Dakota State University: Technology Equips Graduates with Real-World Experience
Dakota State University's mission,
as authorized by South Dakota legislation, is to integrate information technology
(IT) throughout the school's curriculum. Dakota State University is regionally
recognized as the leading university for IT education in South Dakota, incorporating
technical training within business and liberal arts coursework.
In accordance with this mission, Dakota State University faculty members were
looking for new ways to enhance our IT programs. But like many of today's higher
education institutions, we grappled with exactly how to integrate new, "real
world" enterprise systems into our established business curricula.
Examples of such systems include human resource information systems (HRIS),
financials, supply chain management (SCM), and other enterprise solutions. These
systems, many of them now Web-based, represent the tools that graduates ultimately
will work with in their chosen professions. Students who gain experience in
working with these technologies while in college will likely possess marketable
skills they can apply in their post-graduation careers.
Fulfilling a Mission
Recognizing the value these technologies lend in the classroom, we began to
explore ways to integrate enterprise software theory and training into Dakota
State University's College of Business and Information Systems (BIS). Three
years ago, we began working with PeopleSoft's On Campus program, and immediately
knew it could be the catalyst to help us fulfill our technology mission.
PeopleSoft's On Campus program is a comprehensive industry-academic partnership
that helps colleges and universities integrate enterprise software into their
course offerings. The program awards training and academic grants of PeopleSoft
8 enterprise management software. Building on an initial project using PeopleSoft's
HR and Financials 7.5 modules, PeopleSoft On Campus awarded Dakota State University
a $2.8 million grant to upgrade to PeopleSoft 8.
We were the first institution to receive the new, Internet-based software.
In the fall of 2001, we began implementing these Internet-enabled products,
including PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, Financials, and Supply Chain
Management.
Smooth Sailing
Dakota State University worked closely with PeopleSoft to ensure a smooth transition
to its new technology-enhanced curriculum. First, we committed to ongoing faculty
training on the new enterprise software. Early on, we had contracted with PeopleSoft's
educational division to train all BIS faculty in PeopleSoft fundamentals. To
date, BIS faculty have attended more than 60 weeks of PeopleSoft functional
and technical training, providing us with a unique and outstanding faculty development
resource.
To meet the challenge of continuous improvement and development, BIS faculty
worked with industry-leading companies to build relevant classroom programs.
Our aim is to create programs and courses with real-world technology applications,
augmenting curricula with the functional and technical skill sets required in
today's workplace.
Today, BIS offers multiple technology-based one- and three-hour courses in
enterprise software. The courses cover Internet architecture, application design,
installation and the fundamentals of enterprise systems and PeopleSoft. Additionally,
Dakota State University is developing an enterprise system software minor in
Computer Information Systems.
Sharing the Wealth
Interestingly, Dakota State took its growing partnership with PeopleSoft a step
further. A natural extension of our On Campus experience is our institution's
new Center for Remote Enterprise System Hosting (CRESH). Through CRESH we offer
other interested schools remote-hosted access to PeopleSoft's suite of applications.
Institutions around the world are interested in utilizing enterprise systems
in their courses, but not every school has the time or technical where-with-all
to support complex systems infrastructures. That is where CRESH comes in, and
we anticipate that it will be a significant new resource for schools across
the United States. At CRESH we have the technical infrastructure in place, and
we are developing business models and access and delivery options that schools
may wish to utilize (for example, we can connect schools to the PeopleSoft server
over Internet2). We highlighted the Center at recent events such as the Information
Systems Education Conference (ISEC) and the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI)
and received enthusiastic interest from faculty members from around the world.
CRESH is how Dakota State can "share the wealth," bringing the merits of the
On Campus program to bear on other schools across the country.
"At Dakota State University, we learned first-hand that a successful, enterprise-software
implementation—even for academic uses—involves a significant investment of time
and resources," says President Jerald A. Tunheim.
"The implementation process—contracting, installation, training, testing, maintenance,
and support—is very similar to the implementation cycles of a commercial project.
But then we had to add curriculum development to the mix too! With the technical
infrastructure completed, we now have a multi-year plan in place that focuses
on faculty and curriculum development and the CRESH remote-access initiatives,
all of which will allow us to exploit the capabilities of this new enterprise
software, while offering an exciting new resource to other institutions around
the country."
While extensive and time-intensive, these undertakings are helping Dakota State
University keep pace with the most recent technical developments in the industry.
The latest pure Internet enterprise software opens doors for remote access to
applications and to new styles of teaching and learning. With the use of these
technologies, industry and academia collaboration can enrich courses and provide
a direct benefit to our students.
For more information contact John Webster, PeopleSoft Programs Director,
CRESH, at John.Webster@dsu.
