Campus Communication

IN THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, most of us have read any number of time management articles that focus on how easy it is to become a slave to e-mail. Most of these discuss the discipline required by executives, including university administrators, to keep the handling of e-mail from distracting us from our primary function--that of providing leadership. It is my contention that time management issues are but the tip of the iceberg.

A staggering 95 percent of sexual assault cases on college campuses go unreported, according to findings of a nine-month investigation by The Center for Public Integrity. Confidential mediation, which is the usual course of action taken by university officials in lieu of judicial action, often leaves victims feeling further victimized as it results in a lack of accountability and punishment for offenders, notes report author Kristin Lombardi.

At Abilene Christian University in West Texas, technology managers were struggling with an outdated email system. While providing basic service, it lacked advanced functionality and was time-consuming and expensive to maintain. in addition, the full-time email administrator’s position had recently become vacant.

Kevin Roberts, chief information officer at ACU, knew it was time for a change. “We were disenchanted with our current email system,” he says, adding that the system servers were outdated, expensive to maintain, and were running out of space.

The 53-campus system includes seven state universities and 25 community and technical colleges offering more than 3,500 programs to 374,000 students and 140,000 continuing career education enrollees. With campuses five to six hours apart, Karen Bergmeier, ITS project lead- er and Cisco WebExTM solution liaison, found herself traveling four to five hours two to three times each week to conduct training on the system’s proprietary software.

The College of Western Idaho was still more than a year away from holding its first class. A thousand details needed to be resolved. Not least among them was the installation of a computer network that would serve the fledgling college’s seven campuses.

Thanks to an aggressive technology modernizationproject initiated by a tech-savvy administration and an energetic technology director brought in to execute the plan, PresentationCollege is quickly discovering how the right tools can attract students and help everyone work more efficiently.

The 200 or so freshmen arriving at the Aberdeen, S.D., campus this fall were required to purchase their own Acer TravelMate 2304 notebook PC. In addition to providing on-ramps to the school’s new wireless network,

For more than 35 years, Barton County Community College in central Kansas has been preparing students for success through a blend of classroom and practical hands-on education. A majority of the school’s degree programs incorporate the use of technology to prepare students for today’s workforce, while its wired buildings and computer labs ensure that technology access is at the fingertips of its more than 5,000 students.

At SMU's Cox School of Business, tomorrow’s business leaders are re-envisioning how the world does business.

“It’s all about making education accessible to everyone, anytime, anywhere,” explained Ann Watts, instructional design coordinator and portal project manager at DMACC. Des Moines Area Community College is a public institution with six campuses.

The portal ? known as “my.dmacc” to users ? is an outgrowth of the college’s educational mobility initiative that runs on HP ProLiant servers. DMACC has implemented a systemwide wireless system to support academic programs and administrative needs.

Stephen D. Golding Executive Director, HopkinsOne Johns Hopkins

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