IT from the Ground Up

UC Merced CIO Rich Kogut’s visions and plans from the past three years will materialize as the first new University of California campus in nearly 40 years officially opens in Merced, CA on September 5.

Preview Q&A excerpted from the upcoming September issue of Campus Technology

You’ve been working toward the opening of the new UC Merced campus this fall. How long have you been working on this project, and what are the goals for IT? I came onboard in August 2002, so it’s been just over three years. The goals for IT are, of course, the same as any campus has: We have to support everything. But there are three cornerstone strategies we’re trying to follow in implementing IT. First, we are very much trying to use a flexible, open-standards-based infrastructure, so that we can allow freedom of choice for the services that are going to be added later. We want to be able to leverage new and emerging technologies without being locked in to any particular solution or vendor, so it’s important to create a solid and open infrastructure that we can build on. Second, we’re trying to provide service from the user perspective, avoiding silos not only in the actual function, but also based and structured around the user’s point of view. Part of that will be heavy reliance on portal technology so that users can see everything they need, via one location. We’re trying to structure our services so that students, faculty, staff, or others have as unified an interface as possible. The third cornerstone: to build in identity management and automated provisioning as a fundamental part of the IT infrastructure. We want to automate as much as we can from the start, and make it totally scalable.

You’re opening with 1,000 students and plans to scale up in coming years. What types of programs will initially be offered on this campus? Of those 1,000 students, some will be graduate students, some will be junior-year transfers, and the majority will be freshmen. On the academic side, as well as in IT, everyone is trying to take an integrated approach. In terms of academics, that means a lot of interdisciplinary work. We’re not opening with standard departments; there is no biology or Spanish department. We have three schools, and majors are intended to be higher level, with the ability to select emphases…The idea is to have as much interaction among our three schools as possible, to prepare students for the cross-disciplinary challenges of the 21st century.

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Purdue’s Cyberinfrastructure Center

Purdue University (IN) announced its plans for a new cyberinfrastructure this past Thursday. With support from a Lilly Endowment, 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, and services, and personnel. 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. The symposium organizers are planning to cover such topics as: Duke’s iPod project and the larger Duke Digital Initiative; how podcasting and other emerging technologies relate to Duke’s long-term planning and to national initiatives; the way people interact with media and how podcasting may transform that; how podcasting and related digital technologies are being integrated into teaching at Duke.

Universities Getting a ‘Black Eye’ on Information Security?

Some experts say universities represent half of the institutions reporting IT security breaches, others say 20 percent. A recent Boston.com article says that “[T]here’s a lot of hand-wringing in universities these days. Those in the IT departments are starting to tell administrators, ‘See, I told you so, we have to have better control.’” (Boston.com)
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SCUP Board Elections

The Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org), an organization representing 5,000 higher education planners, announced its 2005-2006 board of directors at its annual international conference this past month. Michael F. Middaugh, assistant vice president for institutional research and planning at the University of Delaware is president; Andrea A. Lex, senior director of student and administrative services, University of Washington, is president-elect; James L. Murdock, assistant dean of finance and planning, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, is secretary/treasurer; and L. Carole Wharton, a management consultant at McManis-Monsalve Associates (www.mcmanis-monsalve.com), is immediate past president.

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