key areas. Through the implementation of a new CRM system, cloud migration, automation tools, and more, we have significantly reduced operational bottlenecks and streamlined workflows. This has translated into tangible benefits, including a 1,250-hour annual savings by automating degree posting notifications, an improved purchase order process that saves 250 hours a year, and account activation for re-admitted students which has eliminated the previous 72-hour wait.
Beyond streamlining existing processes, our IT division has actively contributed to expanding our resource capabilities. They have played a crucial role in developing and deploying new technologies that have unlocked previously untapped potential including the development of an internal knowledge base, the implementation of a new project management system, and the creation of a data analytics dashboard. These initiatives have empowered our employees with the tools and information they need to perform their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
Furthermore, our commitment to a data-driven approach, spearheaded by our IT team has allowed us to make more informed decisions, optimizing resource allocation and ensuring that our investments yield maximum returns. The sophisticated data analytics tools they’ve implemented have provided us with invaluable insights into our operational efficiency, allowing us to identify areas for further improvement and address potential challenges.
This Review showcases the remarkable results achieved through a collaborative effort, demonstrating the power of technology when strategically implemented and effectively managed. We are immensely proud of the achievements highlighted within, and we are confident that the foundation laid this year will propel us to even greater heights in the years to come. We invite you to explore the details within and share in our celebration of this year’s remarkable progress.
Jonathan See Chief Information Officer
Pepperdine students sign up for IT internship program and gain valuable hands-on experience before entering the job market
There is, perhaps, no better tool for job-seeking college graduates, than real-world experience in their chosen field. And, for qualified Pepperdine Computer Science students, that opportunity is available in the form of an annual internship in the University’s IT department.
Every year, the Computer Science (CS) department sends out an email to its students announcing internships on the Pepperdine IT Innovative Development team. Interested students apply, the CS faculty provide their feedback to IT, and four students are assigned to a year-long project that the team delivers to the University. For 2023-24, that project was eSign, an application built to work with Adobe Sign, a cloud-based e-signature service.
“So, eSign has been around for at least 10 years now,” noted Senior Lead Developer Dustin Luck. “It’s gone through a lot of additions, and code gets tangled up after a while. Technology has come a long way, so it makes a perfect intern project.”
Once the Innovative Development team determined what the intern project would be, Senior Lead Developer Danny Gedgafov made a list of the team’s project goals.
“Danny had the most experience with eSign and was maintaining the current version of it,” said Luck. “So, he went through and made a list of all the things that needed to be done and created the project in Asana (a project management application). On group projects, we have always let the interns decide for themselves how to split up the tasks.”
That’s when Pepperdine IT interns Timothy Chen, Charles DiRaddo, Daniel Lee, and Jackson Walker went to work. Interns work 12 to 15 hours a week and must work a minimum of three hours per shift. The group meets once a week to provide status updates, ask questions, and get any new information on their portion of the project from their mentors.
Each intern had a different mentor with Pepperdine IT application developers. Justis Crocker, Bryant Pochop, Timothy Lee, and Alex Egan worked one-on-one with DiRaddo, Lee, Walker, and Chen, respectively.
“The team broke down the different pieces,” said Walker, “and then we discussed how we wanted it to look. So, for each part, we would mock it up and then submit it to the group for feedback, get approval, and then develop it.”
“On Wednesdays, we were basically all working together, and so we could ask each other for help or get someone else’s eyes on the code,” added DiRaddo. “Just having another intern who’s going through the same thing as you and being able to collaborate on the same thing was really pretty awesome.”
“Yeah, that was something I really liked by the end of it,” Walker said. “We all had our experience on specific things throughout the process. So, we knew that we could just ask each other about it. We didn’t necessarily need to go outside of our group. It was nice just being able to turn around in the chair and ask, ‘Hey, Charlie! What the heck is this?’”
“Having each other to collaborate with was super helpful,” noted DiRaddo.
