Campus Profile: Chemeketa Community College


Copyright 1992 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 1992. 
Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is 
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                      CHEMEKETA COMMUNITY COLLEGE

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

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Cemeketa Community College is a comprehensive, public, community college
with a main campus located in Salem, Oregon, and educational centers in
Dallas, McMinnville, Woodburn, and Stayton. Since its inception as a
vocational/technical school in 1955, Chemeketa has evolved into a
college offering a full range of academic and technical subjects to more
than 40,674 people per year, with a current annual enrollment growth
rate of 5 percent. The college receives support for its $32-million-plus
budget from local property taxes (55 percent), state funds (30 percent),
and tuition and fees (15 percent).

Information Technology: The Chemeketa Way

For the past few years, Chemeketa has been engaged in a process of
vision, mission, and value identification that has touched every segment
of the college. The college community has agreed to five values--
responsive, effective, caring, collaborative, and creative--that drive
what President Bill Segura calls Chemeketa's "strategic improvisation"
process.

Part of that process involved an intensive look at the college's
computer-related systems, resources, and policies. According to Segura,
"Information in combination with technology is a powerful resource, one
that needs to be shared like other, traditional resources. It was
important that Chemeketa be able to think beyond maintenance and take on
new information technology challenges."

More than forty individuals from the college were divided into six
working groups to assess academic computing, mainframe-microcomputer
interfaces, software, maintenance and support, office support, and
electronic communications. From this process, a number of strategic
actions were identified and several "disappearing task forces" were
established to propose implementation strategies in target areas.
Foremost among the recommended strategic actions was the reorganization
of information technology services.

A New IT Management Paradigm

Until last year, computing at Chemeketa was organized in an "old-
time, fiefdom" style, according to Segura, with turf battles between
academic and administrative computing eating up staff time, energy, and
creativity, and actually impeding progress in IT development and use.
This was also incongruent with Chemeketa's philosophy of "one class of
educator," essentially the belief that all college employees are
contributing to the educational mission of the college, regardless of
their specific responsibilities.

An executive team made up of Segura, Chief Financial Officer Craig
Smith, and Academic Vice President Jerry Berger worked to reconfigure
the computing organization by breaking down barriers that had
historically built up, forming what is now called the Information
Technology Group. More than thirty staff make up the new organization,
which cuts across the lines of administration and instructional
computing to support all uses of technology at Chemeketa.

Although the IT Group reports to CFO Smith, IT staff members have a
close working relationship with the Learning Resource Center--
responsible for the library, media services, and distance education--
which reports to Berger. According to Berger, the strength of the new
organization is its interrelatedness to all divisions of the college--
"it's not really a single, separate organization."

The Information Technology Group is managed by a team of five
individuals: team leader Tom DePue, Bob Hunter, Terri Johanson, Doug
Moxley, and Steve Schmidt. The concept of management by a team, rather
than a line organization, is one that DePue and his colleagues are
deeply committed to. They believe it is significant, and in keeping with
Chemeketa's culture, that the management team is made up of individuals
who have not come from technical backgrounds (though they all have
technical expertise in different areas)--in fact, one of their strengths
is their ability to act as "interpreters" between the technical staff
and the user community.

DePue has provided a special kind of leadership in the transition
to the new organization, drawing on his experience as director in
business and management and a year of service in the employee relations
area, where he was instrumental in negotiating a highly successful
collective bargaining agreement with classified staff. Although everyone
in the IT Group has a job classification, there are no formal titles nor
is there a hierarchy or chain of command--something that the outside
world sometimes has difficulty dealing with and even Chemeketa
colleagues are known to tease the group about on occasion!

Building an organization on relationships rather than a formal
structure has been very demanding and challenging for all of the staff,
who have had to be willing to change and grow. That change and growth
will not end, but will be the hallmark of the group. As DePue puts it,
"This is a journey, not an event.'"

Management literature today is full of discussions about flatter,
customer-focused, service-driven organizations, and peppered with
concepts such as staff empowerment, team-building, and collaboration.
The IT Group at Chemeketa is a living, implemented model of these
principles, providing customer support in eight areas: mainframe
support, academic labs, training and staff support, data collection,
networking/computer repair, the phone system, the Technical Assistance
Center, and Apple Alliance project development.

