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Ron Bleed's Chosen Focus: It's Alchemy
A Conversation with Ron Bleed
Ron Bleed has long been known as an exemplary leader in higher education
and a pioneer in education technology. As Vice Chancellor for Information
Technologies at Maricopa Community Colleges (AZ), he has overseen technology
implementations that have had far-reaching impact for the Maricopa Community
College District and have served as important models for community colleges
nationwide. This year, he received an Educause award for Excellence
in Leadership at the 2005 Educause annual conference, which was held
in Orlando this past month. CT spoke with Bleed at the conference.
CT: We understand that you will be retiring soon from your role
as Vice Chancellor for Information Technologies, choosing to give your
full attention to the work that inspires you most at Maricopa. After
nearly 40 years in this field, you have an incredible perspective on
what’s important for IT in higher education. Could you tell us what
you think is important for IT to focus on in the coming months and years?
What will your focus be?
Bleed: There are three banners I’m going to wave as I go into
the sunset of my career. One is hybrid courses, because I have
discovered that the greatest problem working against student success
in courses is life interruptions. Hybrid courses go a long way toward
giving greater flexibility to students by not committing them to such
a fixed time schedule. The second crusade is, when they do come to campus,
to have social spaces for them—spaces that are much friendlier for students,
places where they want to congregate. And we can look to Borders, Starbuck’s,
and those kinds of places for models of how to make seating and other
physical arrangements attractive. The third banner I’m waving is called
visual spaces—trying to introduce that further into the curriculum,
because it includes the skill sets that are needed for the 21st century.
It’s what our younger students have aptitude for, and I think we could
greatly improve learning if we were to use some of the tools they are
most familiar with and adept at. Visual literacy takes many forms and
has many definitions; we're just beginning to sort that out. It needs
to be introduced both as a separate course and in assignments within
courses, and it should also be addressed in teacher education. There
are many ways in which students can learn from and create materials
in digital media formats that include visual and sound elements.
CT: Those are three big challenges. It seems like there are a
lot of different things that have to come together to make these things
work.
Bleed: I think the challenge for us in IT will be to bring together
all kinds of forces. I’ve used the analogy of alchemy. We need to mix
up a different blend of things and produce a different kind of gold
than we have been traditionally producing with our work. This means
drawing not just from those of us in IT, but from a lot of other people
that need to be part of the picture. We’ll be creating a product that
is important to our students and to higher education’s future. We need
to look at just what that end product is—what that gold is. But I really
do believe that it will include more visual images, more flexibility
in course scheduling, and better design of spaces.
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Need to Know
Deliberative Poll Focuses on Diversity and Values
At Carnegie Mellon University (PA), a series of "Campus Conversations"
will incorporate deliberative polling of student opinions about life,
learning, and values. The campus-wide conversations will be held twice
yearly on relevant topics. The first poll, to be held as a face-to-face
event November 19, will investigate the nature of a diverse campus community
and will poll students on several related issues. The second poll, to
be held in the spring, will use PICOLA online deliberative polling software
developed at CMU.
Find
out more.
Campus Management Integrates Donor2 into ERP
Campus Management Corporation will acquire Systems Support Services,
adding Donor2 alumni relations and fundraising software to its CampusVue
administrative system for higher education. Donor2 supports the full
cycle of fundraising and includes constituent relationship management,
analysis functions, and Web browser capabilities.
Find out
more.
Addressing the Technology Gender Gap
The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) and
Cisco Systems announced this week their partnership to raise awareness
of educational and career opportunities for women in science, technology,
math, and engineering-pointing to research from the Information Technology
Association of America (ITAA) that women now represent only about one-quarter
of IT workers. Cisco will participate in NCWIT's growing coalition of
more than 65 corporations, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations,
and government agencies joined in a mission to achieve parity in the
workforce.
Find out more.
Who's Where
Northeastern University Opens Search for President
Northeastern University
(MA) has formed a search committee
for the successor to Richard Freeland, who has served as the university's
president since 1996. In the past decade under Freeland's leadership,
Northeastern has increased its national recognition, earning a ranking
as 115th in the latest US News & World Report's annual "America's Best
Colleges" list. Freeland will leave his post at the end of the current
school year.
Find out more.
Julian Lombardi has announced that he will join the Duke University
(NC) Office of Information Technology as Assistant Vice President for
Academic Services and Technology Support. There, he will have broad
responsibility for academic and research computing development and support
and well as for the customer service functions of Duke's OIT. Lombardi
leaves the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was Assistant Director
for Academic Services and Technology Support within DoIT and one of
the architects of the Croquet Project, a broadband communications platform
with a 3D interface and peer-to-peer network architecture.
Find out more.
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