EdgeCon Autumn 2026

As with any organization with technology assets, colleges and universities are required to maintain business operations, and they face significant pressure to safeguard their institutions' data, research products, and critical infrastructure while also serving as research hubs and innovation development centers. Academic freedom remains a pillar in higher education institutions and thus may require a more liberal use of technology to foster a creative atmosphere. Higher education institutions are critical to communities and societies by providing centers to learn, research, and innovate. As part of these activities, they host vast amounts of critical and sensitive information, innovative intellectual property, student and financial records, and are prime targets for attacks via technology and cyber (Oladele & Samuel, 2025; Wolfschwenger et al., 2022). Corporations and businesses may find it easier to adopt a standardized computing environment, such as restricting certain access or capabilities on computing devices and their networks. Higher education institutions wish to be seen as promoting research and innovation and thus will pursue a computing approach that minimizes technology challenges for staff. Balancing ample information security and cybersecurity with the inherent need to foster innovation requires a strategic framework that respects academic culture without compromising security best practices.

This paper will explore the topic, provide background and data, and propose how institutions of higher education can balance security with openness for research and innovation. An intentional, content-focused approach to a Zero Trust Architecture strategy and philosophy, along with a flexible structure and governance that support research and innovation, will be provided. This proposed document will provide a novel blueprint for other higher education institutions to use for ideation and implementation to balance a resilient cyber posture and will also empower academicians and their departments, rather than stifling them. The intended framework should be considered a base that can be amended to meet institutional needs, not a final artifact, but one that can be updated as new technologies and paradigms arise.

Presenters:

• Stan Mierzwa, Director & Lecturer, Kean University
• Greg Bellotti, Sr. VP of IT and CIO/CISO, Kean University
• Keiron DeFreitas, Director of Enterprise Technologies, Kean University

How can institutions move from data collection to data action? At Thomas Edison State University, the answer comes through an integrated approach combining dashboards, real-time analytics, and actionable business processes. This session shares how TESU develops purpose-built dashboards to track progress toward institutional goals and the business processes that catalyze meaningful operational change.

Designed to serve both executive leadership and functional teams, our dashboards provide a shared view of progress on key outcomes such as registration-to-census and term-to-term retention. The insights from these dashboards became the foundation for cross-departmental collaboration and process improvement. By connecting data insights to tactical adjustments, the university created a feedback loop which enables student engagement, process refinement, and accelerates strategic impact.

Attendees will leave with practical guidance on designing and implementing similar systems at their own institutions, including strategies for stakeholder engagement, performance tracking, and fostering a culture of data-informed decision-making.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to translate institutional strategy into measurable, real-time metrics.
• Explore how data dashboards can drive collaboration and accountability.
• Identify approaches for sustaining continuous process improvement through analytics.

Presenters:

• Matthew Brown, Director, Data Reporting and Strategy, Thomas Edison State University
• Casey Kennette, Associate Director of Operational Reporting & Analytics, Thomas Edison State University

Text is data. Institutional text holds as much measurable signal as any spreadsheet of numbers. Student comments, policy documents, syllabi, strategic goals: all encode information we can mine with analytical rigor. What holds us back is a label: we call this text "qualitative" and shelve it as Too Hard, when "qualitative" names a methodological choice, not the data itself. In this session I will demonstrate how we use transformer-based embedding models to convert institutional text into a mathematical space. There, we can quantify drift and alignment across practices and populations, and turn narrative and open-ended text into evidence for assessment and planning. Come as a strategist, not a statistician: no mathematics background required. I keep the focus on what the method reveals, not the linear algebra under the hood.

The presentation centers on three applied use cases: thirteen years of accreditor language tracked as its meaning quietly drifts, alignment scores computed between learning outcomes and assignments, and shifts detected across longitudinal student feedback. Each yields quantitative measures that are auditable and reproducible.

Our learning outcome for this session is to identify the underused text higher ed systems already hold and to weigh what it takes to make it measurable.

Presenters:

• Viktoria Popova, Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness, Analytics, Planning, Centenary University

For security leaders, the challenge is no longer just managing vulnerabilities, but managing the narratives around them. AI is changing how vulnerabilities are discovered, weaponized, and prioritized, yet many organizations struggle to translate these changes into meaningful risk reduction. This session focuses on governance, decision-making, and accountability in vulnerability management programs.

Presenters:

• Jeremy Livingston, CISO & Deputy CIO, Stevens Institute of Technology
• Rafat Azad, Associate Director, Information Security Services, Stevens Institute of Technology

AI development has had a significant effect on all of society, especially in the past few years. One area it will have a significant impact is cybersecurity. AI has potential for good use such as in triage, response, and detection. On the other hand, attackers can also use AI for phishing, deepfakes, and other attacks not yet created. However, are the students of today prepared for these new threats of today and tomorrow? Our presentation will discuss the approach we are currently taking to prepare our students for this constantly evolving new threat dynamic. We will show examples of how we added and incorporated AI principles and tools to both current and proposed courses. Additionally, we will discuss how our research agenda will add additional opportunities for our students to prepare for future threats and opportunities. Attendees will leave with a practical blueprint for modernizing and preparing their students for the current and future needs of the cybersecurity field.

Presenters:

• John Agar, Academic Specialist - Computer Science, Union College of Union County, NJ
• Quba Raza, Academic Specialist - Cybersecurity, Union College of Union County, NJ

For years, grant and subaward reporting at Harrisburg University relied on siloed spreadsheets, a legacy Jenzabar system, and manual data imports handled by whoever happened to be available that week. It worked, in a sense, but errors were easy to miss, accountability was hard to pin down, and we had no real way to catch misspending or subaward risk until it had already become a problem.

So we built our own platform in-house, server-based, with centralized access controls and one source of truth for all our research and grant data. In this session I'll walk through how we identified the compliance gaps in the old process, what controls we actually built into the new system (access permissions, audit trails, clear lines of accountability), and how it changed our visibility into subawards and final reporting.

I'll also talk about where we're headed next. We're already using generative AI for about 20% of our pre-award proposal drafting, and I'm working on governance documentation for how AI gets used in grant writing, trying to balance the efficiency it offers against compliance, originality, and what funders expect. I don't have this fully figured out yet, and I'll be upfront about what's still unresolved.

If you're dealing with siloed systems, weighing whether to build your own platform instead of buying one, or trying to work out AI governance for grants, this session should be useful.

Presenters:

• Julia Dunst, Director of Research, Grants, Compliance, Harrisburg University of Science and Tech

So, you have been charged with implementing a new cloud based enterprise application (or even and onsite instance) for your institution. These days cloud based, SaaS systems are commonplace. While there are many variables with new systems and how they are implemented, they are normally time consuming and require partnerships with other divisions across your campus. Cloud based systems have challenges that on premises systems do not. Experience and lessons learned over the last 20 years will be shared during this presentation, which will cover forming an implementation team, reviewing business practices, data migration, going live on your new system and system hand-off to the application owner. After a period of time for Q&A, there will be an opportunity for the audience to share challenges they have experienced in the past implementing a new enterprise system.

Presenter:

• Ron Loneker, Jr., Director, IT Special Projects, Saint Elizabeth University