“There’s a term in programming called ‘rubber ducking,’” Luck added. “Sometimes, all you really need to do is just bounce something off of somebody else. And just the act of talking through it kind of gets you to the point where you figure it out. And then if they’re really stuck, they go to their mentor. Or, if a mentor is unavailable, they go up the chain to Danny or to me. They work on their stuff, and if they get stuck, they look for help.”
The eSign project also required a longer learning curve for everyone involved in the project, because the team had to learn new applications including MudBlazor, C#, and GitHub.
Above, Pepperdine students and Information Technology (IT) interns Daniel Lee, Timothy Chen, Charles DiRaddo, and Jackson Walker flash their signature efforts of a different kind after working on an updated version of the eSign application in 2023-24.
Having each other to collaborate with was super helpful. “ ”
“We all had our own branches that we were working on,” DiRaddo noted. “I think it took quite a bit of time for us to wrap our heads around the collaborative aspect of GitHub.”
“I think I did learn a lot,” said Lee. “I think teamwork, collaboration, and having a mentor to look up to was definitely something new. And I think all that is very beneficial for my future.”
“I think one of the things about learning something new is just diving in and trying to figure things out myself,” said Chen. “That’s something that I haven’t really been able to practice that much in classes. But through this real-world experience, I was able to figure things out myself. I think it was great.
“Don’t be afraid to just try things out yourself,” Chen continued. “At the beginning, I was really hesitant to get my hands dirty, and I often relied on my mentor and relied on Dustin to help me out on certain things. But, I think as I progressed, I was able to learn that sometimes all it takes is a search or just trying something out that you think might work. And sometimes you’re actually right.”
“We really wanted to stick to the best way of doing things rather than using shortcuts,” Walker observed. “Sometimes, doing it the best way took a while to figure out, rather than just a simple band-aid that would have functionally been the same.”
Such insight can prove to be the perfect complement to a skillset that includes problem-solving, patience, teamwork, and more. Those skills often provide a significant advantage when the time comes to transition from an academic internship to a professional career.
As for the eSign project, it should be in production soon, and users will notice some marked improvements.
“We’re hoping the big things that people will notice are our speed improvements, organization of the menus and the options, and just a more modern look and feel.” Luck noted of the project’s status.
“This taught us patience,” Walker said. “There are a lot of ways where we could have cut corners, and we didn’t. We figured it out. We did it the right way.”
Meeting Minds of the
Pepperdine University was selected to host the China–U.S. Career and Technical Education
Conference on the Malibu campus in June, bringing together different disciplines, cultures, and ideas
Pepperdine’s reputation as a top-tier, international university helped draw a unique event to our Malibu campus last summer.
A delegation of educators and officials from China hosted a conference on Career and Technical Education (CTE) on June 14 at Elkins Auditorium. Pepperdine is a renowned Christian, liberal arts institution, yet this event was designed to narrow perceived gaps between the United States and China in their respective approaches to technology in education.
Panelists from Pepperdine, Southern California, and China explored themes including meeting increasing technological demands and how to prepare students for the modern workforce. Pepperdine Provost Jay Brewster opened the event by discussing Pepperdine’s scientific research.
“Our Summer Undergraduate Research in Biology program has existed at Pepperdine for 35 years, funded for most of that time by the National Science Foundation,” Brewster said, describing the program that selects 10-12 students who are matched with faculty members to work on projects that include ecology, biochemistry, genetic engineering, marine biology, genetics, and botany.
Pepperdine’s credentials aside, the real question was: How did a delegation of educators from China wind up on Pepperdine’s Malibu campus to discuss technology and education? That’s where Pepperdine’s Director of Youth Leadership Jeff Walling comes in.
“It all started with the Flow Foundation,” Walling began. “I know this mission organization’s director, Sunny Chen, and she reached out and said she wanted to connect us with the director of the Educational Collaboration from the Jiangsu Province in central coastal China, who also works in Los Angeles. And so I was just
the little door that God used at Pepperdine to say, ‘Okay, let’s meet.’
