Kenyon College - Information and Computing Services
Three-Year Plan for Information Technology
a working document: January, 1997
The process:
- to outline the current status of
technology infrastructure and use at Kenyon,
- to define information technologies that meet the critical
needs of the College,
- to define long range goals for
technology and service supporting the mission of the
College.
The plan:
We have drawn together two sources of valuable information to
guide this response. We have combined the major goals and key
issues developed by the campus-wide "Future of Information
Technology Committee" (1994-95) with college accreditation
standards developed by three national technology organizations:
CAUSE,
EDUCOM and ARL.
This plan, always a working document, has
been developed with considerable input from the campus community,
but it needs much more, on a continuing basis. Strategic plans themselves
have little value without an on-going strategic planning process. By combining the
detailed internal review done in 1994-95 with carefully selected national
perspectives, this plan becomes the most comprehensive review of
Kenyon's technology needs to date. For clarity, the matrix is
broken down into ten areas:
-
- Summary of the plan:
- Client support
- Refocus staff work to support client needs;
improve client access to information and training
- Teaching and learning
- Enhance student learning and faculty teaching
with better access to networked information and
collaborative tools
- Network infrastructure
and applications
- Extend the campus network to all faculty and
staff desktop computers and selected classrooms,
and enhance the structure and capacity of the
system
- Distributed, desktop
computers
- Replace all obsolete desktop computers and
terminals with supportable systems and software
- Administrative
systems
- Plan and implement new administrative systems to
achieve efficiencies and high levels of
reliability, contain costs and provide needed
services
- Staff salaries and
development
- Bring staff compensation up to standards for
academic positions, and improve professional
development program
- Standards
- Consult, formulate, announce and implement
hardware and software standards that meet needs
and that staff can support
- Resource management
- Catalog and displace old, unsupportable
technologies; maintain leadership in securing
extramural funds
- Planning and advisory
committees
- Facilitate campus wide conversations to plan
policy and advise management (Information
Resources Council); consult broadly and regularly
with all constituents
- Partnerships,
Consortia and Collaboration
- Leverage consortial opportunities to enhance
learning and contain costs
Details, including current status and statements of critical
needs, are presented in the attached report which includes a
capital budget plan. The planning horizon for meeting many
critical, technology needs of the College is three years. The
planning horizon to meet long range goals is further out.
The goal:
The goal of this plan is to make the best possible uses of
information technology in supporting the College's needs for the
next three to five years while containing operating costs.
Elements of the plan address specific needs for support services,
for technology that appropriately enhances teaching and learning,
for technology that the best students, our ultimate clients,
require in selecting an institution, for efficient administrative
systems that provide competitive services while containing costs,
and for applications and information access that enhance office
productivity. These are challenging goals; a status quo
will lead to increased costs and inefficiencies that will put
Kenyon at a clear competitive disadvantage.
- Strategic Vision for Information
Resources
- Comparative data with other
institutions in the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges
- Summary of campus resources
- Capital Budget Plan (on-campus readers only)
Contact: Scott
Siddall, scott@siddall.info
Edited: 01-27-97