Higher education is all about preparing students for today’s world — and the one to come.

 

That demands a network foundation that’s future-proof, secure, and AI ready. Because in the AI era, change comes fast and the challenges are steep. Outdated infrastructure is not an option.

That’s why so many colleges and universities are turning to Cisco. Not that they haven’t already. Cisco has been a major technology provider in the higher-education space for decades.

Today, however, the stakes are higher than ever. A modern university campus is like a small city (preferably a smart one). Beyond lecture halls and dorms, there are hospitals, athletic stadiums, power plants, and cutting-edge innovation centers running simultaneously. All while tens of thousands of students, researchers, and visitors demand seamless, secure connections.

Notre Dame in Indiana, Auburn in Alabama, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. are but three major universities partnering with Cisco to help build an innovative future.

Transforming operations — and learning — at Notre Dame

This month, for example, Cisco and Notre Dame Athletics announced a multi-year partnership to modernize the University of Notre Dame’s campus-wide network.

Because however the needs of students, professors, and researchers evolve, the network needs to be ready. Especially as things like immersive, virtual-reality labs and AI-powered experiences revolutionize campus and remote-learning experiences.

John Buysse, senior director network & telephony services at the University of Notre Dame, summed up Cisco’s impact on his school.

“Modernizing our campus network is about far more than just replacing hardware,” he said. “It is about building a foundation for the future of learning, research, and campus life. And by consolidating our infrastructure onto a unified Cisco multi-gigabit platform managed through Cisco Catalyst Center, we have transformed our operations.”

Notre Dame’s South Bend, Indiana, campus relies on nearly 1,000 switches. So, simplicity of operation is essential. And Cisco Catalyst Center streamlines device deployment, software updates, and configuration templates. It uses AI to monitor network health, trace traffic paths, and troubleshoot issues quickly. In keeping with Cisco’s platform strategy, it also integrates with tools like Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE).

For visibility into every network, Notre Dame is also piloting the use of Cisco ThousandEyes, while Cisco Professional Services offers continuous support, helping to maximize the university’s investment.

“In the dynamic world of higher education, speed is a requirement, not a luxury,” said Mike Witzman, vice president, public sector solutions engineering at Cisco. “Together, Notre Dame and Cisco are doing more than just connecting a campus; we're building an AI-ready foundation that will redefine the future of learning for generations of students, faculty and staff.”

Keeping Auburn U. secure

Of course, protecting critical data and research is paramount at major universities. At Auburn University in Alabama, Splunk, a Cisco Company is demonstrating the power of analytics and AI in security, while transforming and empowering their relatively small security operations center (SOC) team.

“We have found success with the current size of our team,” said Jay James, cybersecurity operations manager at Auburn University. “However, we had to find something scalable for the growth of emerging threats. Having a partner like Splunk helped us make sure that we could keep our daily workflows going. Splunk really filled that gap for us.”

James stressed that as AI students and researchers increase their use of AI, it can open security vulnerabilities. All while bad actors are also using AI in increasingly sophisticated ways.

“In terms of students using AI,” James said, “we’re not in the business of trying to prevent innovation. We want to do all we can to better protect our students so they can lean into these tools.”

The integration of Splunk with Cisco tools like Cisco XDR has further enhanced that protection, while cutting through the complexity.

“Now that we've added Cisco XDR, it's really about building a comprehensive SOC architecture,” James said. “We can scale and grow whatever we need. We can pull application logs into Splunk Enterprise Security when we need to or pull them into XDR for context from a networking perspective. Cisco being Cisco, it’s really helped us streamline things.”

That streamlining has freed up time for James to engage more deeply in an activity he especially enjoys: working with student interns, who become an integral part of his team.

“We pull them all in at different stages,” he continued, “to where we have our engineers and analysts working with them directly, putting them on different training paths to where they can not only do the day-to-day alerts, but take on specialized projects.”

As for the future, James is excited about possibilities, with a foundation built on Cisco and Splunk.

“Our team is very happy right now with the direction we're moving in,” he expressed. “Now that we have all the pieces in place, we can shift from our limitations to a much more innovation standpoint. And really get our arms around things like AI moving forward.”

Wi-Fi 7 drives future-proof connections at Georgetown U.

Earlier this year, Georgetown University launched a sweeping network overhaul and Wi-Fi 7 deployment across its main campus in Washington D.C. It’s an investment that will stand the university in good stead, even as higher learning demands massive data sets, advanced AI modeling, and whatever comes next.

“This will allow for things like multi-streaming video for both professors and students in large lecture spaces,” said Doug Little, CIO of Georgetown University, “easily pulling down huge shared online data sets for analysis. And it allows us to be ready for the next generation of simulation instruction, which may include new advancements such as holographic images.”

Underlying Wi-Fi 7’s blistering speeds, expansive bandwidth, and ultra-low latency is a complete network refresh — essential as students up their usage of AI.

“Our multi-year partnership with Georgetown University marks one of the largest Wi-Fi 7 deployments in higher education,” said Gary DePreta, Cisco’s senior vice president of U.S. public sector. “Fast is the past — instant is the future when it comes to higher education.”

“We’re bringing the latest Cisco networking technologies to campus,” DePreta continued, “modernizing Georgetown’s entire network with our advanced enterprise switching and wireless solutions.”

As with any Cisco deployment, simplicity is a key feature. Cisco’s unified infrastructure and platform strategy make life a lot easier for Georgetown’s IT team. And to streamline security, Georgetown has deployed a multi-layered framework, powered by Cisco’s comprehensive portfolio. That includes multi-factor authentication, end-to-end network visibility, and advanced security operations analytics to protect the campus community and its digital assets.

For users, of course, it’s all invisible.

“We have over 6,000 wireless access points and 50,000 active devices,” Little explained, “and the wireless access points dynamically adjust their channel, power, and bandwidth configurations to accommodate traffic. They speak to one another to coordinate traffic load. When users move around, the wireless access points automatically change their configurations to accommodate that traffic.”

It’s the kind of innovation that signals a bright future for higher education.

“This partnership is about empowering the Georgetown community with innovative digital experiences and a strong, AI-ready foundation for the future of education,” DePreta concluded. “We look forward to supporting Georgetown and other universities as they continue to redefine campus connectivity, prepare students for the future, and lead with the latest educational experiences.”