“Sunny worked with the folks from China to provide information on a number of schools in Southern California including USC and UCLA,” Walling said. “Pepperdine stood out because of its national ranking, location, and the University’s biotech work.”
But Walling was concerned about the fit with the Chinese delegation and Pepperdine’s spiritual beliefs during any potential visit. When he cited the simple act of giving thanks before a meal that would occur at the conference’s lunch break, Chen said the delegation would expect no less.
“So, here’s a room full of presidents and vice presidents from these colleges and universities, who may have never heard the words, ‘We’re going to give thanks for the meal we’re about to have. Let’s pray together.’” said Walling. “And what more do they do? They showed up in a bus with all their people, paid for the lunch, and handled all the transportation. Everything.”
And then came an unforgettable icebreaker at the event from Los Angeles County Board of Education Member Yvonne Chan.
“She’s a Chinese educator here who works with a school in Pasadena, and she is a firecracker!” said Walling. “She’s very well respected by her peers, and she was closing her presentation, when she took a slight turn.”
Chan appealed to her colleagues noting that educators needed to do more than show up for events like this conference.
“We need to believe we can do this…that we can step in!” she said, as her voice raised with emotion. “And I found a book that has inspired me,” as she held up the children’s classic, “The Little Engine That Could.”
“Next, she gets all of these somber Chinese educators in suits–who are all trying to be very serious and wise–to play along with her,” recalled Walling.
“Okay! I say, ‘Chugga, chugga.’ You say, ‘Choo-choo!’” yelled Chan at a stunned audience.
“Chugga-chugga!”
“Choo-choo,” came back in tepid disbelief from the auditorium.
“Chugga-chugga! C’mon!” Chan yelled again.
“Choo-choo!” came a louder response.
“CHUGGA-CHUGGA!!!”
“CHOO-CHOO!” the room finally answered, before Chan surrendered the podium with a smile.
“And here’s our Provost Jay Brewster down in the front row giving her the thumbs-up sign with a huge smile on his face,” Walling continued in laughter. “And I’m just watching this online and thinking that I don’t believe this is happening.”
The experience brought Walling to a realization of what often separates technical schools from liberal arts schools.
“We have siloed IT,” he said. “We’ve got a generation of students that grew up with technology, yet we still need to make technology native to them. The real challenge for the Arts and Humanities is, how do we integrate technological education into our liberal arts studies and not silo it in a corner?”
The conference was certainly a step toward that goal, as an impressive roster of academics from China and the United States discussed technology’s role in higher education in the panel discussions that followed Yvonne Chan.
Left, Pepperdine University Provost Jay Brewster reacts to LA County Board of Education Member Yvonne Chan’s presentation at the Career and Technical Education Conference (CTE) in Elkins Auditorium on June 14. Below, Pepperdine University Associate Chief Information Officer Gerard Flynn speaks as a panel member during the CTE Conference.
Pepperdine University Associate Chief Information Officer Gerard Flynn spoke on technology’s role in contemporary education, alongside Professor Ben Postlethwaite, Ph.D., Director, Center for Teaching Excellence at Seaver College. Pepperdine Professor Fabien Scalzo, Ph.D., Director of the Artificial Intelligence in Imaging and Neuroscience Lab at the Keck Institute for Data Science also delivered a keynote speech on Pepperdine’s AI Research, including the work of the University’s first Rhoades Scholar, Sean Wu, announced four months after the event on November 19, 2024.
Flynn offered some insight from the IT department’s perspective.
“Here at Pepperdine, we try to create a new model of apprenticeship, using our IT staff as mentors for our department’s ongoing intern program,” Flynn noted.
“The year-long internships provide experience they can put on a resume and, in many cases, earn jobs from. Good scholarship is pairing scholars and learners and providing the technology in what you might call ‘safe spaces’ for them to learn and even to fail: that’s where a great deal of learning comes from,” Flynn noted.
“Ultimately, we were honored to be one of the two or three schools in America that this group of educators and administrators from colleges and universities in China selected to visit,” Walling said.
