Andy Arnold to Become New SSCC Director
We are pleased to announce that Andy Arnold, currently Associate Director of the SSCC, has been selected to become the new Director of the SSCC when Nancy McDermott retires this summer. Andy has devoted his entire career to the SSCC, starting out more than twenty years ago as a student operator changing nine track tapes and managing dot matrix printers in the server room. He has been manager of SSCC Technical Services since 2000 and Associate Director since 2006. Andy was the original architect of Winstat back in 1997 and has kept it on the technological cutting edge ever since. This includes recently building a special version for WLS that combines the convenience of Winstat with the security of a cold room. The SSCC will be in good hands under his leadership.
At the same time, Russell Dimond will take on the role of Associate Director. Russell has been a statistical consultant for the SSCC for more than ten years, and this will continue the long-standing tradition of the SSCC leadership consisting of one person with an IT background and one person with a research/statistics background. Russell has also been active in shared governance, recently chairing a committee that played a key role in the creation and evaluation of the Critical Compensation Fund, and received a Letters & Science Mid-Career Award in 2014.
Andy and Russell have worked closely with Nancy McDermott for many years and are committed to maintaining the same high standards of customer service, innovation, and general excellence that have exemplified her leadership.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to hire someone to replace Andy in his current role due to budget cuts (as previously announced), leaving Technical Services short-handed. Many staff duties have been redistributed as a result. Please be sure to send all requests for help to helpdesk@ssc.wisc.edu so they can be routed to the proper staff member.
Office 365 Update
Preparations for SSCC's migration to Office 365 are continuing rapidly. The official migration period has been set for July 27-August 7, with the following schedule:
| Sociology | July 27-28 (Monday-Tuesday) |
| CDE & CDHA | July 29-30 (Wednesday-Thursday) |
| Catch-Up Day | July 31 (Friday) |
| Economics & IRP | August 3-4 (Monday-Tuesday) |
| COWS, UWSC, SoHE, & IoA | August 5-6 (Wednesday-Thursday) |
| Catch-Up Day | August 7 (Friday) |
For more information, come to our Brownbag on May 20, or read the SSCC's Office 365 FAQ and What's New pages.
SSCC Summer Training
SSCC will offer training on Mplus, Stata, and R this summer, and we hope to add sessions on Office 365 to the calendar very soon. "Bootcamps" on several statistical packages will be scheduled for late August. Keep in mind that starting with those bootcamps, SSCC training will no longer be free for people who are not members of the SSCC.
Reminder: SoE and WCER to Leave the SSCC July 1
Please keep in mind that SSCC members from SoE and WCER will no longer have access to Winstat, Linstat, statistical consulting, and all other SSCC services after July 1. Please consider now how this transition will affect you. For more information see our SoE/WCER transition page.
Free Statistical Software from the Campus Software Library
DoIT has created a Campus Software Library which includes Stata, SAS, SPSS, and Matlab, to name a few. These software are free with some licensed with the right to install it on UW-owned computers only, and others on personally-owned computers as well. Note that Stata/SE is the only version of Stata available from the library (but it is Stata 14).
Winstat users are cautioned about installing these software on their own computers. For example For example, SAS in particular requires an enormous amount of disk space, and the installer has many steps with many options to specify correctly. Winstat also gives you access to higher performance hardware and data is stored on network disk space with all the advantages that implies. If you do, please know that it is SSCC policy that staff will not install or troubleshoot installation problems on the individual computers of students (university or personally owned) for any software from the Campus Software Library that is readily available on Winstat.
Digital Media Center Closing Later this Month
The Digital Media Center (DMC) is closing May 22nd. This is one of the first casualties of recent UW-Madison budget cuts announced by DoIT. The link has a list of alternatives for finding services provided by the DMC. The DMC already discontinued poster printing, but posters can be printed at the College Library in Helen C. White Hall.
You will find a list of other planned DoIT service cuts on DoIT's News page.
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