About LEARN: Activities & Accomplishments

During the past year, LEARN has continued to build partnerships to enhance the strategic value of LEARN to Texas. LEARN is a very diverse and talented consortium with a history of success, but a focus on the future. Highlights from the past year include:

Expanding Access

LEARN's network is an important strategic asset that enables Texans the opportunity to serve, collaborate, innovate, and compete throughout the world. LEARN, in partnership with the public and private sectors, has deployed high performance network services on 3,000 miles of fiber in Texas. Network points of presence have been established in many locations throughout the network that serve as customer access points to our network enabled services. To enhance the value of the network, LEARN connects to other networks in Texas, regionally, nationally and internationally. This network of networks allows us to leverage existing investments and broaden the utility and value of the network services that are available to the LEARN community. More

LEARN Identity Management Federation

Collaboration requires the sharing of data and services across organizational boundaries throughout Texas and the world. It is not practical or wise to have valuable electronic resources available without proper safeguards. Thanks to the support of the University of Texas System (UT System), LEARN has deployed an Identity Management Federation (IdMF) for Texas. The IdMF is structured on standards based open source technology that brokers the authentication and identity management process between organizations that participate in the Federation. More

University Of Texas Medical Branch

UTMB provides healthcare services to many of the correctional facilities in Texas. These facilities are geographically dispersed across the state and serve two million patient visits, dispense four million prescriptions, and conducts seventy thousand telemedicine sessions annually. To improve the quality of these services, UTMB has completed the conversion of its network that supports its Correctional Managed Care services from a shared T1- based state-wide network to a network that utilizes LEARN for its core intrastate network services. More

PK-12 Public Schools

The Texas Education Telecommunications Network (TETN) utilizes LEARN's high capacity network to provide network enabled services for the PK-12 community in Texas as recommended in the Texas Education Long Range Plan for Technology. TETN core routers were deployed among the cities of Dallas, Houston, and Austin, and network switches were deployed in San Antonio and Tyler to expand the TETN footprint to connect Education Service Centers (ESCs) and Independent Schools Districts and students throughout Texas. More

Public Health And Disaster Recovery

The recent Gulf of Mexico oil disaster will likely have long-lasting effects on our environment for years. The blown-out Deepwater Horizon oil rig released massive amounts of oil into the Gulf Coast, and now the oil, as well as defoamers and dispersants utilized in the clean-up, pose difficult questions concerning the impact these chemicals may have on the environment and human health. More

Lamar University Utilizes LEARN For Disaster Recovery

In the connected world that we live in today, information technology is no longer used simply to support business processes, it enables them. Most organizations simply could not operate using the old pencil-and-paper processes of just a few years ago. Lamar University is no exception; the IT systems that run their mission-critical business processes must be continually available. More

Soltis Biodiversity Research Center

The Soltis Biodiversity Research Center in Costa Rica was established in January of 2009 to provide an international experience to students at Texas A&M University (TAMU), while protecting the unique ecological setting and enhancing awareness of the need for preservation. Located in the tropical rain forest of Costa Rica, about three hours northwest of San Jose, the technology infrastructure had to be built from the ground up. More