“This event told me that we’re being challenged to think outside the box,” Walling continued. “And if somebody had told me that this challenge would come from China, I wouldn’t have believed it. The Americans are the ones who are known for our thinking outside the box. And that’s why I’m thankful that the conference took place.”
IT delivers efficient solutions in three cases to help win the race against time
When the semester comes to an end, imagine work piling up on your desktop as the sheer volume of tasks, and documents, and changes, and approvals bury you under an avalanche of administrative clutter.
Now imagine clicking on a single digital button to handle all those tasks, giving you back almost three weeks of productivity on your calendar in the process.That’s what the Pepperdine IT department was able to do for the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School (PGBS) Faculty Affairs team for the fall 2024 semester.
“We took a process that took them 14 business days, and we automated it so that they can just hit a button and everything happens instantaneously,” said Senior Lead Business Analyst Michael Shiver. The process leading up to creating that button, however, took a little longer.
“Deborah Galuhn came to me a year and a half ago after some big budget cuts and said she needed a new vendor,”
Shiver noted about the outreach from the PGBS senior director of student systems and administration. Specifically, the PGBS team needed to re-imagine their system for handling faculty schedules and contracts, so they initially talked to outside vendors for a solution.
“Our CIO (Chief Information Officer) Jonathan See had asked us to work on reducing the number of outside vendors the University uses, so Deborah and I sat down and came up with a plan,” said Shiver.
“Deborah asked us what PeopleSoft could do,” Shiver continued. “But PeopleSoft didn’t do this.”
3 Driving Success
“Basically, Faculty Affairs had department chairs who ran their own disciplines, and they were just swamped,” explained PGBS Senior Faculty Support Specialist Janna Martinez. “So, the timing was perfect, because they were going to the Dean and they were begging for help. Some of this was just falling through the cracks; some department chairs had their own systems; others were just piecing it together from the faculty themselves.”
Shiver worked with the Graziadio Faculty Affairs team and quickly discovered just how intricate the contract scheduling process was. To appreciate Shiver’s work, you have to understand what the PGBS Faculty Affairs team was facing.
“Part of the challenge is that there isn’t a universal method for tracking all faculty data,” explained Martinez. “I’ve had 109 fulltime faculty, and every single one has a spreadsheet. So, if they weren’t teaching, I would even write in there, ‘No courses taught.’ Otherwise, a faculty member might think that I hadn’t documented their classes, when they simply hadn’t taught during that term.
“But that meant that I had to review every single faculty member’s spreadsheet for every single term,” Martinez explained. “And some faculty teach 30 units–maybe 10-12 classes–and I would manually enter each one from WaveNet. Sometimes, I pull a query, or I would just go into their Faculty Center in PeopleSoft and cut and paste. I had to track the class, the class number, the course title, the contract, and the number of units, because PeopleSoft uses units.
“I’d have to populate every single box for every single faculty member,” Martinez continued. “Everything was done manually, and I’d have to do that every term. Then, some classes have course exceptions. So, I had to make sure I had those documented. Whoop! That one’s a stipend. Oh, they don’t get paid on that class. Oh, they split units: make sure it’s divided. And with all the exceptions, I needed to review every class.
“Sothat would take at least four days to do 109 of them,” Martinez continued. “And then I would email them out and get answers like, ‘Oh, that’s incorrect.’ ‘Oh, I ended up splitting the class with so-and-so.’ ‘Oh, that class is going to be session B now, not session A.’
“The work would be at least a solid week and go into a second week,” said Martinez. “It was just so consuming. We really had to clean up our documents and our processes. There were just a billion mind-blowing exceptions that we’ve tried to streamline.”
Shiver worked in PeopleSoft and created what’s known as a “bolt-on” or a custom solution that he designed to automate the contract-scheduling process. His PeopleSoft solution automatically pulls all the data that the PGBS team had been compiling manually to populate the Google Sheets.
“Now, faculty members can see all this data in one location: their Faculty Center in PeopleSoft,” said Shiver.
