Inside Arizona's Push to Modernize and Secure Campus IT

CIO Elliott Cheu on Identity Upgrades, Unified Support and Research-Ready Systems , Jennifer Lawinski • January 28, 2026

The University of Arizona is advancing a campus-wide modernization and security agenda by centralizing a previously fragmented IT environment and unifying core platforms that support teaching, research and operations, said Elliott Cheu, CIO at the university.

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The school's approach builds on major structural changes made in 2024 and 2025, including an IT centralization that expanded central IT from roughly 350 staff to nearly 1,000 and a broad push to standardize tools and governance. A centerpiece of that effort is a wholesale email migration that consolidated more than 200,000 student and alumni Gmail accounts into Outlook to tighten security controls and improve the user experience.

"What we were looking to judge success was security… trying to reduce phishing by tightening controls ...