Campus Briefs
CENTRALIZED CYBER-INFRASTRUCTURE.
Purdue University
(IN) has announced its plans for a new
cyber-infrastructure. With support from a Lilly Endowment grant, Purdue’s
Cyber Center will unite the computer
resources on all of its campuses. The strategy is designed to give the university
a robust, central information technology
system, including computers, software, facilities, repositories, services, and
personnel. A critical role of the center
will be to develop gateways like the NanoHUB (
www.nanohub.org),
a research portal for nanotechnology research and
education. President Martin C. Jischke commented, “The Cyber Center will
place the university at a competitive edge
by accelerating discovery, which will lead to new avenues of research.”
AHEAD OF THE POD. Still more
avenues for academic podcasting are being explored this fall at
Duke University
(NC). The university is planning what
it believes to be the first ever academic podcasting symposium. Organizers are
preparing to cover such topics as: the iPod
project and the larger Duke Digital Initiative; how podcasting and other emerging
technologies relate to the university’s
long-term planning, and to national initiatives; the way people interact with
media, and how podcasting may transform
that; and how podcasting and related digital technologies are being integrated
into teaching at Duke.
OCW GETS
EVEN MORE ZIPPY. Need course materials fast? MIT’s OpenCourseWare
(
ocw.mit.edu) is piloting a feature
that
will allow users to download in a .ZIP file all HTML pages and files associated
with a particular course. Yes, it’s still
free.
CIO MAG HONORS THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. Higher ed institutions
were well represented
this year among CIO magazine’s “CIO 100” (
www.cio.com/awards/cio100).
Honorees named to the list of 100 top organizations
were commended for their “boldness” and “the guts to embrace
the dangers.” The gutsy U’s honored for their
IT achievements were:
George Washington University (DC),
Northeastern
University (MA),
Neumont University
(UT),
Temple University (PA), the
University of Notre
Dame (IN), and the medical centers at the
University of Pittsburgh
(PA) and
Johns Hopkins University (MD).
CYBER CAFE IS
BIG AT CAMDEN
COUNTY. When
Camden County College (NJ) initiated a
$3 million redesign of its fire-damaged
community center on the Blackwood campus, administrators immediately included
what they believe
may be the largest collegiate cyber café in the region. The revamped facilities
are open this fall.
INSECURE ABOUT VOIP? The
Georgia Tech College
of Computing will host a Wireless
VoIP Security Summit in November to educate both the academic community and industry
players
about the security threats thwarting the mass adoption of the technology (
www.cc.gatech.edu).
NEW VP/CIO AT TUFTS. Amelia (“Mely”) Tynan became
the new VP for Information
Technology and CIO at
Tufts University (MA), beginning this fall
term. She was previously vice
provost and CIO at the
University of Rochester (NY), where she
introduced enhancements in wireless
computing, advanced networking, new courseware, and online admissions.
WHARTON
GETS REAL. The working professionals going for a Wharton Business Essentials
Certificate at
the
University of Pennsylvania are using new, sophisticated management
simulations to make “real
world” business decisions in teams. Students face the results of their decisions
almost immediately—
preparing them to work in a fast-paced, changeable, and risk-filled environment.
