Copyright 1997 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 20, Number 2, Summer 1997, pp. 34-37. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jrudy@cause.org
Campus Profile
Colorado Community College and Occupational Education
System
The Colorado Community College and Occupational Education System is the largest postsecondary education system in Colorado. Reaching over 200,000 students yearly, it comprises twelve state system community colleges (including the "virtual" Colorado Electronic Community College), with a thirteenth, Northeastern Junior College, scheduled to join the system in July. The system carries additional responsibilities for three district community colleges and local secondary vocational schools that connect it with the K-12 sector in many parts of the state.
When the Colorado community college system was combined with occupational education in 1986, the new governing board selected Jerome F. Wartgow as CCCOES president to blend the two groups into a system. Their vision was for a system of colleges that would be adaptable, responsive to changing technology, and committed to serving local needs. Wartgow had his work cut out: member colleges run a wide gamut in size, sociological environment, and technological sophistication (some sites still have to accommodate significant numbers of rotary dial telephones).
In the ensuing decade, enrollment in the system increased by 74 percent -- by far the fastest growing educational system in Colorado. CCCOES made some projections about space needs, tracking the population bulge coming up through the K-12 system, and realized that Colorado did not have the building capacity to support the growth. As Wartgow said, "We began looking at how we could use technology to deliver courses. On the quality side, we'd made a commitment to try to provide the same level of quality and support to all of our colleges no matter where they were located. If you're out in Lamar with 800 students, we'd like to provide you the same options that we can provide in Westminster with 8,000 students."
This instructional challenge played into System demands for a high degree of standardization and commonality in other service areas, as well. The first seven or eight years of Wartgow's tenure was an exercise in diplomatic centralization -- establishing a common academic calendar, common tuition, faculty workload, core curriculum with common objectives for key courses, common application form.
Working with Wartgow throughout was Don Williamson, Vice President for Information Technologies, who was building a technology infrastructure capable of supporting extensive communication and widely dispersed information needs with minimal duplication and support. The system that has evolved is an unusual balance of centralized and geographically dispersed, standardized and custom-built.
When Williamson started his job ten years ago, "We were challenged
to put something together technologically. We had POISE in some places,
homegrown software in others. We developed a standard set based on Series
Z from Information Associates, and VAXes; we borrowed some money and brought
up ten or eleven community colleges in one year. It was unbelievable, but
we did it."
Over the years the standard software set has changed -- in the mid '90s, when SCT bought IA, CCCOES had just converted to SIS-Plus. Rather than move to another commercial option, they "decided to invest in ourselves," as Williamson described it. "We expanded our staff and reorganized into a structure that could centrally support administrative functions." The software result was a blend of purchased and home-built: they have farmed out financial aid to WolffPack for federal regulations, but done their own telephone registration system, faculty management, grades, in many cases enhancing purchased systems for their own needs. In the central Community College Computer Services (CCCS) office in Denver, staff are running Series Z on an Alpha platform. And they aren't in a hurry to move away from VMS -- always pragmatic, they are looking at client/server for some development, but keep many legacy systems for their stability and security.
According to Customer Service Manager Jeanette Lillard, administrative software is now standardized to the point that almost every school that has its own data center receives an automatic download of upgrades and inserts it into production without human intervention.The development is done in Denver, where the job runs for five to seven days, and on Sunday night it is inserted into production at the other sites. The staff is sensitive to special needs: "We didn't just take code that was developed here and say 'you have to use this,'" Lillard says. "We worked hard to accommodate local nuances, to modify the code to support unique features they were used to having. The changes were added in for everyone; other schools could choose not to use it."
A major network development effort started in 1994, with a move from DECnet to a TCP-IP network with standardized routers and hub products. From the central CCCS office in Denver, staff can view the whole system and alert local staff to problems. As Programming Manager Joe Misiaszek put it, "We're positioning ourselves to become our own disaster recovery facility. If one campus loses its shop, we can hot-swap boxes anywhere in the system. With the IP network, we just change where they reference their services to reconnect to their data." T-1 lines connect all campuses, and a 16-port audio-video bridge, the first implemented by a Colorado educational entity, allows conferencing from multiple sites.
