Wind a New Opportunity for Community Colleges

We've all read about campuses that have natural gas or oil being pumped from them. Now, some - especially rural - community colleges are finding that they need to pump out graduates trained in wind energy skills:

Community colleges in North Dakota and other states are jumping at the chance to help fill that need and develop a niche for themselves at the same time through wind tech programs.

"The demand (for wind techs) is such that some (colleges) have been trying to keep companies away from the program because they want everybody to graduate first," said Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association. "In some cases, students are being picked up after only a couple of months."

Last year, 3,200 new wind turbines were installed across the nation as power companies responded to the push for more green energy. It brought the total number of towers with wind-catching blades to more than 25,000, the association said. 

University of Phoenix Opens Tutoring and Social Centers for Online Students

By Goldie Blumenstyk in The Chronicle of Higher Education's 'Buildings & Grounds Blog':

[T]he University of Phoenix has begun to develop new drop-in centers for its distance-education students. The specially-designed centers house tutoring services and double as social spaces. About 200,000 of the university’s 330,000 students take courses online.

U. of Phoenix

The first of the centers, conceived as “a cross between a library and a Starbucks,” opened about a year ago in Plano, Tex., says William J. Pepicello, the university’s president. University leaders determined that Plano would be a good site after analyzing ZIP codes of distance-education students and finding that the location was central to many of them.

Personal Liability for University Administrators Comes Into Its Own

Ouch. This says it all:

The Texas Court of Appeals has hurled what may be the most significant legal challenge university administrators have had to face in higher education’s recent history. Tom Gray, the court’s Chief Justice, has written an opinion that affirms the sovereign immunity of the institution while removing any immunity from campus administrators.  . . . the decision creates an anomaly by enabling the institution's Scott-free exit while its employees hang out to dry on the litigation hook. . . . Meanwhile, will the immune university be required to indemnify and defend its employees? If so, then can the plaintiff’s come through the institution’s back door though the law has locked and barred the campus’s front gates to them?

What a Provost Knows and Can't Tell

James J. O'Donnell, now Provost at Georgetown University, gave a well-remembered plenary session at the SCUP annual, international conference in Vancouver, almost a decade ago. His latest viewpoint piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education shares some of what the changes in his life was when he moved from purely faculty to having an administrative role. You will need a Chronicle subscription or a day pass to read this:

The provost knows things that the faculty members don't. And a lot of them have to do with money.

I know that this year's operating budget is the least of our worries. The capital budget, the institution's debt capacity, the current debt load, the anticipated need for significant maintenance (deferred or not) — those each cost a lot of money and fluctuate broadly, sometimes unpredictably: "Mr. Provost, that roof on the dining hall? I know you don't want to put a new roof on during sleet storms in December, but ceiling tiles in the vegetarian stir-fry just aren't acceptable." (That particular dining hall was in the residence hall where I lived at the time, so we all spent December listening to the contractors drill through concrete to put in the drains. It felt as if everyone in the building was having dental work at the same time.)

NCHEMS Information Center for State Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis

This Web resource from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems provides access to quite a bit of useful data, special analyses, and other resources. It includes a interactive Generate Your Own Data & Maps functionality that you may find useful.

The mission of the NCHEMS Information Center for State Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis (The Information Center) is to provide state policymakers and analysts timely and accurate data and information that are useful in making sound higher education policy decisions. Through the work of a small staff and the operation of a website, the Information Center is the only comprehensive "one-stop-shop" for state-level higher education data and information, and a leader in coordinating activities and securing funds for the collection of missing data and information that are crucial for higher education policy analysis.

Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses: 2008 Edition

This publication is available for purchase from the American Council on Education. A summary of its key findings is freely available here:

Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses: 2008 Edition the second in a series, following a 2001 study, on the policies and practices of colleges and universities in furthering internationalization. When possible, the report compares the 2001 data with the most recently collected 2006 data. The results, taken from a survey of more than 2,700 colleges and universities, present an overview of U.S. higher education institutions as well as information by institutional type.

While there has been some progress since 2001, ACE's 2006 data found that gains have been slow and uneven, few areas registered sharp increases, and some experienced declines.

Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Resources

From the excellent newsletter CurrentCites comes this timely (think 'flooding') annotation of an American Library Association (ALA) set of resources on disaster mitigation:

American Libary Assocation. "[7] Disaster Preparedness and Recovery [8]American Library Association Website  (August2007) (http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/disasterpreparedness/distrprep.cfm). - I'm using the "current" in Current Cites this month to think about current events. I live in St. Louis, and I've been watching the flood waters rise in our area and throughout the Midwest. I'm starting a new job soon, and two of the branches for the St. Charles City-County Library District are under threat of flooding. They're still dry as of right now, and all of the staff are safe. However, much of the community will suffer losses this summer due to flooding. I look at the [9] pictures of the Cedar Rapids Public Library, and know that could happen anywhere along a flood plain. If you haven't thought much about disaster preparedness at your library, take a look at some of the excellent resources linked from the "Disaster Preparedness and Recovery" page from the ALA Washington Office. Highlights include:

[10] Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance Website: Search by state for services, view sample disaster plans, and check out other resources.Disaster Mitigation Assistance Website: Search by state for services, view sample disaster plans, Planning and check out other resources.

 [11] Flood Mitigation Assistance Program: FEMA's grant program to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk of flood damage. Flood Mitigation Assistance Program: FEMA's grant program to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk of flood damage.

 [12] dPlan: The Online Disaster-Planning Tool: A site from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) which allows you to enter data into an online template to create a customized disaster plan for your institution.dPlan: The Online Disaster-Planning Tool: A site from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) which allows you to enter data into an online template to create customized disaster plan for your institution.

Remember, disaster isn't always delivered from Mother Nature. Pipes burst, cars drive into buildings, and fires happen. Be sure to have a disaster plan in place for your library and your community. - KC

It is published with this Creative Commons license.

An Invisible, Annual $7B from Higher Ed to the Outside Community from Service Learning. Wow!

So, how often do you hear someone thank higher education for the $7B+ of volunteer work that comes from Campus Compact-related colleges and universities each year?

Campus Compact-an organization founded at Brown more than two decades ago to encourage college students to become more active citizens-reports a 60 percent increase in service participation over the last five years, and more than $7 billion worth of volunteer work coming out of its nearly 1,100 member schools annually.

"More students are doing service because they firmly believe that collective action is the best way to get out there and accomplish something," explains Campus Compact President Maureen Curley, who says that 98 percent of Campus Compact schools now offer service learning courses, and that 86 percent have created their own community service or service learning offices.

Text Messaging as Emergency Communication Superstar? Nt so gr8.

A contrary perspective from Dewitt Latimer:

All over campus, students have their heads bent over mobile devices, their fingers working furiously on miniature keypads. Students today use SMS (Short Message Service) messaging for everything from arranging study groups to discussing campus politics. SMS messaging—or “texting”—is performed before class, after class, and oftentimes even during class, making it the most ubiquitous form of student communication.

The popularity of SMS messaging among the college-age demographic, as well as its perceived speed of delivery and ease of use, have led some campus planners to view SMS messaging as the superstar player in an emergency notification strategy. But rapid is not the same as reliable, and ease of use doesn’t equate with robust. And as evidenced by recent campus emergency events—at Virginia Tech, Delaware State University, LSU, and Northern Illinois University—delayed messaging in an emergency isn't merely inconvenient; it has the potential to turn an already bad situation much worse.

Bowdoin Museum of Art Expansion: No 'Default to White'

A beautiful building. A challenging expansion project. Author James McCown says of this building that "no small building in New England so exquisitely epitomizes the Beaux-Arts style. It's exterior has not been changed since 1894, which definitely makes it a valuable campus heritage building. Of its expansion, McCown writes:

It is an eloquent refutation of one of the most dispiriting tendencies of the past few decades—what I call the "default to white." Faced with the daunting task of expanding a landmark building, many architects, fearful of offending some delicate sensibility, have sought refuge in a sort of Calvin Klein beige-and-white minimalism. 

Not so here.

The Petabyte Age: Because More Data Isn't Just More - More Is Different

This collection of related articles from Wired magazine is required reading—that is, required if you want to risk overstimulation of your brain about major changes in the ways we collect and record large amounts of data:

Sensors everywhere. Infinite storage. Clouds of processors. Our ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology. As our collection of facts and figures grows, so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions. Because in the era of big data, more isn't just more. More is different.

