Articles: Administration & Management

7/1/2009

IT WAS THE DISASTER THAT DIDN'T happen, despite the headlines in national and local newspapers throughout the spring of 2008. “College Financial Aid System ‘In Crisis,’” proclaimed USA Today. “No Funds to Lend to 40,000 Students,” blared the Boston Globe. “Student Loans Start to Bypass 2-Year Colleges,” warned The New York Times.

7/1/2009

Recent events have understandably triggered a flurry of crisis preparedness efforts at colleges and universities across the country. Many of these institutions are today breathing easier now that they have incident response plans the size of phone books resting in drawers or populating intranets. They feel confident that in an emergency they can evacuate parties at risk in a timely organized manner — perhaps.

6/1/2009

Colleges and universities have long competed for students, faculty, and funding through academic excellence, research success, and athletic prowess. Now, they have a new arena for competition—the size of their carbon footprint. This is a way to measure an aspect of environmental impact through determining the amount of carbon produced by the institution and its activities. Schools wanting to distinguish themselves for being “green” now have hard numbers to back up their claims.

6/1/2009

The “cloud computing” trend of replacing software traditionally installed on campus computers (and the computers themselves) with applications delivered via the internet is driven by aims of reducing universities’ IT complexity and cost.

6/1/2009

NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO, when North Carolina was still a largely agricultural state, North Carolina State University President Daniel Hill described its mission as developing students who can “skillfully and unhesitatingly lead the industrial progress of our people.” His comment speaks to NC State’s historical commitment to driving the state’s economic growth.

Today, with a bow to our school colors, we express that spirit in slightly different terms: “Red means go!”

6/1/2009
 

THERE IS A NEW "SIN" INDUSTRY on college campuses. It’s not beer, fast food, or tobacco. It’s water!

6/1/2009

THE CALL CAME IN AT 9:22 P.M. ON THURSDAY, APRIL 2, FROM THE Radford University (Va.) EMS team, an all-student, volunteer rescue squad, that there had been a fatal shooting just one block from campus. Dennie Templeton, who directs the school’s Office of Emergency Preparedness, remembers the time exactly, because within 15 minutes he had set up an emergency operations center (EOC) to interact with the outside responders who were fast arriving at the 9,500-student school.

5/1/2009
 

MANY PEOPLE HAVE stopped watching the evening news. Why bother? More corporate greed. More stocks plummeting. More people losing their jobs, homes, or life savings.

5/1/2009
 

SINCE WORLD WAR I, FORT ORD IN SALINAS, CALIF., HAD BEEN AN ARMY training facility and artillery target range.

5/1/2009

As we look across the landscape of private liberal arts education in the United States, we understand that change comes slowly. Recently there have been a spate of writings about the need to develop more creativity in the graduates of our colleges, and in the faculty and the way they teach at those smaller institutions. Howard Gardner of Harvard writes about the five minds necessary for the future; one of them is “the creative mind.”

4/1/2009
 

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I WROTE A COLUMN FOR UNIVERSITY BUSINESS that introduced the idea of brand as experience.

4/1/2009

What’s hot for today’s engineering students? What’s really hot is the emerging field of assistive technologies. Combining professional career fields like robotics, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer science, and occupational health, a new breed of polytechnic programs are serving up state-of-the-art, adaptive technology courses for civically engaged engineering students who want to make the world a better place for the disabled.

3/1/2009
 

TIGHTER BUDGETS. CUTS TO PROGRAMS. LAYOFFS. Frozen salaries. The list goes on and on as to how colleges and universities are being affected by the country’s recession.

3/1/2009
 

DEPENDING ON WHOM YOU TALK TO—AND that person may well have an agenda—the current trend in help desk service is outsourcing.

3/1/2009
 

ALL YEAR LONG, BUT THROUGHOUT the colder months in particular, health care needs inevitably arise.

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