Despite technology’s critical role in higher ed, there remains a gap between central IT and the rest of campus that can lead to unnecessary spending. Recent findings of a MeriTalk survey of 52 U.S. higher ed IT professionals illustrate this discrepancy. An average of 18 percent of campus IT systems are redundant, and 19 percent […]
First-year MBA students in the action-based degree program at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business spend seven weeks working with a U.S. or international company. After that, they form seven-member teams to propose a solution to a problem they encountered in the corporate world. But this learning process isn’t just about the instruction—it’s also […]
Higher education institutions can venerate or perpetuate hallowed traditions. Institutions have had a reputation for infrastructure conservatism. William Rees’ 2003 article “Impeding Sustainability? The Ecological Footprint of Higher Education” states “the real challenge for higher education is to help articulate an alternative life-sustaining worldview.” Today, campuses lead the transformation to sustainability, demonstrating its value nationwide. […]
"The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life." […]
The setting was big, the company was good and the technology talk was buzzing at this year's UBTech Conference, held June 16 to 18 at The Mirage Las Vegas. And based on the feedback from our 1,273 attendees, the "Technology Changes Everything" tagline will be put into practice as administrators and educators from the more […]
Georgetown University officials had a bit of an epiphany recently about the impact of their noncredit courses. While the offerings had been around since the 1990s, administrators hadn’t realized the big benefits they could bring to the institution. “What started as fairly standard, adult-education, personal-interest type of courses has evolved into a major part of […]
“Copyright is broken,” said Kevin Smith, scholarly communications officer at Duke University, to open his UBTech featured session on intellectual property. Smith, who is an attorney and a librarian, noted that in recent years technological innovation has put a severe strain on our copyright law, which dates from 1976. The law is supposedly technology-neutral, but […]
Getting tripped up on the latest accessibility standards when planning or renovating campus buildings—and then having to make costly changes later—is hardly a project team’s idea of a good time. The mistake may be innocent enough. Take the concept of completing a project in steps, which may have accessibility-related complexities. “There is a lot of […]
Cultivating a campus culture that embodies both global diversity and interconnectivity should be central to the mission of universities today. Reminders persist that our current environment and economy are not confined to our immediate geographic surroundings. Modern-day technologies, transportation, international trade, and politics significantly diminish distances that used to seem great. At the University of […]
In today's higher ed world, no department can work in a vacuum, least of all IT. From understanding the business plan to knowing how a web page or application will be used and by whom before it is designed and built, the days of CIOs and their teams working independently are gone. IT administrators are […]