Several from AGB's "Trusteeship" for March/April 2008

The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) has a bimonthly magazine, Trusteeship, which is widely read by college and university trustees—probably including yours. It's only available to members of AGB in print, but AGB publishes the entire issue, not separated out into articles, as a PDF which can be downloaded (for now) by anyone. You can find the latest here (PDF). It includes, among other items of interest, the following articles:

• Do Rankings Reward Poor Institutional Decisionmaking?; 
  
• Moving a Board to High Performance; 
  
• Balancing Sports Spending With Campus Values; 
  
• Email Risks for Boards and Presidents; and
  
• Trustee's Roles in "Green" Campuses.
  

AAC&U Podcasts - Sort of Like on-Demand Higher Education Radio

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&C) has what we think is the most advanced and continuous series of Web-posted streaming audio from various presentations at its live, face-to-face events. They are available to anyone, for free. A sampling of its most recent postings from its 2008 annual meeting include, among many others: 

• Global Citizenship and the Humanities by Martha Nussbaum;
• A New Agenda for American Higher Education: Shaping a Life of Mind for Practice by William Sullivan and Matthew Rossin;
• Academic Governance in the New Academy by Neil Hamilton; and
• Reframing the Quality and Accountability Challenge: Employers, Educators, and the Quest for Meaningful Evidence&mdasha panel discussion moderated by AAC&U president Carl Geary Schneider.

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For-Profit Universities in the Political Economy of Higher Education

This worthy read by Brian Pusser is from International Higher Education and is a concise brief of the state of the relationship of for-profits and and traditional institutions in the current American political framework:

Can states preserve regulations that protect the public and private benefits of higher education while satisfying the profit demands of an evolving postsecondary market? As with most political contests, much will depend on the ability of a variety of postsecondary stakeholders to become involved in the political arena shaping higher education. Future research on the tension between states and markets will benefit from turning attention to the evolving balance of political legitimacy, lobbying, and policy challenges evidenced in the rise of for-profit degree-granting colleges and universities.

Technology Adoption Patterns in Higher Learning Through 2035

Time to peek into the future: Technology adoption in any sector is rarely uniform. Understanding the drivers and constraints associated with technology adoption makes it easier to anticipate how technology will be used and what populations will benefit the most. Robert G. Henshaw examines factors likely to influence technology adoption within U.S. higher education over the next 30 years and their impact on education providers and consumers. Progress, and the way progress is defined, will be uneven and will continue to reflect disparities across organizational cultures, socioeconomic demographics, and other variables. Technology will have the greatest impact on learning outside of classrooms and other formal educational constructs.

To gain access to this information from Innovate you will need to create a (free) account.

Revisiting Learning Space Design: An ELI Focus Session

We've attended a number of EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative focus sessions. Each was well-run and a truly stimulating experience. ELI has been doing really leading edge work into learning space design issues and we highly recommend its Fall 2008 session titled Revisiting Learning Space Design. These are some of the questions being addressed:

The changes in our students and an evolving understanding about how people learn generate new discussions about the roles of technology and pedagogy in the design of learning spaces. How can we design spaces that facilitate the active construction of knowledge? How can a physical space support flexibility, interactivity, and collaboration? Is the curriculum a factor? That is, are the implications of learning space design for a history class the same as those for a physics course? Are there emerging practices (or guiding principles) to designing technology-rich learning environments? We know—and students tell us—that learning spaces can significantly influence teaching and learning, but how do we maximize that impact? What role will technology play? And what role should pedagogy play?

SCUP will be there.

Map Services Hit Your Streets?

Ann Arbor, where SCUP's offices are located, recently became the 47th US city completely mapped out in GoogleEarth. The entire industry and technology realm of mapping has left the illusion of linear growth behind. We are now in an era of obvious exponential growth in capabilities. Map services are definitely hitting the street. Get current with the latest functionalities and offerings in an article by Evan H. Shu from Architecture Week. One example of something you might not already know:

Of prime interest to architects is a very nice viewing option called "Bird's Eye" view. At last report, in over 100 U.S. cities and over 80 European locations, a Bird's Eye view offered aerial photos showing images at higher resolution than the aerial shots and, in some cases, provided quite a bit of detail.

Another nice feature of the Bird's Eye view is that you can use the turn arrows to give bird's eye views from four different aerial angles of your site.

History in the Making: What Do You Do With Historic Buildings?