About 5,000 CCCOES employees statewide, 2,000 of them in administrative roles, rely on this technology infrastructure. Supporting them is a centrally directed but geographically dispersed IT group. About half of the sixty computer services staff are located in the central Denver office, along with seven out of twelve managers (the management team depicted in the oval on the organizational chart). Williamson explains, "When we began this organizational structure, we knew we wanted to do something centrally in terms of our decisions about how to make strategic choices, but we wondered whether we needed to centralize people -- did we really need to bring them all in? Because of the network, we could build a more dynamic organization."
As a result, Joe Misiaszek and his staff of twelve, who develop financial aid and data warehousing applications for the system, are in Pueblo; Don Ina managed multimedia integration for the ETTC before being named its COO; Carole Sola and her three staff members work on system policies and procedures from Trinidad; Ken Goodwin directs imaging applications with three staff in La Junta. In July George Deaton and his staff at Northeastern Junior College will be fully incorporated into the networked organization from Sterling.
The CCCS staff work together as a system of flexible teams based primarily on need rather than traditional hierarchical principles. The reorganization extends the value of specialized knowledge workers as widely as possible, and fosters distribution of knowledge. Various projects draw from the different teams, Williamson explains. "If we're working on purchasing, the head of the team might be Eric Hasfjord. We'll probably have somebody from Dan's shop [training], somebody from networks, somebody from operations. What we've found is that no matter what you do in terms of technology implementation any more, it impacts everybody. That's why we developed the Project Implementation Teams. We have two PITs going now: a Web kiosk project, and our executive information system based on Magic -- our first deployment of a client/server application."
The staff forms SWAT-type teams as needed. Denver-based Network Manager Rick Dobbs has been working with a group drawn from as far away as Pueblo and La Junta to bring Northeastern Junior College in Sterling into the system by July 1, the start of a new fiscal year. They have had less than three months to convert the school, with a student FTE of about 1,700, from a PC and old PDP system to Series Z, converting the network to IP.
To coordinate all staff in spite of their geographic separation, the group relies heavily on the CCCOES compressed video/audio network, which has the capability to link up to forty-four sites across its 16-port bridge. This network gets steady use, with an average of eighty hours per month for meetings among Board members, campus presidents and vice presidents, and managers, and at least 100 hours per month of course delivery. The CCCS management team meets for a couple of hours a week via the video network, and individual teams schedule it as needed.
Driving the teams' priorities are the user committees for major functional areas -- registrars, controllers, financial aid directors, student services, admissions, business officers -- with representatives from the various schools. These groups, which usually meet monthly, set priorities for what needs to be done.
At an operational planning level is the Information Technology Executive Committee consisting of individuals from each campus, which meets every two months. To promote communication at the highest level of the campuses, all members must report to a president, providing the data center a first-hand view of what's going on with the presidents and how they're reacting to computing services. The first item on every agenda is campus issues.
Systemwide strategic issues are addressed by a seven-person Information Technology Master Planning Council representing major constituencies. In keeping with an overall emphasis on effectiveness and frugality, Williamson says, strategic planning for the System emphasizes careful, methodical thinking and communication with minimal documentation. "One of the members of my master planning team, a national consultant on planning, looked at all the pages and graphics I'd compiled and said, 'How many people do you think are going to read this?' and then, 'How long do you think this is going to be current?' We finally settled on a process: to have a one- or two-page product. No one will read any more than that. So that's what we've done for the last five years."
The primary focus of the CCCS is administrative technology, for which the central office essentially provides all logistical and planning support: development of administrative applications, online ordering, contracting for maintenance, backup of data from the local sites.
"We've really worked on trying to run this operation under a business model," Williamson says. "We look for ways to enter into System-wide agreements that take advantage of our common hardware and software standards to provide the best benefit for individual colleges." Such arrangements include a MOLP license for the Microsoft Office suite, a maintenance agreement with Digital Equipment Corporation that has saved the system a couple of hundred thousand dollars over individual agreements, and a common contract with Wolffpack. The standardization extends to many office products and forms: CCCS staff create base templates of such necessities as registration forms which can be ordered in quantity and customized for needs of the individual schools.