“We didn’t realize how the Google Sheet just took so much work from the IT perspective,” said Martinez. “We would add something, and Michael would say, ‘You don’t understand, we have to totally re-code everything now.’
“So, some of that was a learning curve, but we’re super happy,” Martinez smiled. “I’m excited to see what spring is going to look like. The reporting aspect’s been great and we’re happy!”
That happiness could become contagious, as IT puts the finishing touches on the project.
Finance Dept. Shifts Gears, as Asana Fuels Smoother Ride
When Pepperdine IT Lead Business Analyst David Kellogg started working with University Controller Katelyn Crowe on time-saving opportunities in the Finance department’s busy schedule, the collaboration essentially “dropped the flag” in the race to improve communication and efficiency.
“My role in this project was to get Finance leadership comfortable with Asana,” said Kellogg of the project management software. “We met with Finance staff, helped them get familiar with Asana, and ultimately empowered them to do their own thing.”
Kellogg had offered to sit down with any interested party in the Finance department for 20-30 minutes and offer one-on-one Asana training.
“Because Finance already owned several Asana licenses,” said Kellogg, “it was our way of helping their staff dip a toe in the waters with a little extra guidance.”
2“David shepherded us in using Asana for a weekly meeting that involves representatives from every department within Finance: close to 50 people,” said Crowe. “We had previously used a Google Doc to track all of our different topics, which was kind of messy.
“It was like we were just adding on to it every week,” Crowe continued, “and it just got bigger and the meetings would run over quite a bit. It’s a half-hour meeting, but it would generally be close to an hour. We would pretty much double the scheduled time quite frequently. Then David transferred everything from the Google Doc into Asana.”
Using Asana, various staff now take turns presenting, updating tasks, deadlines, and more as they run their portion of the meeting. The software uses “boards” as a digital workspace to provide a dynamic visual summary of each project that the team may access.
“The documents are linked, and Asana’s helping us track the status of each individual project,” noted Crowe. “The main thing I’ve noticed is that our meeting time is now about 25
“We will be rolling this out over the next six to nine months to all the other schools at Pepperdine,” Shiver shared. see Finance, page 10
Client Services wins IT Innovation Award
If necessity is the mother of invention, as the classic idiom tells us, then efficiency can’t be far down the family tree. Operational efficiency was the simple goal that provided the need for a Pepperdine system that eliminates wasteful tasks and time-consuming processes. And so, the Pepperdine IT Application Management team of Glenn Levine, Carina Figueroa, and Reyn Oyadomori parented the development of the PeopleSoft Finance Security Access Request form.
The Pepperdine team’s work was so effective in leveraging Softdocs to integrate Etrieve and PeopleSoft, Softdocs recognized their work with the IT Innovation Award for Higher Education. The process-automation and document-management company presented the Pepperdine IT team with the award at the Softdocs Bridge Process Automation Summit in New Orleans.
This solution replaces a manual, error-prone process that had taken up to a month to complete, with a streamlined, automated form that delivers results within a couple of hours. This is what the project provides:
from PeopleSoft, ensuring accurate, consistent entries while reducing errors and speeding up approvals. Users can search flexibly by name, NetworkID, CWID, or department.
3. Improved Role Descriptions: Descriptive tooltips clarify PeopleSoft role selections, simplifying the process and enhancing accuracy.
11. Modify Access with Precision: The form imports an employee’s existing PeopleSoft permissions, allowing users to make precise updates, rather than relying on guesswork.
2. Data Consistency: Drop-down menus dynamically pull data
Finance, from page 9
minutes. We end early almost every time, so that’s been a huge time-saver for the 10 or more people on that call every week.”
But that was just the beginning. When Systems Analyst Kaitlyn Alderete wanted to employ a web audit of the department’s pages, she saw Asana as the perfect vehicle to drive the project.
“One of the biggest things I find with project management is that it’s hard to get people to do it when it’s not something that’s in your face,” said Alderete. “So, what is the best way to get people to do it? It’s to make it as easy as possible.”
