The UT Tower rises above campus in warm morning light with subtle digital overlays, used as the standard hero image for CIO Updates.
Standard hero artwork for recurring CIO Updates posts.
Monthly Digest
Feb 2026
Four notable updates spanning creativity tools, research support, infrastructure, and institutional analytics.
ET Newsroom

February 2026 CIO Updates

A compiled monthly view of Enterprise Technology work across creative platforms, research support, infrastructure modernization, and institutional analytics. This recurring format gives leaders and stakeholders a fast, structured way to scan high-impact updates.

March 13, 2026 Enterprise Technology CIO Updates
Mar 17
Canva launch for faculty and staff
170+
Network devices being replaced
16
Buildings included in Spring Break upgrades
100+
General major groupings in the dashboard

The CIO updates provide an overview of Enterprise Technology accomplishments and ongoing efforts, highlighting projects, services, and initiatives that demonstrate value and impact for university leaders and stakeholders.

February 2026 centers on practical institutional progress: broader access to creative tools, stronger support for controlled research, lifecycle investments in campus infrastructure, and better analytics for academic planning and decision-making.

Update 01

Canva for faculty and staff launches March 17, 2026

Campus Solutions Engagement & Experience Operations Infrastructure
Following the successful rollout to UT Austin students, Canva will expand to faculty and staff beginning March 17, giving more of the campus community access to professional-quality design tools for communication, teaching, and collaboration.

The expansion builds on the student launch and extends the same platform for presentations, social graphics, promotional materials, and video content to faculty and staff.

Enterprise Technology positioned the rollout as part of the University’s broader digital innovation work, with the goal of helping campus teams elevate communication and creative collaboration.

Pricing details, account-request steps, and training resources were expected to follow in the days after the update so faculty and staff could prepare for adoption.

Update 02

University launches the new Controlled Research Support Program

Campus Solutions Infrastructure Engagement & Experience Operations
The new Controlled Research Support Program (CRSP) brings together enterprise technology, research support and compliance, and information security expertise to create a more coordinated path for onboarding controlled research projects.

A new CRSP team in ET Campus Solutions is being led by Jeremy Wilson, whose cybersecurity leadership background strengthens the University’s program development and readiness.

The program is designed to help investigators navigate controlled environments more efficiently while reducing award delays tied to compliance gaps.

The update also underscored growing federal expectations around frameworks such as NIST 800-171, CMMC, ITAR, and NIH GDS, reinforcing CRSP’s role in connecting research operations with ET security and compliance expertise.

Update 03

Spring Break lifecycle upgrades strengthen network reliability

Infrastructure
ET Infrastructure is using Spring Break to replace more than 170 aging network devices across 16 buildings, continuing a multi-year modernization effort aimed at improving security, stability, and operational reliability.

The work includes new switches and wireless access points that improve day-to-day performance for University users while reducing risk from outdated hardware.

The upgrade is part of a broader lifecycle strategy that supports a more sustainable and predictable refresh cycle for campus infrastructure.

Infrastructure teams have coordinated with campus partners for two years to retire aging equipment and prepare for scalable future replacements.

Update 04

Major Funnel Dashboard and documentation finalized for EVPP stakeholders

D2I EVPP-RC
D2I finalized both the Major Funnel Dashboard feature review and its supporting business process documentation, confirming core functionality and preparing a targeted release for EVPP stakeholders.

The dashboard supports lifecycle analysis across applied, admitted, enrolled, and degrees conferred populations, using general major transformation logic to create consistent and transparent groupings.

Three integrated views with synchronized ranking and filtering let stakeholders compare trends across more than 100 general major groupings, while crosswalk downloads and CIP-based mappings improve transparency.

The team also documented special cases such as Business Administration and double-major logic, with initial access limited because of sensitive admissions data and a PDF documentation version planned through Alation for external users.