Campus Profile: Wesleyan University


Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 2, Summer 
1991. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is 
granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for 
commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and notice 
is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for 
managing and using information resources in higher education. To 
disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For 
further information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, 
Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu


                           WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

************************************************************************

This article is based on a visit to Wesleyan University by editor Julia
Rudy. The Campus Computing Environment department of CAUSE/EFFECT
regularly focuses on the information technology environment of a CAUSE
member campus, to promote a better understanding of how the information
technologies are organized and managed in colleges and universities of
various sizes and types.

************************************************************************

Founded in 1831 by the Methodist Church as a small men's college,
Wesleyan University today is a non-sectarian, co-educational liberal
arts university with an enrollment of 2,750 students, located in
Middletown, Connecticut, on a 120-acre campus. In addition to the
bachelor of arts degree, the University offers master's and doctoral
degrees. Known for the value it places on academic and personal freedom,
from its founding to the present Wesleyan has emphasized the importance
of a liberal education.

Information Technology Strategy
and Planning

Like most colleges and universities entering the 90s, Wesleyan is
facing budgetary constraints and retrenchment. In response, President
William Chace is putting into place a new planning process that will
address the financial and programmatic needs of the University in an
integrated process. Plans and priorities for information technology,
developed by the University Computing organization under the direction
of H. David Todd, will be incorporated into this campus-wide planning
effort.

Although there has not been a formal institutional planning
process, Todd and his staff have for many years set strategic directions
for computing and networking. For example, in 1986, after several years
of learning as much as possible about the area of networking, Todd
articulated a networking vision for Wesleyan in a special report that
has since provided the framework within which the campus network is
being developed.

In a similar document prepared last winter, University Computing
proposed a computing facilities strategy for the eventual elimination of
the central academic host computer, the functions of which would be
replaced by a system of distributed workstations and specialized central
servers. The plan proposes migration to the Unix operating environment
when Unix applications and tools become more affordable, stable, secure,
and available in the marketplace, and when the campus network is fully
realized. Specific interim goals and budget allocations necessary to
achieve this strategy are included. The plan is being considered by the
administrative and academic computing advisory committees, which provide
input into the information technology planning process.

According to Todd, among the key factors that have enabled
information technology to advance in spite of somewhat limited support
(computing's share of the institutional budget is about 2.[5] percent)
are: (1) a technically-expert, far-sighted, committed staff with very
little turnover, and (2) an aggressive training program not only for
computing staff but for the user community they serve, which helps
leverage the University's investment in technology.

Computing Services Delivery

Computing and networking services are delivered to all campus
computer users from a single computing center in which academic and
administrative computing functions are combined. These services are
delivered by a cross-functional, "generalist" staff, supported by a
large corps of student employees who are distributed throughout and are
an integral part of the computing organization. Major central computers
and systems supported are a Digital VAX 8550 and 6410 (running the 1032
database management system) and a Digital DECSYSTEM-20 (running the 1022
DBMS); the latter is being phased out.

Staff training is an important component of information technology
management at Wesleyan. Todd believes the most important thing to do for
computing staff is make sure they understand that things are going to
change. "The computing business changes from day to day--opportunities
change, costs change, and the marketplace changes. You have to figure
out where you want to be, and make sure staff get the training they need
to get you there." At Wesleyan, time is allocated in staff meetings to
discuss technical developments, and staff are kept informed about
directional changes so they can remain flexible.

The primary model for computing services delivery is to encourage
as much expertise as possible in departments and central offices.
Several academic departments and most central administrative offices
have a computer "expert" who functions as a liaison to central
computing. Essentially the philosophy is to put tools in the hands of
users, and critical to this goal has been building a good user training
program, which includes the concept of "tailored training" to best meet
user needs.

The center has a close working relationship with the campus human
resources department; together they are working toward incorporating
information technology skills into job descriptions and encouraging
personnel across campus to develop these skills. In a program begun two
years ago, once a quarter new employees are invited to attend a session
on "Computing Tools at Wesleyan" so they know what tools and courses are
available to them. Current employees are also invited to these sessions,
department by department. The intention of the program is to make
information technology a part of the campus culture, and especially to
convey the idea to both employees and their supervisors that it is not
only all right but very important to spend time learning new information
technology skills.

Bootstrapping the Network

Unlike many small colleges, Wesleyan's academic mission includes
research as well as undergraduate teaching. With network implementation
fundamental to both, it is not surprising that the University made an
early entry into this arena. For example, Wesleyan was among the first
campuses to have Ethernet interfaces for the DECSYSTEM-20, acting as a
field test site and developing a campus Ethernet before TCP/IP
documentation existed. Today TCP/IP is the primary protocol on the
campus network, which offers connections to both BITNET and the Internet
for the majority of campus users.

Without institutional commitment to fund the campus-wide fiber-
optic backbone network envisioned in Todd's 1986 report, staff have had
to take advantage of opportunities as they arose to build the network
piece by piece--something they were able to do with a strategy in place.
Director of Academic Computing Douglas Bigelow refers to laying "fibers
of convenience," meaning that anytime there is a new building or
renovation project that offers an excuse to pull a wire, they do so.
Last summer, for example, an underground conduit for steam was put
through and five separate fibers were laid to main buildings along the
way.

