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From sources of funding to student engagement models, from the use of mobile technology to social media, multiple disruptive forces create surprises for administrators, frustrations for academics and bewilderment for students. Uncertainty threatens to incapacitate institutions as they choose for change to be thrust upon them, or attempt to avoid or ignore the strategic importance of the changes taking place around them.

For almost three years, Globe University (Minn.) has used video conferencing to connect classrooms, provide training to our admissions professionals, and even facilitate business meetings. Our success in implementing video conferencing has led to 18 video conferencing systems set up across 11 campuses. As a result, our operations are streamlined, our costs are better managed and our student body is better served with classes they may not otherwise have been able to take.

Finding funding for new technology investments in higher education can often seem overwhelming and stressful given the current economic environment. However, there are strategies available to support new technological initiatives. Administrators just need to do their homework and remain persistent to secure the funding needed to deploy these essential advancements.

In a step toward improving college access and affordability, California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law two bills that will provide students with free access to digital textbooks.

Bills 1052 and 1053, passed last week, call for creating free, open source digital textbooks for 50 of the most widely taken introductory courses among the University of California, and California Community College systems, and creating a state digital open source library to house the texts.

While the role of international campuses of U.S. institutions of higher education has been much debated in recent years, their primary purpose and capacity for constructive, new developments is often overlooked. With much controversy over motives, money and visions of soft power, the critics rarely look at the realities that brought these overseas ventures to fruition in the first place—or the drive that keeps them operating and expanding.

Just because your institution maintains a Facebook page and a Twitter account does not mean that you’re utilizing social media channels to the maximum benefit of your college or university. While establishing a platform for the university as a brand, attracting prospective students and faculty, and reaching out to students on the channels of their choice are all great uses of social technologies, there’s far more—and broader reaching benefits—to social media than simply posting news and campus happenings.

This year, the iconic black and white Oreo cookie celebrates its centennial. One hundred years since the chocolate wafer sandwich first went on sale in the U.S., this favorite treat is now beloved around the world with $2 billion in global sales. Second only to the U.S. in Oreo cookie consumption is the world’s most populous country of China. But if you’ve traveled to the Far East, you’ll find the cookie you dunk in Shanghai is nothing like one you savor in St. Louis. In fact, the first Oreos sold in China crumbled.

Over the last few years, high-profile laboratory incidents at major institutions have made front-page headlines. The latest resulting in the death of a graduate student at UCLA, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) decision to pursue criminal charges against both UCLA and the individual principal investigator (PI) in charge of the lab. The UCLA tragedy and another high profile accident at Texas Tech University (which also resulted in casualties) have altered the way OSHA is approaching enforcement in research lab settings.

Institutions of higher learning around the globe are turning green. They are embracing sustainability for many reasons, some of them economic, some of them because their student body and faculty are requesting it, and some of them just because it is the right thing to do. There is now even a “College Sustainability Report Card” (published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute) which lists those schools that have joined the green bandwagon and demonstrated a commitment to sustainability and is designed to give guidance to those institutions considering going green.

Over the past 10 years, tenure at colleges and universities has come under fire from a variety of sources, especially legislators and politicians, most of whom have little or only tangential experience within the academic community. A recent pro and con about tenure by those more connected to the academy also appeared in The Wall Street Journal. Most surprising among recent attention to this issue is a survey of university presidents, a majority of whom would do away with tenure if they could.