Caryn Meyers Fliegler takes a careful look at how several institutions handle their historic properties: care, renovation, restoration&mdash:

including politics, partnering, and fundingHistoric projects like Old Main's renovation help to unify institutions' identities and provide compelling lessons for students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Building rehab and restoration produces rich rewards but takes detailed detective work and thoughtful decision making. "Any time you go into an existing building there will be some issue that comes up, whether it's a structural issue or trying to match a material or make it look exactly as you want to," says Laura Wernick, principal at Cambridge, Mass.-based HMFH Architects. "Ultimately, the benefit to the users and to society of passing on a treasure to future generations is worth a lot. Most universities these days understand that the histories and traditions of the campus are embodied, to a large degree, in their buildings. They are resources that need to be preserved."

The Road to Excellence Passes Through Assessment

Subtitled "What business and the health care industry can teach higher education about assessment," this brief article in University Business by Edwin H. Welch, president of the University of Charleston (WV) concisely presents his view of "institutional introspection driven by corporate competition."

The public reporting of institutional results has brought assessment, transparency, and accountability to hospitals everywhere, forcing them to improve care. The day is surely coming when the government will mandate increased reporting requirements as a way of directing the millions of dollars it invests in colleges and universities.

sustainable facilities vs. Sustainable Facilities

Writing in Facilities Manager, Kevin Folsom asks: "Everything we build will decay, but it may last longer if properly maintained. So here’s a puzzling question….If we build facilities that the natural law causes to decay at fairly predictable rates from birth to burial, why do we not plan for it?" He also notes:

Institutional leadership is not taking into account the renewal needs of their facilities. And, the maintenance operations run on average with about half the funding needed. Meanwhile, as we progress along through the years, we hit a quantum leap in environmental sustainability awareness. Then to everyone’s surprise, leadership begins to see that not enough is being done to support this, mostly in their facilities. As a result, we begin cramming all this new energy saving technology and techniques into old antiquated facilities needing significant renewal. What are we going to do about this? Fortunately, the solution has been used by numerous institutions for 30+ years.needs. Not all state institutions can carry funding over annually, or plan on interest income so we’ll go about this solution differently, but let’s work on the private institutions.

Read more about his solution here (PDF).

Hands On Computing: How Multi-touch Screens Could Change The Way We Interact With Computers and Each Other

Imagine a large flat screen hanging on a wall. You and your design team are hanging out in front of it. Any one of you, even several people at a time, can move things around, shrink things, whatever . . . by just touching the big flat screen, like those who own iPhone can do now, one at a time. It's heading your way:

[I[n laboratories around the world at the time of the iPhone’s launch, multi-touch screens had vastly outgrown two-finger commands. Engineers have developed much larger screens that respond to 10 fingers at once, even to multiple hands from multiple people.

It is easy to imagine how photographers, graphic designers or architects—professionals who must manipulate lots of visual material and who often work in teams—would welcome this multi-touch computing. Yet the technology is already being applied in more far-flung situations in which anyone without any training can reach out during a brainstorming session and move or mark up objects and plans.

Fighting the Flood at the University of Iowa

At The Chronicle of Higher Education's Buildings  Grounds Blog, Lawrence Biemiller has posted a couple of updates on the situation at the University of Iowa, with regard to the heavy flooding there recently—including the submergence of many campus buildings: U. of Iowa Waits for Floodwaters to Recede; Fighting Flood, U. of Iowa Seeks to Conserve Utility Resources. Katherine Mangan wrote this in-depth article, U. of Iowa Flooding Takes Costly Toll in Research and Equipment but, unlike the blog posts by Biemiller, you'll need a Chronicle subscription and password to read the latter. 

Additional Chronicle items about this flood are: As Floodwaters Surged, U. of Iowa Tried to Save Music and Art and With 16 Flooded Buildings, U. of Iowa Warily Watches a Swollen River.

Good as Gold: New LEED Gold Buildings at Universities

Scott Carlson of The Chronicle of Higher Education (He'll be at SCUP-43 next month, by the way, and helping to moderate the Planning for Higher Education Roundtable on Sustainability, shares brief peeks at new LEED Gold buildings at Vanderbilt, DePauw, and Furman—in the Buildings & Grounds Blog.

Getting to Green

You really should be reading the blog posts under the pseudonym "G. Rendell" that constitute the Getting to Green blog at Inside Higher Ed. G. Rendell, it is explained, is an administrator at a large private school in the midwest who is heading up Rendell's campus' effort to meet the American College and University President's Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). The tidbits of lessons learned—about water, energy, people, laws— are interesting and written very lightly. In the latest post, titled Water or Not, Rendell muses about his discovery that the water laws in some states may outlaw the capture and reuse of rainwater:

Think about it—a campus takes the rainwater which falls on building roofs, stores it, for a bit, then runs it out onto (or into) the ground. If the cistern weren't there, the rainwater would flow off the roof onto the ground (similar ground, not very far away) anyway. Where there's no measurable effect, there's no harm. Where there's no harm, there's no foul (remember, it's athletic fields we're talking about, here). What's the problem?