CCCS works hard to be responsive to user needs. Every campus, even if it doesn't have its own computing center, has at least one internal information services staff member on site, with some responsibility for campus local networks and instructional technology support, who can take many of the first-line calls for help. To avoid the problem of letting employees at campuses which have on-site data centers get undue advantage from the proximity, Williamson's group has built a centralized request process. If, for example, the Student Services staff at Pueblo Community College have a request, they electronically submit it to Marguerite Hudak in Denver. She may assign that student project to a programmer in Pueblo or to someone in Denver, depending on their workload.
One of the most popular support innovations in the past three years was the implementation of a central help desk staffed by Ed Hansen, "Mr. Ed." His 800 phone number is in heavy use, and if he is unable to talk the user through the problem, he knows which CCCS expert to refer them to. When he identifies patterns of problems, either with particular systems or with individuals who obviously need more extended help, he works with Training Manager Dan Tacker to develop an appropriate training program.
To keep users up to date on hardware and software, Tacker and his assistant have designed a complex of on- and off-site training, depending on the need. They balance group programs in their Denver offices with "road shows" to campuses undergoing special implementations, with a heavy emphasis on one-on-one training. They might choose to pull in a programmer who is expert in a new system and ask that person to provide content expertise under their pedagogical supervision. They develop relationships with suppliers, too, setting up, for instance, a training day with a Cisco representative and CCCOES network users. A relatively new area of interest, Tacker reports, is human resources training on stress, working with multiple priorities, or a help desk training session on dealing with difficult customers.
Support for instructional technologies has been more ad hoc. While CCCS provides the data and audio/video networks to all campuses, and help with RFPs, they essentially provide back-up instructional computing support according to the level of interest of the campus. However, the momentum is building for a major increase in this activity with the growth of the new Education Technology Training Center in Denver whose primary goal is to foster technology innovation in instruction throughout the System.
There is a new emphasis in the CCCOES on distance education, which has been available in a limited way for years but is taking increasing advantage of the System's PictureTel video network. President Wartgow sees two significant breakthroughs contributing to the new focus: "One was getting the legislature to create Colorado Electronic Community College under a state statute. It's a whole new college that has the same status legally as any other college and university in Colorado [and is expected to be accredited next year]. That was very, very significant. The second one was convincing the Capital Development Committee to change their definition of capital construction. Before that it was based on bricks and mortar -- price and life expectancy. We had to do a lot of groundwork to convince them that if they'd change the definition we could reduce the size of our 100,000 square-foot building to 50,000 square feet and put the rest of the money into technology. We did that. The breakthrough was that the technology support no longer had to come out of the operating side of the house."
Providing library support for this diverse assortment of institutions has been difficult. While all member colleges have libraries, some of them serve primarily off-campus, distance-learner students. CCCOES focuses on guiding users to tools such as CARL and CD resources. These efforts often tie into community service projects, which are a priority for the System. CCCOES is a leader in the Connect Colorado (C2) group which links higher education and K-12, state agencies, libraries, and hospitals to better serve rural areas. A pilot project of the group is working on bringing Internet connectivity into the Arkansas Valley in southwestern Colorado. In urban Westminster, the CCCOES has been consulting with the city to link a community college with the Westminster library, bridging two very different systems with a T-1 line and two user-friendly front-ends developed by the CCCS.
With state funding allocated by student FTE, and community colleges at the lowest allocation level for state higher education systems, many of the technological accomplishments of the CCCOES have been achieved through creative partnerships, careful deployment of resources, and clear purpose. Williamson points to pressures by business and industry, who both push for outcomes and provide advisory groups to identify means, and to beneficial collaborations with other higher education institutions for needed resources. But the remarkable successes of this group are also attributable to a staff who takes pride in responding to the needs of their customers and working together to solve problems.
