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| Vol. 19, No. 10 | Nov. 4, 1999 |
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| Vol. 19, No. 10 | Nov. 4, 1999 |
Capturing the First Keystrokes: A Technological Transformation at the University of Delaware," coauthored by President David P. Roselle and Ginger Pinholster, public relations, is the lead chapter in Renewing Administration: Preparing Colleges and Universities for the 21st Century, published recently by IBM and EDUCAUSE.
The chapter details how UD's intensive commitment to technology over the last decade has resulted in improved learning opportunities for students, reductions in administrative costs and corresponding increases in scholarship monies and faculty and staff compensation.
The 330-page, hardcover book features a series of invited essays on administrative technologies at colleges and universities. Three sections cover administrative viewpoints, emerging strategies and tactics for sustaining positive changes in higher education, respectively.
Other contributors include Michael Finlayson, vice president for administration and human resources at the University of Toronto; Sister Janet Eisner, president of Emmanuel College; and Wendell C. Brase, vice chancellor for administrative and business services at the University of California at Irvine.
The chapter on UD highlights some of the awards garnered in the last five years for the campus commitment to making the best educational and administrative use of cutting-edge technology. These include UD's being cited in 1997 by the National Science Foundation as one of the top 10 universities demonstrating "bold leadership" in classrooms and UD's being ranked in 1998 by Yahoo! Internet Life magazine as 11th in the nation-and fourth among public universities-among "most wired" universities.
In 1994, UD received the top national award for its leadership in campus computing and was called a model for other institutions of higher learning across the country. The CAUSE Award for Excellence in Campus Networking recognized exemplary campus-wide network planning, management and accessibility, as well as effective use of the network to enhance teaching, learning, research, administration and community service.
Building a network in which 7,000 miles of fiber optic cable link every classroom, residence hall room, office, lounge space, laboratory and the library required substantial financial commitment, but it is one that has paid off.
UD's commitment to providing students access to the latest technological resources goes hand-in-hand with its implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) techniques, helping prepare students for the expectations and challenges of the 21st-century job market.
"The remarkably pervasive nature of technology at UD," according to the authors, "means that students within every discipline are continually introduced and reintroduced to some of the most sophisticated voice, video and data technologies currently available at any global corporation or university."
With these technologies, students in fields as diverse as art history and electrical engineering become active problem-solvers who can investigate historical mysteries and map the intricacies of abstract concepts such as the resistance of an object to electrical flow.
Even before they get here, prospective UD students can apply online, a convenience that more and more applicants use each year. Once on campus, students benefit from "one-stop shopping" via the web for a host of student services, including course registration, schedule changes, tuition payment, textbook purchases and more.
Both students and faculty gain from the wide array of research materials available to them. In Morris Library, they can access multiple networked databases, thousands of full-text journal articles and abstracts from thousands of scholarly journals. If, after reading a promising abstract, a faculty member wants to acquire an article published in a journal not in the library's collection, he or she can order it online and expect to receive it within 48 hours-and often in half that time.
The same institutional philosophy that has placed such resources just a few keystrokes away also sees "capturing keystrokes" as the key to a leaner, more efficient administration. "When a user's first keystrokes are captured electronically," the chapter explains, "they can be harnessed to achieve savings of time, paper and money. Faculty members and staff who have been freed from tedious exercises, such as typing and retyping manuscripts and administrative forms, can focus instead on more elevated responsibilities. Likewise, administrators provide faster, less expensive service to students and faculty when they have been freed from mountains of paperwork."
Such reengineering of administrative processes has curbed overhead and significantly contributed to the three-fold increase in student financial aid from 1990 to 1998. In this same period, compensation for full professors has risen from 16th among 24 top-rated public and private universities in the region to sixth, and junior faculty enjoy similar improvements. Staff salaries, too, are well above national and local medians.
All this combines to make UD a better buy for incoming students. Both U.S. News & World Report and Money magazine named UD a "best buy" in 1996, ranking it among the top 25 publicly supported universities in the nation.
Renewing Administration: Preparing Colleges and Universities for the 21st Century, edited by Diana G. Obligor of IBM and Richard N. Katz of EDUCAUSE, was published by Ankara Publishing in Boston. It is available at Morris Library and the University Bookstore.
--Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay
