1. State your departmental mission:

Discuss the relationship between your departmental or unit mission and the mission of the College:

Our department supports the educational mission of the College through comprehensive voice, video and data services and facilities. We also provide students and faculty with the opportunity and the means to explore and adopt technologies that support their educational goals and promote innovative approaches to teaching and life-long learning.

We recognize the importance of, and support, the College's mission to promote an expansion of knowledge as well as an understanding and awareness of the larger community. We provide the necessary communication infrastructure and technology to access and publish information used in research, sholarship and creative activity, to facilitate interpersonal communication and to maintain a robust campus connection to the rapidly developing global Internet.

We also acknowledge our responsibility to provide public service that is consistent with the College's mission. We provide full public access to many of our computing facilities on campus as well as to our technology demonstrations and presentations.

Finally, our departmental effort to create and foster an exciting and challenging place to work lies at the heart of our commitment to provide outstanding service to the campus community.

2. Given the rationale for planning, what are your departmental or unit goals?

3. How can your department or unit improve the programs and services it offers?

Voice Technologies/Services

Telephony

• Investigate bringing student voice service back in-house (currently out-sourced to ACUS) to generate revenue which will maintain the quality of our campus services in light of budgets reductions.
• Investigate emerging technologies (e.g., CTI) to reduce voice-service costs and enhance services.

Campus Switchboard

• Investigate extending switch-board hours for off-campus callers from 7am - 11pm to improve access to campus information.

Campus Directory

• Explore possibility of Human Resource maintaining and publishing the campus directory to reduce redundancy of information maintained on employees.

Billing for personal long-distance calls

• Investigate feasibility of billing/collection for personal phone calls via electronic means
• Increase the cost of personal calls to generate revenue which will maintain the quality of our campus services in light of budgets reductions.

Computing Technologies/Services

Desktop computing support

• Develop a system life-cycle approach to resources to avoid supporting old equipment (older than 3 years).
• Investigate the feasibility/practicality of eliminating support for multiple operating system environments (for example: Window 3.x, DOS, Unix, VMS, Mac 7.x.)
• Re-think the installation/troubleshooting process
• Separate responsibility for server support from client support (hardware/software)
• Investigate the feasibility/practicality of the Bookstore handling repairs of personally-owned computers?
• Replace/upgrade student computing resources available in residential areas and in non-residential areas.

Instructional computing support

• Focus on two key instructional support goals: (1) eliminate technical barriers and hassles that impede teaching and learning; and, (2) consult and partner with faculty to foster creativity and improve teaching and learning
• Develop technology classrooms that are "turn-key" in management/operation (e.g., access controlled via SUNYCard)
• Research the availability of pertinent software for faculty.
• Continue working with the Registrar's office to reserve high-tech classrooms so that we maximize the availability of these facilities for their intended purpose.

Network Technologies/Services

• Investigate the feasibility/practicality of centralizing support for hosts/servers within the Information Services Division (PATHWorks, Email server, Bootp, DNS, NetNews, Dial-in remote access, Banner, Library Card Catalog access, CD-ROM LAN, file-servers, interactive accounts on hosts, etc.)

Other areas

• Consolidate all department offices within Kellas Hall to enhance interdepartmental activities (team meetings, projects, workspaces).
• Invest more time and resources on strategic planning and development.
• Focus more on the goals and directions of offices, departments and faculty (help them achieve their instructional goals, vision and direction).
• Increase staffing so that we can meet our development goals as well as our day-to-day operations goals.

What new programs should be developed to address emerging student needs?

• Implement and manage the campus residential wiring project which will provide students with direct, high-speed access to our campus network and the Internet.
• Provide more assistance in student computing centers by hiring more student workers for these facilities.
• Support the College's efforts to provide distance learning opportunities.
• Promote and support the College's efforts to ensure that every student has an opportunity to become "literate" with information technology and services.

What new approaches should be used to market these programs?

• In general, the marketing approach for all of our College's programs and recruitment efforts should be based upon the Web, the Web, the Web!
• Invest more time in evangelizing and promoting technology on campus.

What programs and services can be eliminated without sacrificing quality and access?

• Consolidate Carson, Levitt and Kellas HELPDESKs into one HELPDESK facility within Kellas Hall.
• Consolidate student computing centers in to one facility that is continuously monitored

4. How will your academic department address the need for quality academic programs that provide job skills and ultimately careers and yet retain our liberal arts mission? (If you are not an academic department, you may skip this question.)

• Continue to offer employment opportunities within our department that provide student workers with professional-level skills and experience that will enhance their employability and career options.

5. Given that we must retain our qualitative standards, are there more efficient an/or effective ways in which the department or unit mission can be carried out?

- through technology?

• Continue publishing documentation and other HELPDESK-related material via the campus WWW server
• Continue disseminating departmental information via local-access-only WWW server.
• Promote just-in-time training and technical support using Timbuktu.

- through cooperative arrangements with other departments or units in the College?

• Continue collaborating with College Relations and other ISD departments to develop, promote and manage BearFacts.
• Perhaps the most significant arrangement that could be made to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our department is to build teams within the ISD that draw upon the experience, skill and talents across the Division. These teams would address those goals/needs we have most in common, such as:
  • HELPDESK-based services
  • training
  • Web development in support of information technologies
  • centralized support for host services (see above)
  • information technology support for faculty and curricular development (especially the proposed library pilot project to work more closely with academic departments)
  • information technology support for administrative offices
  • the design of database systems for individual/office use and a Web browser interface to databases via the WWW.
• Support efforts to give faculty more release time and/or rewards for working on developing and utilizing technology
• Provide more support for faculty and administration development (skill development; testing/proto-typing; exploring; developing).

- through cooperative arrangements with neighboring institutions?

• Continue to develop collaborative, cooperative projects with our sister institutions (especially SUNY Canton and SUNY Plattsburgh) such as:
  • a SUNY-based virtual HELPDESK.
  • training sessions and presentations employing distance learning technology (e.g., PictureTel).
• Continue supporting the PictureTel-based TeleNursing program with SUNY Plattsburgh.
• Explore the feasibility/practicality of collaborating within Associated Colleges on media-development and other technologies where we can benefit from the skill and experience of our colleagues.
• Continue to support technology conferences/programs sponsored by the Associated Colleges.

6. What other points or suggestions need to be considered as the College responds to a society that increasingly questions the value of higher education? (e.g., reduced time to degree, measurable student learning outcomes, etc.)

• promote and support campus Web-based information and projects which:
  • enhance and augment recruitment efforts
  • improve campus communication and the dissemination of timely information
• promote and support the strategy of publishing campus information on the Web first, then encouraging others to only print what they need from the Web; that is, a distribute-and-print strategy vs. a print-and-distribute strategy.