Drake University: What Presidents Need to Know About the Impact of Networking on Campus Background paper for HEIRAlliance Executive Strategies Report #3 "What Presidents Need to Know ... about the Impact of Networking on Campus" ------------------------------------------------------------------- prepared by representatives of DRAKE UNIVERSITY Michael R. Ferrari President Gary D. Russi Vice President, Research & Strategic Planning William A. Stoppel Director of Libraries Robert W. Lutz Director of Computing & Telecommunications ----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1993 by HEIRA The Executive Strategies reports are published by the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (HEIRAlliance), a vehicle for cooperative projects between the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM. For information about paper copies, contact CAUSE at 303-449-4430, orders@CAUSE.colorado.edu ============================================================= What Presidents Need to Know about the Impact of Networks on Campus: Networks at Drake University If there is one word that can be used to characterize the Drake experience with networks, that word is communication. Since ubiquitous voice, data and video networking appeared on campus in 1987, there has been a change in the daily rhythm of the university based on the changed mechanisms for communication. Barriers of space and time have been removed by store and forward mechanisms that operate in all three arenas. A voice mail system allows faculty and staff to receive messages at all hours of the day and night, whether in the office, at home or on the road. Electronic mail services provide the same capabilities for the written word. Of course, the ready availability of VCRs and a campus- wide video distribution system has enabled the same capability to exist for the video world. Two examples of enhanced communication come to mind. We invite new freshmen and their parents to campus for a Friday evening - Sunday noon orientation event. We hold several of these events in June and early July. The president tries to do the opening welcome for as many as he can. This past summer, the president told the students what his e-mail address was and urged them to keep him informed on their progress. He now routinely receives many e-mail messages a week from students. The electronic format has effectively erased the communication barriers between student and university president. Students are not likely to take the time to write a formal memo to a president or to request time on his/her calendar for a face to face meeting on a small issue. Being able to send the president an electronic note any time of the day or night is a powerful stimulus to communication. Another example involved using electronic mail to do an informal survey of new students in the early fall. The survey form was sent to all new students electronically with electronic response preferred. An excellent return was achieved and students' opinions were quickly gathered through a simple mechanism. We believe that student response rate was good because a "high-tech" method was used for the interaction. Our president, as is true of many other presidents, is on the road for a significant amount of time each year. A laptop computer with modem provides electronic access back to campus and enables the president to maintain direct contact with the key members of his management team. The contact occurs through electronic mail with capability for attaching word processing documents, spreadsheets and other items. When the president is on campus, a large portion of his wide-ranging contacts with members of the campus community occur through the identical mechanism. Many faculty have found that office hours are now twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week through electronic mail. Students can send questions, comments or concerns at a moment's notice. Faculty can respond thoughtfully at a time convenient for them. The result is enhanced communication between students and faculty. This form of interaction extends beyond the teacher-learner pair. Ever larger portions of university communication are conducted with electronic mail and messaging. Additionally, group authorship of documents is dramatically enhanced. As a result of these and other uses of networked personal computers, we have realized productivity gains for students, faculty and staff. The connection of campus computers to the Internet adds a wealth of opportunities for members of the campus community. The same communication gains that provided on-campus benefit are now extended to the broader community of scholars throughout the world. The rapid growth of the Internet speaks volumes about the benefits that are derived from routine access. Access to people and information on a world-wide basis at low cost provides obvious benefit. The availability of networking and pervasive desktop computers has not only changed the character of the institution, it has changed the type of people that we want to hire. It has changed the kind of students we want to recruit. The expectations of these new students, faculty and staff for more and better networking and desktop computers are high and rising. Thus, by satisfying initial needs for networking and information technology access, we have sown the seeds of new demand through fundamental change within the University. The rising expectations produce a new set of issues. Network bandwidth becomes a critical success issue for students and faculty. While students and faculty were delighted to be able to up- and download files from mainframe to desktop computer at 9600 baud several years ago, their current usage patterns have made this approach obsolete. Access to the Internet and its wealth of resources has accelerated the demand for file transfers between systems. Users are no longer content with slow transfer rates when they have many files a day to up- or download. Rising expectations have also caused increased demand for support services. Both reference librarians and computing center personnel are increasingly swamped with demands for help with accessing the wealth of information available on both the campus network and the world-wide Internet. Demands for installation of new departmental local area networks and for interconnection of these networks to the larger campus network are growing rapidly. Installing, maintaining and supporting local area networks is an ever-growing portion of the support staff workload. If there was one area in which we underestimated the costs of information technology it was in support staff. The fundamental question to be asked about networking and the integration of information technology into the fabric of the university relates to the fact that large expenditures are necessary to make it happen. Naturally, the question is, "Is it worth it?" Our answer is an unequivocal "Yes, it makes a difference. It makes a difference in productivity of faculty, staff and students. It makes a difference in quality of instruction, research and administration. It makes the university capable of thriving in the decades ahead. Clearly, the dividends warrant the investment." Notice that we do not say expense. We say investment. We view the expenditures to date as an investment in the future, both in the University and in the future success of our students.