Is it Time to Go 'Un-Global'?

Some tongue-in-cheek hyperbole from George Morgan, in Inside Higher Ed: It is past time for colleges and universities to fully accept the trend before they and their graduates are left behind. Universities should embrace the anti-globalization ethos not just with rhetoric or by re-focusing investments of their foundations, but by overhauling the curriculum. The curriculum and staffing should be harmonized with the tenets of the new nationalism movement. The status quo will not do justice to our students who will enter the un-global world.

Area Career and Technical Colleges Head to Head with Community Colleges?

The Career College Association (CCA) is essentially the trade association for for-profit technical institutions. It has more than a thousand members and described itself as "The Career College Association is a voluntary membership organization of accredited, private, postsecondary schools, institutes, colleges and universities that provide career-specific educational programs." Its new white paper: Higher Education and a Competitive Workforce is "must" reading for those who would understand where these for-profit institutions positioning themselves in what seems like a directly competitive battle with community colleges:

Three in four respondents in the CCA survey acknowledge that some young people might benefit more from alternatives to a four-year college or university. When asked to consider options beyond traditional four-year colleges and universities, 45 percent of respondents said career and technical training colleges do the best job of equipping Americans to compete in the global economy.

Conceiving a New Agenda for Public Higher Education

This reporting is by Doug Lederman in Inside Higher Ed: Gerald L. Baliles was most of the way through his speech Monday, delivered to nods of affirmation from the state higher education officials, public college trustees and others in the audience, when he threw the assembled a curveball. . . . Baliles, a former governor of Virginia and now director of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, was expressing the dual views that state and national politicians too often fail to recognize the value of American higher education (as college and university officials frequently argue, usually when seeking more government funds), and that higher education as an industry is too slow to adapt to changes in society and to those it purportedly serves, as critics often accuse. . . . “The point is that higher education is essential and that it is at risk in a time of change,” Baliles said. That’s when he dropped his punchline. [Emphasis SCUP's.] The words Baliles had just finished reading were not a fresh speech about the current state of higher education; they came from a letter he had written 15 years ago to introduce a report on educational quality from the Southern Regional Education Board. . . . The issues that the group had gathered to wrestle with—concerns about affordability, access, quality and accountability that college leaders and politicians have been discussing intensely for the last few years—have been around for ages. And relatively little progress has been made in attacking them, in part because the many words that have been spilled on the subjects have not been sufficiently transformed into actions.

Policy Matters: The State College Role in Advancing Environmental Sustainability: Policies, Programs and Practices

From our friends at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) comes this new Policy Matters document (PDF):

Many institutions and state college systems are using campus resources to carry out grassroots environmental initiatives that yield important environmental, educational, and economic dividends. Continued campus efforts will be most successful to the extent that policymakers provide leadership and support to advance common environmental agendas. . . . This paper first presents a background of key changes college campuses can make to limit emissions and provide institutional savings. Also provided is an analysis of creative campus-level efforts yielding key economic, educational and environmental dividends. Finally, leadership and legislative efforts are highlighted to demonstrate how state and federal policies and partnerships can effectively enhance campus-level efforts to invest in the next generation of technologies, practices and leaders.

The Cost of Corruption in Higher Education

A scholarly article from Comparative Education Review focusing on corruption and the perception of corruption in higher education on a country's learning institutions and system with special emphasis on (but not limited to) countries which were formerly part of the Soviet Union: There are many mechanisms that a country or a university needs to adopt to lessen the possibility of corruption and to lower the perception that it is corrupt. These include codes of conduct for faculty, administrators, and students; statements of honesty on public Web sites; university “courts” to hear cases of misconduct; and annual reports to the public on changes in the number and types of incidents. These mechanisms may well be requirements for universities in those parts of the world hoping to have their degrees declared equivalent to those of universities in the European Union or having the support of international development assistance agencies.

However, the first step to effective policy intervention is to acquire information about the experience and cost of corruption. We recommend regular surveys of students such as those reported here.34 In one country, with surveys at two points in time, the decline in corruption was significant, suggesting that when the possibility of exposure and professional embarrassment is real, the propensity to engage in corruption declines.

