Where Green and IT Meet

By Linda L. Briggs

Here are some interesting facts you may not know: U.S. colleges and universities spend nearly $2 billion each year on energy, according to the federal government. And the Department of Energy (D'E) estimates that the average PC wastes up to 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year simply by running at full power when no user is present.

What should this mean to you? Simply this: As an IT manager, how much do you know about your school’s energy management program and systems – some of which are sophisticated software programs sharing the campus network? Although the cost of energy is soaring and computers are voracious energy consumers on campus, many in IT know very little about what their school is doing to save energy. That’s partly because most energy dollars don’t come out of the typical IT budget. The energy it takes to run PCs and servers across campus generally belongs to the facilities side, and is regarded as a set cost of doing business.

But those perceptions – that energy consumption is a fixed cost, and that IT isn’t involved – are both increasingly out-of-date. Computers are playing a growing role in energy management, as schools rely on sophisticated computerized energy management systems that rival the complexity of mission-critical systems on campus. Adopting a strategic approach to energy management, especially as new buildings are planned or retrofitted, can lower a university’s energy bills by 30 percent or more, according to figures from the government’s Energy Star Web site...

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Tuition Tax Credit Issue Undecided in Senate

Tax credits related to higher education are held up as Congress embarks on a month-long recess...

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Nike Founder Gives $105 Million Gift to Upgrade Stanford B-School

Nike Inc. founder Phil Knight will give $105 million to Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business...

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College Students Warned About Online Postings

Incoming college students are hearing the usual warnings about the dangers of things like alcohol abuse and credit card debt...

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Video Delivery Products Enhance Distance Learning Quality

By Linda L. Briggs

Colleges and universities delivering distance learning via the Internet face challenges in maintaining high-speed, high-quality voice, video, and data. Delivering video and voice courses using Internet protocols (IP) has been growing over the past five or six years, and technology companies are racing to keep up.

Many of the challenges are highly technical ones involving the best standards for sending content from one location to another. Voice and video is condensed, or “coded,” on the send side, then decoded on the receiving end using codec equipment. The challenge is to have the decoded content appear as the sort of high-quality displays and sounds that users have become accustomed to...

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2006 Campus Technology Innovators

With just under 500 entries, this year’s Campus Technology Innovator competition was a standout – as were the institutions, visionaries, and vendor partners who caught our attention for their innovation, ingenuity, and just plain gutsiness... (Campus Technology)

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From the Reader Response Forum

"Smart" Classrooms

Posted by: Carine

Hello,

I read with great interest this blurb in your May 24 piece in Campus Technology. We are preparing to build 13 "smart" classrooms and were looking for a solution that would let instructors access the DVD/VCR, but not the rest of the AV equipment. You read our minds! In perusing the Middle Atlantic Web site, however, I wasn't able to come up with a picture of a cabinet put together as described here. Might you know where such a photo exists?

Thanks!

Photos of the cabinet in question can be found here. Model numbers are available as well.