UB Buzz

From Chess to Channels

As their topics differ, each of three new University Business web exclusives touch on the subject of reaching out to varying prospects for recruitment.

"A New Admissions Gambit," by Ron Schachter, a regular contributor to UB, explores how the game of chess is gaining ground in collegiate athletics, with chess teams at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and University of Texas at Dallas generating the same buzz as IHEs with football and basketball powerhouses. Both universities offer full scholarships to high-powered chess players; their teams travel to major competitions.

Another trend centers on institutions implementing measures to make higher education more accessible to veterans. This past summer, for example, Ohio’s public universities decided to charge in-state tuition to all veterans attending college on the G.I. Bill. In "The Best Thing We Can Do to Thank Returning Vets," Misericordia University (Pa.) president Michael A. MacDowell discusses how the new G.I. Bill will be beneficial to this group and, overall, this country.

In "Up Front and Personal," Roger Sametz, president of Sametz Blackstone Associates, a communications firm that focuses on branding, writes about how although technology is increasing the channels in which officials can market their institutions to potential students, the methods they use to connect with them stay the same. He explains how to get out of this rut.

Our Turf is Greener Than Your Turf

The University of Maryland is driving its environmental efforts right up the middle. In a surprise play, administrators are implementing a massive recycling effort for all home football games.
A recycling program was already in place, but they are taking it to the next level with more obvious collection points, as well as a wider distribution including into parking lots and tailgating areas. Food waste and other compostable material will now be collected as well.
It is anticipated the effort, dubbed "Feed the Turtle", will collect 15 tons of compostable material during the season.
Maryland President C.D. Mote Jr. signed the Presidents Climate Commitment in May 2007. They recently completed their carbon footprint inventory. The first step everyone usually takes is turning out the lights, but this is the first time we've heard of an athletics program joining the huddle.

Gulf Goast Universities Brace for Gustav

Tropical Storm Gustav has been gathering speed and could reach hurricane strength--with a likely path to New Orleans--by early next week, say forecasters.
Universities and colleges in and around New Orleans are bracing for the worst, with evacuation plans at the ready should they be needed. Xavier University in New Orleans will close at noon on Friday. Classes are not set to resume until Thursday, September 4th. A XULA spokesman cautioned students, staff and faculty to take steps now to ensure personal safety in the event evacuation becomes necessary. "We will keep the XULA community informed by way of the website and through broadcast messages sent to your XULA web mail account," the spokesman said.
Loyola University has also cancelled Friday classes but, so far, plans to re-open Tuesday.
New Orleans officials declared a pre-storm state of emergency Wednesday, and put 3,000 National Guard troops on standby. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said he would order an evacuation if Gustav looked likely to come ashore with wind speeds over 111 miles per hour. That would make it a Category 3 hurricane. By comparison, Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in 2005.
Louisiana officials will make 700 buses available for assisted evacuations, which could begin on Friday for people who need help due to medical or other conditions. Amtrak trains were also standing by to move 7,000 elderly residents to safety.

Art Lessons

Wow, talk about embarrassing. Wellesley College (Mass.) has lost a painting by French cubist Fernand Leger. The article in the Boston Globe explains the painting was sent to The Oklahoma City Museum for display while the college's Davis Museum and Cultural Center was being renovated. Sometime after being shipped back from Oklahoma the painting went missing. Of course, the piece was insured and the police have been notified, but it's still a loss to the college.

It makes one wonder whether Pamela White, interim director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, has the urge to call Chicago and check up on all her pieces that were taken for safe keeping and restoration during the floods in June.

ACUTA Survey Tracks the Greening of Technology

Two-thirds of colleges and universities have gone--or are going--green by taking energy-saving and environmentally conscious steps, according to a new survey by ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education. With the heightened consciousness of the environmental impact of individuals and organizations, the organization--which represents nearly 2000 individuals at some 780 institutions--set out to find out what its member schools are doing.

Here are some survey highlights:
• 80 percent of the green schools recycle computer and networking equipment, rather than sending it to a landfill.
• 73 percent said they had bought more efficient equipment with an eye toward saving energy.
• 63 percent said they had implemented a policy of reducing the amount of printing.
• 27 percent of the schools say alternative sources are providing some of the electrical power on campus. • 25 percent of schools say that at least some telecommuting is in place among faculty or staff.
• 22 percent say they have implemented or expanded their distance learning programs to reduce the need for student travels.

And those schools that haven’t yet gone green? They blame it on the lack of that other green: money.
Seventy-two percent blame budget limitations for holding them back, although 32 percent said the difficulty in finding energy-efficient equipment and the difficulty in proving future cost savings are additional obstacles.

Campuses Adjusting to Political Conventions

As the Democratic National Convention has taken over Denver this week, higher ed institutions in the downtown area have responded to the political frenzy primarily with closings, according to an article in The State News.
The Auraria Higher Education Center, a campus for the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the University of Colorado Denver Downtown Denver Campus, has shut down operations this week. In anticipation of the conference, the fall 2008 semester began earlier than usual; classes will resume this Saturday. The article lists that 40,000 faculty, students, and staff from all three institutions will be effected by the campus closing.
The University of Colorado at Denver was reported to have some student housing outside campus, with only residents being permitted inside the gated community, being guarded 24/7. Officials at Metropolitan State have planned volunteer/social activities to maintain student involvement despite the campus shutdown. At Colorado Technical University, criminal justice classes have been canceled because instructors who are also police officers are working on convention-related security.
So, what will happen for Minnesota higher ed institutions, when the Republican party kicks off its convention in the state next week? Well, for example, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system has been listing information on its website so employees who work in downtown St. Paul are aware of security-related changes such as parking. Concordia University, which is close to downtown Saint Paul, also says on its website that the campus may be affected by the GOP's convention activities. In a Pioneer Press article, Macalester College administrators denied a student group's request to allow crowds of people from around the country to camp out on the school's green or bunk together indoors, citing too many health and safety concerns. Instead, visitors will be allowed to stay in residence halls with individual students under the rules that apply to overnight guests.

