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Technology Planning
Technology planning never ends. However, this year's cycle is now pretty well wrapped up. What did we accomplish?
The University Technology Council (augmented by additional Academic representatives to create the Strategic Technology Planning Committee), with guidance from Jarrett Cummings, our Strategic Planning consultant, completed a new Strategic Technology Plan. The plan now awaits approval from the UPG and President McCray. At the same time, the Tactical Planning Team (a subgroup of the Strategic Technology Planning Committee) is refining the tactical work plans for the first year of the Strategic Plan.
The plan identifies six goals: (1) Improve technology budgeting. (2) Create an institutional environment that uses technology to support NLU's mission and overall strategic goals, with emphasis on University communication and access to student services. (3) Continue building technology infrastructure, expand service to remote locations, and enhance all access services. (4) Develop and maintain customer-service oriented IT support for students, faculty, and staff. (5) Provide a professional development program regarding technology for faculty and staff. (6) Establish university-wide priorities and strategies for the development of technology-enhanced or technology-delivered learning.
Three major strategic initiatives for the first year of the plan emerge from the goals:
- Implement a full suite of online student services (registration, financial payments, email, etc.)
- Redesign and expand the web site into a marketing/recruitment center with significant feature enhancements.
- Expand online learning with the focus on fully online degree programs.
The strategic initiatives have prerequisites. After all, new buildings require foundations. In this case, the foundations are the network infrastructure (which requires capacity expansion) and the basic desktop equipment (much of which requires replacing). The other prerequisite is the people - the faculty and staff who can only make new systems work if they have adequate training and support.
The challenges to achieve the ambitious objectives are many. The most obvious is money - replacing all PCs slower than 800 Mhz carries a > $1M price tag alone. Implementing the online student services is projected at almost $1.2 M, primarily for the additional hardware and software required. The other key challenge: the time required from dozens of staff to participate in the setup of these new systems.
The Technology Planning Committee believes these initiatives are a critical part of NLU's future. |