Following the 2008 Election and Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new blogging site, Campaign U: Higher Education and the 2008 Candidates, which should be a nice place to follow the latest on what the candidates do and say with regard to a wide range of issues important to college and university planning. Like all of the Chronicle's blogs, it is not password protected.

Preserving Cultural Landscapes

This thoughtful article could be useful for those interested in campus heritage preservation:

Just as the concept of cultural landscape can mitigate polarized views of nature versus artifice, so it can bridge divisive opinions on the relative importance of "architecture" versus "history."

The segregation of these terms into categories was codified by National Register criteria and other documents emanating from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and reflects long-term attitudes among preservationists in the United States. This bifurcation can wreak great mischief, for it reduces "history" to intangibles—associations with persons, events, and the like—robbing it of any physical dimension.

Pandemic-Ready Planning: What's Your Crisis Management Plan?

NACUBO has consistently located or created useful resources relating to crisis management and planning. The latest is this article in Business Officer:

The Legal Imperative for Preparation
“Failure to produce a pandemic response plan may create liability for the institution, particularly given the amount of warning and guidance offered by governmental officials and the encouragement to develop such a plan.” This language from the “Blueprint for Pandemic Preparedness Planning for Colleges and Universities” reinforces the importance of developing a deliberate plan for dealing with a pandemic.

Indeed, a number of legal reasons underscore the need for proper planning, including directives contained in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration General Duty Clause and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 5 (February 28, 2003), which maps out the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

It is a description of a more complete document published elsewhere, Blueprint for Pandemic Flu Preparedness Planning for Colleges and Universities (DOC).

Report Takes Aim at ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype of Asian-American Students

"How does it feel to be a problem?" is a pretty strong way to begin a research report. The New York Times writes:

The report, by New York University, the College Board and a commission of mostly Asian-American educators and community leaders, largely avoids the debates over both affirmative action and the heavy representation of Asian-Americans at the most selective colleges. But it pokes holes in stereotypes about Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the perception that they cluster in science, technology, engineering and math. And it points out that the term “Asian-American” is extraordinarily broad, embracing members of many ethnic groups.

A PDF of the full report is available here.

Tech Tip: Using Jott to Dictate Email and Text Messages

Wow. Once every couple of years something comes along and demonstrates that a technical hurdle has been overcome and, as a result, the very latest in information technology has something pragmatically useful to offer, even to aging Boomers. Jott allows you to easily set up a Web-based account that then lets you dial a phone number and dictate a message into your land line or cell phone. Its voice transcription technology then translates what you said into text and sends either an email message or a text message, or both, to whoever you have designated—and it also sends a copy to you. Just the ability to send such messages to yourself can transform the way you take mental notes or set reminders for yourself. At the moment, at least, it's free.

Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner

Subtitled "How tech-obsessed iKids would improve our schools," this article by Marc Prensky in edutopia (George Lucas Educational Foundation) explores engaging with and asking young people what the learning experience is like for them and how they would improve it. It is mostly about high school-aged students who will be our students on campus soon. It concludes:

After hosting dozens of these conversations, I realize one thing: We just don't listen enough to our students. The tradition in education has been not to ask the students what they think or want, but rather for adult educators to design the system and curriculum by themselves, using their "superior" knowledge and experience.
But this approach no longer works. Not that the inmates should run the asylum, but as twenty-first-century leaders in business, politics, and even the military are finding out, for any system to work successfully in these times, we must combine top-down directives with bottom-up input. As the students have told me on more than one occasion, "We hope educators take our opinions into account and actually do something!" Until we do, their education will not be the best we can offer.

Environmental Roles and Responsibilities in a Climate of Change: WHat's Changed? What Hasn't Changed?

New Book: "The Campus Consortium for Environmental Excellence (C2E2) announced today the availability of a new higher education report titled Environmental Roles and Responsibilities in a Climate of Change (PDF). The document spotlights the evolving environmental, health and safety (EH&S) assignment on college and university campuses where homeland security directives, sustainability initiatives and emerging health and safety issues demand increasing attention. The 16-page booklet illustrates both the challenges and opportunities with narrative, quotes, cartoons and images." It should provide current insights into the minds and perspectives of our colleagues in EHS.

The Art & Architecture Addition - at Yale: What Would You Have Done?

