Networks / Servers

Innovation and initiative are integral to higher education success, but three schools recently stood out to judges of the 2011 AMX Innovation Awards. The University of Florida, College of Veterinary Medicine; Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada; and The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey were selected from a field of over 500 nominations.

The campus network is home to thousands of student residents while at the same time hosting key administrative servers containing private personal information. Yet in most universities the network administrators are expected to maintain an "open network environment" that allows free access in and out of the campus.

Caught up in cloud fever, campus IT leaders across the nation have virtualized their server rooms. Having fewer servers didn't make the world come to an end; in fact, just the opposite happened. Staffers have more time to work on critical tasks and energy bills have gone down since IT departments aren't cooling massive data centers anymore.

Is 2011 going to be the "Year of the Mobile Web" for higher education? A few studies have already hinted it. According to a white paper published by The Nielsen Company in December 2010, "Mobile Youth Around the World," 48 percent of the 15- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. now browse the web on their mobile devices?even though only 33 percent own smartphones. The Pew Internet and American Life Project concurred in its own report, "Mobile Access 2010," released in July 2010.

Who are you and how did you find us? That's what admissions officers at colleges and universities all over the country are asking this year as "stealth applications" proliferate.

e2Campus' uTip service from Omnilert enables campus constituents and community residents to report suspicious activity or crime incidents by sending a short message service (SMS) text message. Made to work in conjunction with e2Campus, uTip can deliver anonymous tips sent from a standard cell phone to public safety or campus police's mobile phones and e-mail accounts. Current e2Campus customers can set up the service for either anonymous alerts or auditable alerts.

A friend recently told me that she had deactivated her Facebook account because of security concerns. Just last month we heard that some Facebook applications, such as the extremely (yet inexplicably) popular Farmville game, were causing identifying information to be sent to advertisers without the users' consent.

For years, Butte College in California put up with an internal IT system that left huge gaps in the ability of administrators, faculty, staff, and students to electronically communicate with each other. Administrators were unable to send memos targeted to, say, faculty members or the public works staff. Professors were unable to communicate with specific classes. And students had to go through separate log-in procedures to access the system's Web Advisor - and Blackboard - functions, as well as their e-mail accounts.