DRAFT SPECIAL REPORT
of the
UNIVERSITY COMPUTER AND ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
CONCERNING THE BOARD OF HIGHER EDUCATION'S
SUPPORT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

        The rapid growth of information technology (IT) and pressures for its use in education demand a substantial investment by the University.

 

        IT use on campus varies depending upon the equipment available in existing classrooms, the Internet connectivity of our community, the training of our faculty and students, and the equipment available on faculty and student desktops. Heroic efforts are sometimes needed to assemble equipment in our less well equipped classrooms. The slow increase in the number of well equipped classrooms is a bottleneck to the general faculty’s progress in developing pedagogy.

 

        The Committee recognizes that revenue issues may dictate the rate at which IT can be developed. We believe, however, that the current focus on existing IT programs does not address the broader objectives that the Board of Higher Education wishes to address in encouraging IT education. The Committee urges that the current emphasis on maintaining support for focused IT programs on our campus be broadened to include an emphasis on increasing the number of IT-ready classrooms and providing a revenue stream that will provide appropriate computer equipment and training for all faculty and students.

 

        We emphasize that the appropriate hardware needed by each faculty member and the students they serve may not be consistent with a common solution for the entire campus. A flexible approach to providing the technology to different disciplines must be combined with an understanding that all disciplines must be served by any mandate to increase IT. Some teaching pedagogy requires substantial investments in university owned and maintained equipment such as digital projectors and information servers, and in faculty training.   Improvements in equipment may put economic pressures on some segments of our student body and may require special mechanisms to maintain equity.

 

{        Therefore, the Committee recommends that the Faculty Senate adopt the following resolution which was passed by the Committee on April 10, 2001:} To be determined.

 

WHEREAS

            The need for information technology (IT) infrastructure has become fundamental to the advancement of the academic enterprise and the current structure has resulted in:

(1) inequities, including that not all faculty have access to

a) desktop or laptop computers,

b) training in use of computers,

c) classrooms equipped for IT; and

(2) inequities to students across the University, including

a) unequal IT resources based on discipline,

b) unequal access to IT based on housing, and

c) unequal access to IT based on financial need;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT

             The students and faculty of every discipline of the University community should benefit from planned improvements in IT infrastructure.

MOTION That the Faculty Senate endorse the resolution passed by the University Computer and Electronic Communications Committee that would provide all disciplines of the University community with improvements in information technology.

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DRAFT 3/11/2001 12:34 by JGK