“What’s really cool about what Kaitlyn A. is doing is that this is entirely Finance, starting and managing the project on their own in Asana,” said Kellogg. “I worked directly with leadership and now she’s taking the ball and running with it. It’s kind of a natural progression: step one is to advise
4. API Integration with PeopleSoft: The Etrieve API automates data exchange with PeopleSoft, securely routing requests and provisioning access automatically upon approval.
With the adoption of Etrieve Workflows, the Pepperdine team developed a streamlined, digital process that allows request originators to track their forms, approvers to see pending requests in real time, and workflow managers to easily reassign approvals when needed. Processing time has been slashed, and each completed form is securely saved in an employee’s file as an accessible PDF.
“Glenn, Carina, and Reyn’s innovative work on the EtrievePeopleSoft integration has transformed a once-cumbersome process into a streamlined, digital experience,” noted Associate Chief Information Officer Kevin Phan. “Their innovation sets a new standard for security access management, enhancing the University’s capacity for growth and improvement.”
leadership; step two is to let them run their own projects.”
“I always wanted to know how I could be more efficient in delivering this type of data,” explained Alderete. “And it wasn’t until I got to Finance that I learned about Asana and really got to experience its power.
“We’ve really started to use Asana heavily for our website updates,” said Alderete. “Finance has over 100 individual web pages, procedures, things like that. As you can imagine, it’s a lot to track. When I was going through the Finance website, I felt that there were some significant gaps. I went out on this mission to find a way that we can regularly audit the website. Hence Asana.
“I implemented all of the automations and workflows with other users in mind,” Alderete added. “I’m trying to demonstrate that, yes, there will be a little bit of set-up
in the beginning, but if you have someone who’s excited about the project–like I am–then someone can do it. And then from there, the project takes off and there’s very little maintenance.”
Alderete didn’t hesitate to express her appreciation for Kellogg’s guidance.
“He is such a pleasure to work with, and he’s incredibly responsive,” Alderete said. “He was a really big advocate for everything that we’re doing, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what else we can make better. But the efficiencies: that’s the selling point.”
“The bird has left the nest, and she’s flying on her own,” Crowe added with a smile.
Honor Roles
Information Technology staff who have brought distinction to Pepperdine University
Edwards earns encore in Las Vegas
en Senior Project Manager, IT Special Projects Franziska Edwards hit a Las Vegas stage to present on classroom technology at INFOCOMM 2024, she had no idea that the audience response would lead to a return invitation for the 2025 show in Orlando.
Edwards, a Las Vegas resident, stood in on short notice when Client Services Senior Manager Jared Mukai couldn’t give the presentation. She also had the support of the rest of the Pepperdine Audio-Visual Technologies (AVT) team, who attended the conference alongside her. Edwards spoke to about 80 people, and when she opened the floor for questions, not a single attendee left the room.
“Everybody was just so engaged with the conversation,” Edwards said. “And they were also surprised that our entire AVT support team was on hand. I explained that we could all be there because of the Classroom Technology Process Loop that we use in AVT that includes research and design, project management, academic and event support, and analysis.
hose data points really feed into identifying and addressing any potential problems we might have,” Edwards added. “To support two campuses, 110 classrooms, and 2,000 classes a week with just four or five people was possible because we had the ability to think ahead and plan for things.”
“She stepped in at the last minute and represented herself and Pepperdine extremely well,” said Mukai.
“Franziska’s presentation was easily the most engaging presentation we saw all week,” added AVT Manager Nick Maniglia. “People seemed to take real interest in what she was saying in how we operate as a team. It made me realize the impact AVT makes at Pepperdine.”
“The quantity and quality of engagement she and the rest of AV Technologies received for this presentation was more than I’ve ever been aware of,” noted Mukai. “The fact that she was asked to repeat the presentation next year is a testament to her talents, charisma, and expertise.”
Senior Project Manager Franziska Edwards.
