Shortly after becoming a CIO (Chief Information Officer), the author read an article by Gregory Jackson in the January 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, "A CIO's Question: Will You Still Need Me When I'm 64?" Jackson, one of the most widely known and respected CIOs in higher education, argued that CIOs in higher education face four…

Universities face the challenge of being aware of and responsive to continuous, rapid technological change as it affects the institutional mission. To address this challenge, the University of Washington conducted an institution-wide assessment of educational technology. The purpose of this research was to inform the design of technical tools and…

Five years ago, North Shore Community College (NSCC) encountered rising enrollments in the face of lagging state funding. The addition of two new campuses stretched NSCC thin as it attempted to provide administrative and academic services across five (more recently consolidated to four) locations. Its students increasingly struggled to balance the…

With a new wave of campus IT solutions comes a familiar challenge: How does one encourage and help build distributed applications without being overrun by stovepipe solutions? Anticipating significant enrollment growth (5 percent per year) for the next several years, double-digit annual growth in funded research, and little chance that resources…

The commoditization of low-cost hardware has enabled even modest-sized laboratories and research projects to own their own "supercomputers." The authors argue that this local solution undermines rather than amplifies the research potential of scholars. CIOs, provosts, and research technologists should consider carefully an overall…

Many of the information security appliances, devices, and techniques currently in use are designed to keep unwanted users and Internet traffic away from important information assets by denying unauthorized access to servers, databases, networks, storage media, and other underlying technology resources. These approaches employ firewalls, intrusion…

In 1995, Gonzaga University embarked on a project to implement a university-wide information system. The search for an "out-of-the-box" solution began following an attempt to build an integrated data management system in-house. In 1994, Gonzaga decided to look at commercial solutions to its database management problems. With the blessing…

As a CIO leading an IT department through change and reorganization, the author developed the Enterprise Compass--a four-point guide to reaching goals and focusing achievement. The Enterprise Compass directs staff to look forward to future accomplishment, back for performance assessments, across campus for better understanding of practical working…

This year marks the fifth annual EDUCAUSE Current Issues Survey to identify what campus information technology leaders see as their most critical IT challenges. Thirty-five percent (571) of the 1,638 EDUCAUSE primary member representatives who were asked to participate responded to an e-mail invitation to complete the Web-based survey in December…

For several years prior to 2000, students and faculty at McMaster University rated classrooms below those at peer universities. In the case of many classrooms, the teaching environments were outdated and the technology was old. The provost determined in 2000 that they needed to make a long-term investment in their learning spaces. For sound…

It is difficult to estimate the costs of not writing thorough IT policy. Misuse of IT resources, whether through ignorance or malice, costs money, as do court cases that can result from abuse. Furthermore, a poor university accreditation report caused in part by poor policy documents will likely have an adverse impact on student enrollment. There…

Virtually every academic department in an institute of higher education requires Web presence as a critical component of its information technology strategy. The problem of how to leverage the World Wide Web and build effective and useful departmental Web sites seems to have long been solved. Yet browsing academic Web sites from around the world…

Just as technology-enhanced teaching and learning has evolved over the past 50 or so years--from overhead projectors and reading machines to PowerPoint presentations, discipline-specific simulations, and Web-based databases--so has support for instructional technology evolved at institutions. The changing rubric of librarian, media specialist,…

With the infusion of technology into all aspects of daily life, students are becoming more and more adept at using technology as an educational resource. Many faculty, however, are not keeping pace with their students. Additionally, faculty feel increasingly unprepared to integrate technology into the classroom. Many institutions of higher learner…

Good information security does not just happen--and often does not happen at all. Resources are always in short supply, and there are always other needs that seem more pressing. Why? Because information security is hard to define, the required tasks are unclear, and the work never seems to be finished. However, the loss to the organization can be…