| Summary: | Nagwa Nicola was an information technology administrator at the American University in Cairo in the 2000s and 2010s, and had been an undergraduate student at AUC from 1979 to 1982. Nicola recalls her upbringing in Port Said (partly during the 1967 War), Cairo, and the United Kingdom. She recounts her time as an AUC undergraduate student, pursuing an economics major and computer science minor (the latter unavailable as a major at the time), and speaks about her professors and experiences like the challenge of using punch cards at AUC's Computer Center. Nicola covers other aspects of student life such as work study positions, student social groups, hang-out and eating locations on campus, as well as the presence of fellow students Alaa and Gamal Mubarak at AUC before and after their father became Egypt's President. Nagwa Nicola outlines her early career in computers at a bank, and later work for the Egyptian Parliament and USAID. She tells about her hiring in 2001 in an Information Technology (I.T.) planning role, and describes the I.T./computing units and administrators in the early 2000s (like Associate Vice Provost for Computing Sami Akabawi), and restructuring into a single I.T. department. She describes the early projects in which she was involved, such as implementing voice over internet protocol and videoconferencing, and covers the transitions from systems in place when she joined AUC, in the areas of finance (CUFS to SAP), student information (SIS to Banner), Email (software to Gmail), and fundraising. The central role of I.T. consultant John Stuckey is detailed, in particular in connection with planning and implementing the I.T. and communication infrastructure on the New Cairo campus being constructed in the 2000s. Other developments covered include I.T. security risks and the establishment of a unit to address them, the way AUC managed the internet outage during Egypt's 2011 revolution, the challenges of budget cuts and personnel turnover, and the contributions of various individuals in computing and ...
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