Tucked unexpectedly into a 1950s-style one-story yellow brick building in east Denver is the technology gem of the CCCOES, the Education Training Technology Center. The startling interior of this 25,735-square-foot production and training facility, designed by architect Otto Poticha of Oregon, has been recognized for its futuristic energy and use of galvanized steel.
The largest educational production facility in Colorado
and one of the most comprehensive multimedia production sites in the U.S.,
the ETTC is part of the vision of CCCOES President Jerry Wartgow: "If
we're going to make a real change in the educational product, we have to
have something to do it with." When Wartgow learned that Lowry Air
Force Base was to go on the military-base closure list in 1992, the CCCOES
was first to file a proposal for use of part of the facilities as a public
benefit conveyance. They received over 153 acres of land and almost a million
square feet of building space, including the Lowry Enlisted Club, whose
solid terrazzo ballroom floor now serves the ETTC's 4,000-square-foot production
studio.
The Center is the product of masterful planning,
partnerships, and bargain hunting. An empty shell on January 8, 1997, open
for a full dress rehearsal on February 8, it contains over 115,000 connections
and 200 miles of cable linking multimedia production workstations, an executive
videoconference center, control room audio suites and a graphic/animation
suite, a smart classroom for multimedia training and videoconferencing.
Don Ina, Director of Operations for ETTC as of July 1, describes the facility
as unique in that all signals are digital, all can be routed anywhere in
the building without videotape or "sneaker net," and multimedia
is fully integrated with all classroom development. Technology was selected
for seamless integration, simplicity, and upgradability. Williamson estimates
that he paid about $4 million for equipment worth $7 million. Major partners
are Jones International, U S West, and PictureTel.
According to Executive Director Mary Beth Susman, the Center embodies a basic CCCOES philosophy of minimizing duplication: individual campuses will have instructional technology pods, but this is the facility that will be kept state-of-the-art, allowing faculty to experiment and decide what seems important to carry back home. The vision is that each of the 800 faculty in the CCCOES and a majority of its part-time instructors will cycle through in the next two years, to learn how to take advantage of available instructional technologies.
In addition to training, development of course content in multimedia
form is a current priority. Susman is working with faculty experts from
CCCOES colleges and industry partners to create Internet and CD-ROM courseware.
One such project involves a partnership with a major publisher to create
multimedia courseware based on their popular textbooks. The project will
use ETTC facilities and system faculty as subject matter experts along with
a national advisory committee.
An Executive PerspectiveJerome F. Wartgow, President, CCCOES
There's been a real change in the level of use of technology by our senior managers, vice presidents, and presidents in the last two years. With that you get the critical mass, and then you can really do some things.
For us, it just became practical. We have this system with twenty-two campuses, where we needed to take communication beyond telephone conference calls -- our twelve college presidents are all over Colorado. We started with something as simple as e-mail. Three or four years ago everyone had e-mail, but getting all the college presidents to use it was a challenge. I just had to start doing it. I sent out meeting notices and budget material -- "Here's a draft budget; let me know in twenty-four hours if you have any concerns." If five of them didn't turn on their computers . It wasn't an edict: we just started doing important business on it, and they came along because it was necessary.
In the early years our people had different levels of sophistication in making decisions based on data. As time went on they began to realize that we had a common numbering system, common ways of reporting. We even worked with the state auditors and built a whole series of programs that they were comfortable with that showed countable FTE, non-countable FTE, and all the rest of it. The system is run everywhere, at every institution. We started making budget decisions based on these data. When we handed out reports at presidents' meetings, and everyone could see inconsistencies where some colleges hadn't used the system, it had a big impact.
The money to support technology comes from the colleges, and the more success and visibility we have, the more support there is for everything Don's doing. Our philosophy has been "how do we benefit our whole organization."
This article is based on a visit to the Colorado Community College and Occupational Education System by CAUSE editor Karen McBride. CAUSE/EFFECT's Campus Profile department regularly focuses on the information resources environment-- information, technology, and services-- of a CAUSE member institution, to promote a better understanding of how information resources are organized, managed, planned for, and used in colleges and universities of various
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