Key points:
- Students played a pivotal role in improving campus Wi-Fi coverage
- Weak tech could push students, faculty to other institutions
- What’s the state of wireless in higher education?
- For more news on campus Wi-Fi, visit eCN’s IT Leadership hub
Every day I come to work at Gettysburg College wearing a college-branded cap that I bought with a $25 gift card, presented to me by the Student Senate for leading an effort to improve student access to the campus Wi-Fi.
It’s a reminder of why I’m here—and also, a reminder of a challenging yet rewarding year rebuilding trust with the student body.
In the fall of 2025, shortly after I became CIO, the IT department at Gettysburg College turned on a brand-new Wi-Fi network that included over 1,000 access points, new wiring, switches, and routers across the campus. It was designed to serve our 2,200 students across our 260-acre campus in Pennsylvania.
But students hated it.
Registering devices was an ordeal that could leave students in limbo, thinking they had joined the network when in fact they were quarantined. There were dead spots in buildings and in heavily trafficked outdoor spaces.
Stepping into my new role, I learned that IT hadn’t consulted with students about their needs as they were designing the new network—and now, we found ourselves bombarded with hundreds of negative YikYak comments. For a college that prides itself on the quality of service it provides to its students, this situation was unacceptable.
Fixing the network
It didn’t take IT long to find the technical fix for the students who had found themselves in limbo—a rapid deployment of a “Zero Trust” network that was easy to join was ready by the spring of 2026.
But the experience that past fall had made me realize that improving the Wi-Fi was just a downpayment toward rebuilding trust with the student body. IT needed to show that it wanted to hear from students, that it would listen to them, and that they could trust us going forward.
And we still needed to address the fact that students were reporting dead spots on YikYak but not engaging with IT’s help desk to report issues. Without detailed information on who was having the issue, where they were, and when the problem occurred, we were at a loss as to how to troubleshoot or where to deploy additional access points.
We realized that we needed some partners to successfully regain trust. These included the Student Senate and Velaspan, a Wi-Fi and network engineering company with experience in conducting network-related listening sessions. Velaspan’s independence and its partnership with our students, as well as its experience in leading these sessions, helped students to see IT’s true intentions of rebuilding communication.
Student ambassadors
One of the first steps was to hire four students—two to be ambassadors to the student body and participate in the outreach and other student interactions. These ambassadors were not technical but were studying public policy at the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College and were well-versed in public engagement. The other two students were engineers and worked hand-in-hand with IT to continue to map the network to direct future Wi-Fi investments.
Listening
The listening session was conducted by Kerry Kulp of Velaspan in partnership with the student ambassadors. They utilized guided prompts and even sticky notes on a glass wall to facilitate meaningful discussion.
The conversation was lively and IT heard directly from students about their Wi-Fi pain points, related patterns (location, time, devices), usage trends (streaming, gaming, academic use), device variability, and perception of “good” versus “bad” Wi-Fi.
Students still had concerns about Wi-Fi and addressing those was a unique challenge—Wi-Fi is invisible, so while students couldn’t see it, they knew when they didn’t have it. It was here that Student Senate and Velaspan came together with the idea to map Wi-Fi coverage on the whole campus and make it fully transparent by having students do the work and publish the maps, so students could see where coverage was strong and where it was weak.
Velaspan trained the students to use professional radio frequency mapping tools by Ekahau. This initiative was funded by IT and fits with the College’s goal to provide career-building experiences for its students. What could be better than to be involved in a critical project and receive training and mentoring from an industry leader?
Other projects
The ambassadors also worked on several other innovative wireless-related initiatives:
- A data intake form with fields for location, time, device, and troubleshooting specifics that are fed into a digital map that students can consult to find dead zones or strong or weak signals.
- Setting up IT support tables in high-traffic areas during finals week to show the willingness to go to students for wireless feedback instead of assuming students will come to us
- The student data collections engineer continues to map and assess campus buildings to optimize the ongoing network remediation.
Dramatic results
The result of hosting the listening activities and the good work of the student ambassadors resulted in a better network, more transparency, and a dramatic decrease in the number of negative YikYak posts.
More personally satisfying was when the Student Senate gave IT a vote of thanks for this work. From failing to meet expectations to a public thank you is a satisfying turn around.
The student ambassadors who were involved in the listening sessions and in the planning for the Wi-Fi network expansion helped to fulfill the college’s mandate to provide practical career skills to students.
The implementation of our listening sessions, the development of the Gettysburg ambassadors, and our ongoing transparency and network improvements show how a little flexibility and the will to see network challenges through the eyes of users can yield innovative solutions that meet user needs.
Gavin Foster is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He leads the information technology office, overseeing campus networks, digital transformation projects, and student technology resources. Before his promotion in January 2025, he was the Associate Vice President for Information Technology and Director of Institutional Technology and Training.
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