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Every department at VCU, as well as the entire student body, utilizes test scanning services provided by our office, the VCU helpIT Center. The push for a new test scanning system was mainly so that we could work with newer test scanning technology, lower our annual maintenance costs as well as provide a system which we could personalize to fit VCU's needs. The VCU helpIT Center was tasked with implementing and transitioning the VCU faculty and students to a new test scanning system. This paper discusses our process of transition from our Legacy Scantron test scanning system, to our new gradeIT system (which utilizes Remark OMR). Our paper highlights our "plan of attack" we developed to prepare for the transition, the implementation steps we took, our marketing campaign that we developed, the successes we celebrated, as well as the shortfalls we encountered in our attempt to provide a change in services to the VCU community.

Identifying the cells from which cancers arise, and the paths they take towards malignancy, is critical for understanding the molecular basis of tumor initiation and progression. To understand if stem and progenitor cells can serve as cells of origin for cancer, we created a model in which the CreERT2 recombinase was knocked into the endogenous locus of the stem cell determinant Msi2. When crossed to a conditional CAG-LSL-MycT58A model, Msi2-CreERT2 mice developed a diversity of tumors across tissues, including multiple pancreatic cancer subtypes: pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas (ASCP), acinar cell carcinoma (ACC), and rare anaplastic tumors. Using single cell analysis, we traced the temporal changes that occurred as normal Msi2+ cells evolved through a pre-cancerous stage to PDAC, ASCP or ACC. These results revealed that Msi2+ cells were present predominantly in pancreatic ducts and exhibited heterogeneous differentiation states in the normal pancreas. At initiation, Myc triggered oncogenic transformation in the most undifferentiated subset leading to the rise of pre-cancer cells with multi-lineage properties. Subsequently, these pre-cancer cells were driven along different fates by epigenetically activated transcriptional programs with genomic changes amplifying the progression into distinct pancreatic cancer subtypes. Finally, integrating transcriptomic and functional genomic approaches in this new model allowed us to define Ifne, Ifitm3, Atf3, Hmmr, and Raet1e as novel functional dependencies of ASCP, giving us unique insight into the most lethal of pancreatic malignancies. These data show that multiple pancreatic cancer subtypes can arise from a common pool of pre-malignant cells and provide a powerful molecular framework to understand the programs that shape divergent fates in pancreas cancer and develop approaches for early detection and interception.

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Do you have users who complain about issues that existed years ago, but have now been rectified? Do you provide excellent service but still lack respect from your university community? Maybe it is time you revitalize and re-brand your group. The VCU helpIT Center did just that in an effort to overcome the hurdle of a bad reputation that was set years ago. Before rebranding, they took several steps to bring about change in the service provided by their office. Aggressive metric goals were set and statistics gathered to rejuvenate the group internally. Then, while working with the VCU Technology Services Marketing and Communication Department, the inception of the IT branding took place. Learn what was necessary to bring about the change in people's minds, both internal to the VCU helpIT Center staff and also their external user base. Also see how this effective branding campaign helped raise the respect of the VCU helpIT Center within the university and expanded to a divisionwide re-branding of the groups within the VCU Technology Services -User Services Department.