The center's approach has also included making use of public domain
software and in-house development to provide solutions that don't cost
much but work well, e.g., using NCSA Telnet (which is free) as the main
platform for PCs and Macintoshes, and using for routers several PCs
running public domain router code. The extra programming that was
required was well worth the effort, according to Bigelow: "Using
successful combinations of low-cost Ethernet cards and low-cost software
has netted us twice as much for our money as we would get if buying
commercially available solutions."

Supporting Administration

One of the administration's responses to budget constraints has
been to institute a staff attrition policy, i.e., when any staff member
resigns, the position may not be refilled. When the registrar's office
lost two positions within a short period of time, Director of
Administrative Computing Allyn Chase was asked to consult with that
office, paying special attention to how work was being done and by whom,
to see what work processes might be automated using in-place databases
to relieve some of the work pressures. This "reengineering" consultation
resulted in a plan for providing online inquiry to students and
automating several procedures that were being done manually, including a
new way of handling transcript requests. According to Chase, information
systems (IS) staff are increasingly playing this new role with campus
offices, i.e., focusing on changing day-to-day operational tasks, a
departure from their more typical function of developing large-scale
applications.

Work continues, however, on major administrative systems. A
significant undertaking in the past year was designing and beginning the
implementation of the new University Data Bank (UDB), a repository of
standard data attributes across campus that will enable the true
integration of all major administrative systems. Current databases in
the admissions, registrar, and alumni offices communicate with each
other, but the focus has been on entering, capturing, and reporting
data, not on long-range planning, modeling, and decision support.

Having one data structure in a constituent database will allow
sharing many report-generating aspects, all with one common set of
software. The UDB is being implemented on the VAX 6410 in 1032 with
relational-like features, a less expensive alternative than purchasing
commercial relational DBMS software. Standardized software and screens
have been prototyped for all major offices and the admissions
application was implemented last fall. Involved with the IS staff in
planning the project were the associate treasurer, registrar, director
of institutional research, and representatives from the admissions and
alumni/development offices. Chase feels that this widespread
participation and ownership of the project will ensure its success.

The University is also in the process of negotiating the final
details on the purchase of a financial system from Information
Associates. An essential part of this project will be to rebuild the
University chart of accounts, which will allow taking full advantage of
the new system and provide a more structured platform for departmental
user access to financial data. Again, because critical user offices were
involved in defining systems requirements and in the acquisition
process, users understand the need to change the way they are doing
business and are looking forward to the benefits of the new system.

Faculty and Student Computing

More than three-quarters of the faculty at Wesleyan use personal
computers, and most are heavy users of the network, primarily for
electronic mail, file sharing, and access to the online library catalog.
Many faculty use computing in their coursework, especially those in
computer science, physics, chemistry, music, social sciences, the arts,
theatre, and French.

The Public Affairs Center Data Lab for the social sciences
(economics, history, government, sociology, college of social studies)
offers students an outstanding selection of instructional programs,
simulations, and statistical packages and spreadsheets for analysis.
These programs can be used in the lab or taken into the classroom and
projected onto a screen. Professor Stew Gillmor uses a program called
The Great American History Machine, which provides statistical analysis
and graphical displays based on 19th and 20th century census data. The
program runs on a Unix-based Apollo workstation.

All students are eligible for free VAX accounts, with 24-hour-a-day
access. Students are by far the heaviest campus e-mail users, making
frequent use of such network bulletin boards as USENET. Students also
have unlimited access to several microcomputer labs, predominantly
equipped with PC/AT compatible micros. Most of these labs are networked
to fileservers and connected to the campus network. One of the most
recently established microlabs, with color monitors and high-speed 16-
megahertz machines connected in a Novell network, is proving to be an
effective facility for faculty courseware development.

In keeping with the potential migration into a distributed
workstation environment, Wesleyan has aquired three IBM RS/6000 RISC
workstations for research in chemistry and molecular biology, five Unix-
based Apollo workstations for instruction in computer science and
history (donated by Hewlett-Packard last summer), and two Tower Unix
computers (donated by the NCR Corporation through the generosity of
Charles Exley, a Wesleyan alumnus who is chairman of the board and CEO
of NCR).

Information Technology in the Library

Wesleyan's library joined with Connecticut College and Trinity
College to form the CTW Library Consortium in 1984. Two years later, the
Consortium launched a five-year plan to implement an integrated library
system to serve the needs of faculty and students at all three campuses.
The following year, an IBM 4381 was installed at Wesleyan, which
functions as Operating Partner in the Consortium, and the implementation
of the selected NOTIS system began. By early 1988, the online catalog
was available on all three campuses, and currently most of the other
library processes have been automated.

Robert Adams, Wesleyan University Librarian, believes that from one
terminal, using a common command language, users should be able to find
all forms of materials in the CTW library collections and, in addition,
to gain access to materials available elsewhere through the network.
Adams has prepared a CTW vision statement that identifies fifteen steps
necessary to achieve this goal, many of which are either completed or
under way. Further evidence of the University's commitment to the vision
of accessing information resources through networks is its support of
the Coalition for Networked Information through membership and
participation in the CNI Task Force.

Recently, Wesleyan began preparing for reaccreditation by the New
England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. In the process, it
became apparent that the NEASC had few standards for measuring
information technology resources. According to Vice President for
Academic Affairs and Provost Joanne Creighton, "Information technology
should be as important as libraries in the accreditation process," and
with Todd's encouragement the NEASC is addressing this question. With
the quality of information resources available at Wesleyan, it should
easily meet any future standards the NEASC may establish.

************************************************************************