Articles: Technology

Medieval castles were protected by moats, fortified walls, and small villages, yet enemies sometimes still snuck through using disguises.

A similar multilayered approach is needed to protect the modern campus IT infrastructure. Only this time the enemy is malware and viruses and the disguises are links on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

In 1999, the North Dakota University System coordinated a roundtable discussion inviting its board of directors, K-12 administrators, employers, and others to address their expectations of the university.

"It was a landmark event in North Dakota's higher ed history," explains Michel Hillman, vice chancellor of academic and student affairs at NDUS in Bismarck, which has 11 campuses. "What was recommended was a consistent set of accountability measures."

The KeyScan KS810-P Imaging Keyboard ($99) contains a color sheet-fed scanner for scanning documents without having to leave your desk.

In a previous column published in the June issue of University Business, I shared a few anecdotal examples of how universities and colleges had started to use online analytics to inform their marketing and communications decisions. Unfortunately, there was no available data on analytics usage across institutions at that time. I decided to survey practitioners, thus testing my hypothesis that a change of attitudes in higher education toward web and social media analytics was required.

In the summer of 2004, as athletes around the world converged in Athens for the Olympic Games, another Olympian venture was taking place half a world away at George Mason University (Va.).

Will this new fiscal year come with a bigger budget for your web and marketing initiatives? Given the current state of higher education budgets, chances are it won't (but, if you're one of the happy few, congratulations!). For the past couple of years, institutions across the country had to do more with less. That's why it has become so important today to find out quickly what works and what doesn't, and how you can improve your digital initiatives.

When colleges and universities start assessing their carbon footprint, the IT department is likely to come under fire by virtue of having oversight of much of the energy consumption on campus. Just how much energy do IT functions account for? At Harvard, for example, Sustainability Office Director Heather Henriksen says that IT functions--from data centers to network equipment to desktops and laptops--make up between 13 and 25 percent of the institution’s peak electrical load.