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Misericordia University announced in October that it would introduce football, bringing the total number of Division III teams at Misericordia to 23. We will be joining eight other Mid-Atlantic Conference (MAC) colleges and universities in fielding a football team.

Hot button issues facing colleges and universities at times seem endless: recruitment, student retention, and shrinking budgets, to name just a few. In contrast, identity management is an often overlooked and under appreciated business process among senior leadership in the higher education field. Yet with the increase of online courses; rising popularity of distance learning; and the challenge of protecting student, faculty and organizational data, identity management is fast becoming a top concern among university professionals.

Very few--if any--components of campus life are as important to the institution as emergency planning. A college's reputation and, more importantly, the public safety and security of its campus community are at stake.

There was a time, not terribly long ago, when the telecommunications industry spoke of "convergence." Voice and data would soon be one and the complexity that goes with building and maintaining separate systems would evaporate. That time is upon us, and actually, it has been for years. Why, then, is building the corporate information technology infrastructure still so complicated?

Despite the money, time and good intentions thrown their way, most college and university marketing efforts are littered with flawed assumptions, missed opportunities, process inefficiencies, me-too work and disappointing results. The ripple effects spread to recruiting, fundraising, alumni engagement, pricing pressure, and even retention and institutional reputation.

Since emerging in the college recruitment world just three years ago, college search social media sites have been a rapidly growing category of recruitment tools that combine the function of college search websites with the interactive, dynamic communications of mainstream social media networks. As the sites have come of age, they have given admissions professionals increased flexibility, creativity and efficiency in their recruitment communications and the way student inquiries are generated.

Universities are information-rich environments - and not just in the academic sense. Year by year, students apply, attend and graduate, repeatedly filling out exhaustive forms. Their families provide extensive filings to qualify for financial aid. Professors come and go, some staying to earn tenure, others visiting on temporary assignment, providing detailed personal information along the way.

Prospective college students and their parents use a much different barometer today to select a university. Yes, the value of education is important. But increasingly, so is the square-footage of a student's room, quality of cafeteria food and lobby decor. It's no coincidence that university student centers and residence hall common areas share the same color palettes found in the latest Teen Vogue and have the same kind of finishes you'd expect to see in three-star and above hotels and upscale apartments and homes.

Colleges and universities rely on their buried infrastructure, including water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, to keep campus life running smoothly. Unfortunately, many institutions have patchwork systems of underground infrastructure, for which they lack accurate maps and often require more detailed information on the condition of these critical assets.

In the current economic climate, the majority of private universities are stuck between "a rock and a hard place" with both undergraduate admissions and fundraising efforts significantly challenged.