The new Vice President of Technology at Paris Junior College, Sebastian Barron, is quickly working through major challenges to boost student success by improving networking infrastructure and internet speed and reliability. Fortunately, Barron brings a lot of know-how from his previous position at Northeast Texas Community College (NTCC) in Mt. Pleasant.
“Sebastian’s impressive work has made him one of the technology leaders in the state,” said Dr. Stephen Benson, president of Paris Junior College. “We were fortunate to have a candidate of his caliber join our team.”
Barron served as Director of Computer and Enterprise Systems at Northeast Texas Community College since 2018. Prior to that, he was Senior Network Administrator for the college. At NTCC, his major initiatives included Jenzabar application development (this is PJC’s enterprise resource management software), technology strategic planning, infrastructure upgrades, security and compliance, and disaster recovery planning. Barron worked a total of 10 years at NTCC and before that worked in the banking sector, focusing on cybersecurity.
“I am very excited to be here,” said Barron. “I’ve been through some of the projects we need to do to get PJC up to speed, so I know what to do. More than anything, I’m excited to empower staff, faculty and students to give them the technology tools they need to be successful.”
Barron said PJC is already getting new networking infrastructure, improving the student information system and automating and simplifying things. He described his first few weeks at the College, meeting with the previous IT director and IT personnel first, then branching out from there to meet with directors throughout the system. His goal was to get an understanding of the IT strengths and weaknesses at the College, then turn those weaknesses to strengths.
Early on he found mismatched networking components with differing speeds, limiting network performance to the slowest component, and certainly not up to industry standards. In addition to inconsistent performance, network management is complicated because newer components work with an internet interface, but older ones don’t and can’t be updated, which leads to security risks and higher maintenance costs.
“We must change the status quo and get out of that cycle to help move PJC along in their technological journey,” said Barron. “We need to choose equipment that prepares PJC for the future. Technology changes every day; you turn on the news and something else is changing or something new emerging. We need to fix the issues we have now, but also prepare for tomorrow, for five years from now, for seven years from now.”
To break the cycle of repairing old equipment, in September Barron proposed a partnership between Fortinet and Liquid Networx for cybersecurity and networking improvements. The PJC Board of Regents approved the proposal. Next to be tackled are the fiber infrastructure and Wi-Fi network. Mapping of the infrastructure is underway now.
“You could talk to any employee on our campus, and they can tell you of the frustrations that they feel on a regular basis with technology,” said Benson, “though not with our IT staff! The students will be the biggest beneficiaries.”
Though not currently a resident, he was born in Paris and has ties to the area.
“I was born in Paris and have a lot of family here,” said Barron. “I love it here, it’s really comfortable and we have a great team, great faculty and staff and people want to use technology.”