In The Chronicle of Higher Education's Buildings & Grounds Blog, Lawrence Biemiller writes that he is certain that the addition to Paul Rudolph’s Art & Architecture Building is "going to start fights." Speaking of the addition's architect, Charles Gwathmey, Biemiller writes, "If your building’s a success, it succeeds by not overpowering Rudolph’s—so he still gets the lion’s share of the credit. But if your building is deemed a failure, you get blamed for messing up Rudolph’s masterpiece. At best, your assignment is thankless. . . . Once the cranes are out of the way and the fences come down early this summer, you can decide for yourself whether you think he chose the right course. The drawings don’t really do it justice, by the way—you’ll want to see it in person. In any case, Mr. Gwathmey deserves a lot credit for taking on so daunting an assignment. Rudolph should be proud.

We All Know What a College Town is, but a 'College City'?

In this article from Inside Higher Ed, Elia Powers interviews, among others, a favorite SCUP presenter, Richard Florida: "The quintessential college town is lush and lined with quaint boulevards. It’s Ann Arbor, Mich., Charlottesville, Va., and Boulder, Colo. It’s dive bars and bookstores and movie theaters that still charge less than a meal. Classic college towns are typically considered idyllic places to live. Plenty of institutions claim to being located in one, but there are some that simply cannot. They are the urban colleges, located in mid-sized or major metropolitan areas whose social and cultural orbits extend well beyond the campus. And these are where a large portion of professors reside. If there’s such a thing as a classic “college city,” what defines it? For academics choosing where to plant themselves for graduate school or deciding among job offers (if they’re lucky), what’s important in the city where they choose to live? At a time when new Ph.D.s are increasingly mobile and, like other young professionals, thinking about living in an urban area, many are asking these questions."

The "Subprime" Market and International Higher Education: Apples and Apples?

From Philip G. Altbach in International Higher Education, an interesting and intertaining comparison and perspective: It may be illuminating to compare the current subprime mortgage and housing-sector crisis in the United States and developments in international higher education. First, buyers and the housing and financial industries wanted to participate in a growing and lucrative housing market, just as many groups in the higher education industry now want to be players in international higher education. . . . International higher education stands somewhere in the middle of the cycle—somewhere between irrational exuberance and a bubble. Now is the time to look at what actions are sustainable and what are not, what policy will serve the interests of students and the academic community, and what actions constitute mistaken policy or simple greed. The academic community is committed to internationalization, although motivations differ and some institutions have no clear idea why they are involved. . . . [Yet, u]niversity presidents, vice chancellors, and rectors from Europe and North America have been trooping to China and India prospecting for international business—such as, branch campuses, collaborative linkages, and joint-degree arrangements.

'Thizomic' Knowledge and the Relationship of Technology Adaptation to Institutional Mission and Culture

SCUPer James Morrisson, editor of Innovate: Journal of Online Education, is a fan of "SCUP Links" and we're a fan of his digital-only journal. Often the articles are focused a bit more finely than would be appropriate for SCUP Links, but this month's issue contains some potential gems: "Dave Cormier tackles the difficult theme of knowledge by using the metaphor of the rhizome, a plant with no center and no clear boundary, to describe the way knowledge is created in the context of Web 2.0 technologies. “Knowledge as negotiation” provides a lens through which to view the current community-based notion of curriculum. As social technologies move from our personal lives into academic settings, corresponding community and social interaction around information and knowledge will become an important part of education." Also: Robert G. Henshaw analyzes shifting demographics, labor markets, and related factors in urging higher education to “redefine their institutional culture and missions.” Henshaw links technology-adoption patterns to the ability of institutions to meet the emergent needs of learners as well as the need for institutions to retain faculty."

E-learning Market 'Moodling On Over' Toward Open Source

Linda Briggs, writing in Campus Technology, thinks that "[w]ith open source products maturing, Blackboard's ongoing lawsuit with Desire2Learn, and more and more functions linked to learning management systems, it can be a tough time for institutions to standardize on an e-learning platform." She's right. And, among her surprising finds in this interview with Gartner Research Director Marti Harris, is not the growth in campus interest in Open Source, but the fact that more interest is currently being shown in Moodle, not Sakai! "Moodle is, in many ways, shrink-wrapped and ready-to-go open source, so that's part of the attraction. From what I've heard from clients when they do a side by side comparison with other commercial apps, Moodle does very well. The open source part of it isn't really the issue. They just like the features and functionality."

