President Roselle says much of the technological progress at UD, which has been ranked as high as No. 2 in a Yahoo Internet Life poll of the nation's most wired campuses, grew out of the first priority--to be a student-centered and student-friendly university.

Early in the 1990s, UD students were still waiting in long lines at points all across campus to register for courses, to drop or add courses, to buy books, to sign up for meals and to complete many of the other tasks required of ordinary student life. It was a process remembered well, if not fondly, by previous generations of Delaware students.

UD moved to create one-stop shopping in student services and pulled all those functions under one roof, the Student Services Center on Lovett Avenue. The University trained staff members as generalists, to be able to handle questions in all areas of students' needs, and also installed computer kiosks at which students could find key information.

Soon, it became apparent that students were extremely computer literate and would often wait for an open kiosk rather than step up to an available staff member. "We were not aware that is how the students would react until we saw it," Roselle says, "and seeing it, we decided to send the information to the students."

UD acted to wire the residence halls, making use of the early Internet to provide services and information directly to students in their rooms.

"That, in turn, led the University to discover a need for increased network security," Roselle says, "and as we worked on that, we began to see the excellent possibilities for conducting a great deal of administrative work on the web and thus saving a great deal of money."

UD began to install new systems to facilitate purchasing, to manage human resources information, to administer payroll and to handle other important tasks, becoming one of the nation's first institutions of higher education to do so.

"We were the first university on the web, clearly," Carl Jacobson, UD director of Management Information Services, says. "Delaware was the first institution of higher education to web-enable anything, and we did so before Netscape, before Amazon and before Federal Express."

As a result of its innovative use of the still-new technology, UD was presented the national CAUSE Award for Excellence in Campus Networking in December 1994. CAUSE, which is now known as EDUCAUSE, is a national association for the management and use of information resources in higher education.

In presenting the award, Jane N. Ryland, then CAUSE president, told Roselle that the organization "noted that technology has really changed the way the University of Delaware does business. It has helped re-engineer a number of processes; it has helped improve research, teaching and learning and public service; and it has really made a difference on campus."

"By the mid-1990s, the University of Delaware was recognized as a leader in the use of technology on campus, and that opened a lot of doors," Jacobson says.

One of the most important doors to open was that of the Common Solutions Group, a consortium of elite universities interested in web technology. "Admission to the Common Solutions Group is by invitation only, and they chose to invite us," Jacobson says. "That provided us access to people at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon and Princeton universities. We were hanging out with a whole different group of people."

Since, UD has taken advantage of opportunities to share its successes with other universities and to work collaboratively on a number of projects, including important open source software, a field in which Delaware continues to be a leader.

The University also continues to build on its successes, seeking new ways to improve processes and services through imaginative uses of technology.

Among those services that have been improved is communications. Recognizing the need for a fast and effective means to reach students, faculty and staff, parents and alumni, the offices of Public Relations and Information Technologies pooled their talents to create UDaily, an up-to-the-minute news service that offers information on interesting people and programs, events and athletics.

It also provides a means to communicate breaking news, from computer virus protection to Hurricane Isabel closings, in an instant.

There are UDaily sites specifically designed for the campus community, for parents and for alumni. UDaily news packages are sent via e-mail to its wide range of constituents on a daily basis.

At the UD Graphic Communications Center, the University community has access to the latest in copying and printing technologies, including direct-to-plate services that eliminate the need for film in transferring images to printing plates and thus improve overall quality.

Also, UD is exploring new ways to improve public safety through technology, with preparations under way for an online map that will show crime hot spots around the City of Newark. Using the map, students will be able to avoid certain areas at specific times, with most crimes happening on the campus periphery in the very early morning hours.

"We have tried to make technology an important facilitator for the UD experience," David Hollowell, UD executive vice president, says. "Technology is a tool that assists students in the learning process, with class assignments and access to library materials, and in accomplishing the business of being a student, from registration to getting a parking permit to gaining access to a football game. The technology also aids in communication over the Internet with family, friends, faculty and staff."

Hollowell adds, "The intent is to have technology readily available in a user-friendly, nonintrusive way. That is, people should be able to focus on the objective and not get tangled up in the technology."

UD is fortunate to have a group of "very talented web technologists and designers," Hollowell says. "The use of the web for most administrative uses is ahead of our peer institutions."

Jacobson credits Roselle with having a vision for innovation early on in the history of networking. "He is one of the nation's top presidents for technology," he says. "He believes that technology can be used to meet the mission of the institution, to make it a better place to live and learn."