Feature

At the River Store in Ft. Pierce, Fla., it’s hard to miss the course textbooks stacked along multilevel, metal shelves, as well as the array of insignia T-shirts, sweatpants, hoodies, and caps bearing the Indian River State College logo and nickname, the Pioneers. These offerings have long been what generations of students, faculty, and alumni have come to expect at many of the almost 4,500 college stores across the country.

From big-picture analysis to stories from within the trenches, at our UBTech conference, higher ed leaders heard from dozens of pace-setting innovators and practitioners. It was an opportunity to identify emerging trends and models, discover practical paths for implementing new solutions, and explore the impact of technology on higher education together. Whether you were at the conference in person in Las Vegas or virtually, or you were unable to attend, we offer the following summaries, insights, and memorable takeaways. Consider it your UBTech Vegas experience.

Millennials, the generation born between the late 1970s and early 2000s, speak a language all their own. A digital camera is a camera; a cell phone is a phone. They’ve grown up with the internet and are wholly immersed in technology with websites like Amazon and Zappos customized to their individual interests.
The question for higher education enrollment managers is this: Is the viewbook, the crown jewel of the admissions process, ready for a leap into the online world? The answer: A resounding maybe.

Not long after Pennie Turgeon came to Clark University (Mass.) as its vice president for information technology and chief information officer, one of the university’s functional units undertook a project with a significant technology component to it. Despite the expertise of Turgeon’s team, the other unit saw Information Technology Services as little more than tactical lackeys.

“IT,” Turgeon recalls, “was viewed as the plug-and-chug monkeys.”

If you want a comprehensive view of the world of higher education, look no further than your local bookstore. Every month sees a wave of releases by administrators, scholars, analysts, and more focusing on the current state—good and bad—of higher education. We’ve chosen to highlight here some of the more interesting titles that have arrived at our offices. You’ll probably notice a common thread of thought among them. All the books below advocate dramatic changes to the very nature of higher education, and in many cases, they don’t just suggest change, they demand it.

For years, Kevin Confetti would perform a metaphoric scratching of the head. Thousands of work-related injuries were reported at the University of California’s 10 campuses and five medical centers, costing the system $25 million annually in workers’ compensation claims. As a workers’ compensation specialist for UC, he was responsible for payments to injured employees while they were off their feet.

Touch screens are taking over—and people expect to see them. In the years since Apple first popularized the technology with the iPhone in 2007, it has become almost rare to meet someone who doesn’t own a touchscreen smartphone or tablet. This is becoming even truer among the college-bound and younger generation. Take, for example, the viral YouTube video showing a toddler who could easily operate an iPad, but seemed perplexed when she touched the pages of a magazine and nothing happened.

Imagine a learning environment where students can’t hear the professor—or the emergency notifications as part of a safety situation. The basic need of clear audio solutions in higher education impacts so much more than meets the eye.

When applying for any of the more than 200 institutional scholarships at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, whose worldwide campus is based in Daytona Beach, Fla., students used to complete an online form and then spend time gathering an essay and 15 to 20 pages of additional hardcopy documentation. Financial aid staff then sorted and filed it all away in physical file folders.

Adjunct faculty members are an important resource on campuses, supplementing full-time faculty course offerings and making it possible for students to complete required courses on time. But until the fall of 2011, adjuncts and full-time faculty teaching additional courses were causing a tremendous drain on resources at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, located in Green Bay.