Can You Influence Students' 'Willingness to Pay'?

Potential students and their families are arguably the most important part of the 'external environment' (along with competitors and the state for publics) that needs to be paid careful attention to in SWOT analyses as well as other parts of strategic planning. This article from University Business by Kathy Kurz, James Scannell and Samantha Veeder talks about how institutions differentiate themselves, as well as the best ways to persuade your 'customers' that your institution offers substantial Return on Investment (ROI): "When the perceived benefits are high, the family is much more willing to pay, sometimes beyond what the FAFSA indicates as the EFC. But when the educational experience and benefits are viewed more as a commodity, willingness to pay is lower."

A Steady Vision for Libraries In a Tumultuous Time

This is an interview with James G. Neal, who is VP for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University, where he is responsible for university academic computing as well as for a system of twenty-five libraries: We also need to think about how we push more of our services out into a 24x7, self service type of environment. We can no longer assume that people will physically come to the library to get information, to get service, or to get assistance from our librarians. As Web 2.0 develops, we need to think about 'Library 2.0' in terms of re-visioning what we are and how we interface with our user community, and we need to build that social relationship with our users in ways that the old tools didn't allow us to do.

Innovation In the Community College 2008 Award Winners

The League for Innovation in the Community College serves up 53 winners in its 2008 award program. That's way too many to be listing here, but the awards are made in seven categories: (1) workforce preparation and development; (2) learning and teaching; (3) student services and activities; (4) research, assessment, and accountability; (5) resource development; (6) basic skills and developmental education; and (7) leadership and organization. There are a lot of lessons to be learned in the descriptions of what these colleges won awards for - not just for those in other community colleges, either. We especially like Wake Technical College's being the First LEED certified campus in the US and Seattle Central Community College's Global Impact International Service Learning.

Campus-Community Collaboration for Smart Development

One of our favorite higher education writer, Karla Hignite, writes, in Business Officer, about including "neighboring communities in multipurpose capital projects and strengthen[ing] town-gown bonds." She uses case studies from Columbia University's development of its Manhattanville Campus, University Center at Lansing Community College, and Southside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance (SINA), of which Trinity College is a member, the University of Maryland, Jackson State, as well as others, to make her point: "That’s not to say the process to obtain public input and approval for proposed projects isn’t messy or complicated or doesn’t require extreme levels of leadership endurance. Yet, as the institutions interviewed for this article can attest, efforts to be viewed not only as a good neighbor but as an essential part of the neighborhood ultimately make an institution a destination of choice for students, faculty, and staff."

How to Unleash Your Creativity: Insights, Tricks, & Tips

From Scientific American comes this quite useful article about creativity and how to nurture your own: "There are four different skill sets, or competencies, that I’ve found are essential for creative expression. The first and most important competency is “capturing”—preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. . . . The second competency is called “challenging”—giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas. The third area is “broadening.” The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections—so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things. And the last competency is “surrounding,” which has to do with how you manage your physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become." 'Broadening' and 'Surrounding' sure sound like something that SCUP helps to provide its members.

The Future Is Now? Pretty Soon, at Least

"Do you have trouble sticking to a diet? Have patience. Within 10 years, Dr. Kurzweil explained, there will be a drug that lets you eat whatever you want without gaining weight." Right. Yet, this guy—Ray Kurzweil—gets it right a lot. Hmm. "He makes his predictions using what he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns. . . . Two decades ago he predicted that “early in the 21st century” blind people would be able to read anything anywhere using a handheld device. In 2002 he narrowed the arrival date to 2008. Recently, he pulled out a new gadget the size of a cellphone, and when he pointed it at the brochure for the science festival, it had no trouble reading the text aloud." Seriously, anyone who scans trends and tries to predict the future should spend a little time learning about the Law of Accelerating Returns. It's partly about how hard it is to see acceleration when you're linearly stuck in a short time frame.

USA Today College Academics

USA Today has been working hard with its educational resources and we were treated, recently, to a guided tour around its website. If you, like us, have lost your way around the USA Today website when you try to find a place where its higher education stuff comes together, look no further than here!

In addition to the collection of Web-based resources, there is a weekly (Wednesday) email newsletter which you can sign up for. If you're directly involved in learning, you should know about its Collegiate Readership Program and about its easy route to copyright permission for USA Today content for educational purposes. Its Student Voices section is relatively new and promising.