EduComm 2009 Call for Speakers

Planning is under way for EduComm 2009, which will take place June 17-19 at the Orlando Convention Center.
The EduComm Conference is a 2-1/2-day event specially designed to address the needs of college and university educational technology, financial, and academic decision-makers, and facilities planners.
The program is focused on solutions for maximizing higher education using the latest technology (in the classroom, across the campus, and through distance learning) and giving attendees actionable ideas to save money, increase satisfaction, and improve educational outcomes.
Digital content creation, capture, presentation, storage, sharing and collaboration are all important issues to be discussed. Session tracks will focus on "Classroom Technology," "Internet & Web Technology," "AV/IT Facilities Planning & Design," and "Strategies for Success."
If you're interested in presenting an education session or how-to workshop, offering a case study, or leading a panel discussion let us know. Submitting a session idea is easy with the online speaker proposal form.
And if you have questions about EduComm or about the session tracks, please contact Tim Goral, EduComm Conference Program Chair.

It was the 'Best of' lists and the 'Worst of' lists

What? Even after perusing U.S. News & World Report's annual "Best Colleges" guide and The Princeton Review's Best 368 Colleges list, you still can't pick the best school for you? All right then, Forbes magazine has come to the rescue with its own guide to America's Best Colleges 2008. Why? Well, according to the magazine

Choosing a four-year undergraduate college is one of the biggest decisions a typical American family can make. And for too many years, information about the quality of American higher education has been monopolized by one publication, U.S. News & World Report. We offer an alternative.

The report lists 569 (take that Princeton Review) undergraduate institutions based on the quality of the education they provide, and how much their students achieve. A quarter of the overall score is based on 7 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on RateMyProfessors.com. Another 25 percent depends on how many of the school's alumni, adjusted for enrollment, are listed among the notable people in Who's Who in America. The other half of the score is based on the average amount of student debt at graduation, the percentage of students graduating in four years, and the number of students or faculty who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.

If the various guides above still don't help you find the best college, at least you can learn which ones to avoid--or so say the editors of Radar magazine (which covers "pop, politics, scandal, and style"). The September issue of Radar features its "annual semi-scientific guide to the worst colleges in America."

Every September suburban mailboxes across the nation are stuffed with earnest periodicals that rank academia's most elite institutions. But it's not much of a challenge to identify America's best colleges. For millions of students whose SAT results place them south of Stanford, identifying the worst colleges seems like a far more valuable service.

This pull-no-punches list is not for the fainthearted, and contains some content that is potentially NSFW.  To create the guide, the editors say they used the Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report, stats from the U.S. Department of Education, and a variety of online sources.

Like all the guides and ranking systems, this one should be taken with a grain of salt.

Book Note: Serving a Diverse Student Population

When you want to find out how to appeal to a diverse populace, it never hurts to go to the source.
That's what Shaun Harper, a former professor at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education did. Seeing a lack of literature about diverse student needs on college campuses, Harper asked 39 of his USC students to contribute their collective professional and personal experiences to writing a book to fill that hole.
The result: Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Diverse Populations will be released next Tuesday (8/26) by Routledge Publishers.
Harper and co-editor Stephen John Quaye say that diverse populations of students experience college differently and encounter group-specific barriers to success. Each chapter focuses on a different population for whom research confirms that engagement and connectivity to the college experience are problematic, including: low-income students, racial/ethnic minorities, students with disabilities, LGBT students, and several others. The ideas presented in the book are based on the contributors’ more than 540 cumulative years of full-time work experience in various capacities at two-year and four-year institutions of higher education. Harper said he believes this is the first such book of its type that involves the collaboration of student authors.

Is Your IT Energy Efficient?

When it comes to energy usage, IT operations are often the "biggest hog" at any higher ed institution. So, one would assume that, with rising energy costs, most IT directors would not be left in the dark about practicing efficiency.
Guess again. CDW-G's "2008 Energy Efficient Information Technology Report" (E2IT) finds that IHEs, when compared to other industries such as government and business, are least likely to assign the IT department responsibility for its energy bill-- 49 percent compared to 59 percent of all industries.
While more than 90 percent of IT buyers say they care about energy efficiency, they are often uncertain about how they should take action because of a lack of good information.
"The first step in reducing energy consumption is to know what you are spending, yet more than 40 percent of technology professionals say they don't see their organization's energy bill," says CDW Vice President Mark Gambill in a release.
Released this week, E2IT examines where energy efficiency stands in IT decision-making priorities and what prevents their adoption in IT systems. The report cites that only 31 percent of higher education IT purchasers say energy efficiency is very important when purchasing new equipment, and more than half of them remain unsure of how to take advantage of energy efficient IT.
There is hope. E2IT identifies where IHEs are having success and where they need help in reducing power consumption and offers some cost-saving strategies. For example, putting monitors and PCs into low-power states when not in use can save between $20 and $100 per PC per year. Other tips include purchasing devices that qualify for an ENERGY STAR 4.0 rating and simply training employees to turn off equipment when not in use.
A copy of the complete report can be found here.