With the focus of the new organization on supporting the IT needs
of the Chemeketa community, top priority in the reorganization was given
to establishing the effective, well managed Technical Assistance Center
(TAC) to meet the IT needs of the entire college. In addition to serving
as a traditional "help desk," the center also offers comprehensive
consulting services and is a focal point for purchasing approval for all
IT equipment. Anyone wishing to make a computer-related purchase works
with a TAC consultant to determine the most appropriate solution. The
hardware or software is approved and ordered through the center, and the
order is then tracked through the center's management software, called
the HEAT system. All TAC contacts are entered into and tracked by this
system. According to Johanson, the tracking function has matured to the
point where now it is possible to prescribe training programs based on
an analysis of requests and customer needs.

Information Systems Strategy

Like many other campuses today, Chemeketa's current homegrown
information systems are integrated and functional, but use a VSAM file
structure. The strategy identified by the IT Group is to migrate these
systems to relational database technology to provide the kind of access
and reporting capabilities users need. Their plan includes mounting an
active program on an IBM RS/6000 using a relational database software
product from Cincom Systems, Inc. with the capability of accessing,
reading, and updating VSAM files.

The pilot project chosen to test the concept--JOBS--is a welfare
reform program that Chemeketa has contracted with the state to manage.
JOBS will require intensive data collection and reporting, essentially
tracking individual services for every student entered in the program,
and will be an excellent test of the Cincom software. The corporate
partnership includes Cincom's agreement to provide extensive technical
training and support throughout the product's implementation, which is
critical to Chemeketa's staff being able to work in this new relational
technology environment.

With one central IBM ES/9000 and a growing number of microcomputers
on campus, the chosen strategy is to distribute computing power as much
as possible, using multiple platforms most appropriately to serve the
needs of the college. Mainframe-microcomputer connections have already
been established on selected workstations, and the next step is to make
these connections universally available. Fiber optic cable has been laid
through the major buildings on campus in preparation for a campus-wide
network, but some major policy decisions need to be made before the
network is implemented.

Data collection and data administration issues are also of
paramount importance as the college moves toward this distributed
environment. According to DePue, a commitment to training users will be
critical--for distributed computing to reap the expected benefits in the
college, users will have to understand the data, how it is structured,
what it means, and how to use it to derive the information they need,
regardless of their function in the college.

Teaching and Learning with IT

As a community college, Chemeketa has long provided computing tools
for students to learn the skills needed to work in the real world. The
transition the college has now begun is to advance from a "learning
tool" to a "teaching tool" approach, with a focus on faculty training,
development, and literacy in information technology. These goals have
been strongly advanced by Chemeketa's membership in the Apple Community
College Alliance, an alliance between Apple Computer, Inc. and ten
geographically diverse institutions to examine, develop, and share ways
that Macintosh technology can help improve teaching and learning in
community colleges.

In the first year of Chemeketa's Alliance participation, hardware
and software were put into the hands of selected faculty (in response to
their proposals for use in teaching), but by the second year it was
clear that a project development group was needed to provide strong
technical support to predominantly non-technical faculty. When the
project development group found what most faculty wanted was to be able
to make some kind of electronic book, they developed a HyperCard-based
authoring product, called The Textbook Toolbox, that builds an empty
shell which the content specialist then uses to build the book. Much
less complex than authoring software currently on the market, Johanson
likens The Textbook Toolbox to a set of "training wheels," an
introductory point-and-click authoring system that requires no
programming whatsoever. Chemeketa is marketing this product through a
for-profit subsidiary of the college, one of several entrepreneurial
mechanisms established by CFO Smith to market services externally,
generate funding, and manage revenue streams for the college.

In addition to The Textbook Toolbox, the project development group
has helped with a wide variety of projects, including an electronic
version of the college policy manual, a HyperCard stack for assessing
competencies completed by students in the fire sciences program (a
process that used to take an hour and now takes only one minute), a
self-paced program to help people through the grant-writing process, and
a self-paced program to help students in the food handling program to
study for and take their certification test.

Last year the college established the Opportunity Center to help
faculty and staff develop professionally by looking at new teaching and
training models. Center partnerships with the IT Group and the Learning
Resource Center are common, as more innovative teaching and learning is
enabled through information technology. Affinity groups at the Center
have been formed to pursue such emerging interests as collaborative
learning, and a database of comments and video clips on teaching
excellence, called the LEARN system, has been created (see photo below).

The college is also a major participant in a statewide initiative
to build a plan to coordinate and facilitate technology transfer among
all Oregon universities, community colleges, and technology transfer
service bureaus.

In the area of distance education, Chemeketa has made important
strides in recent years. The college offers broadcast and receive
services through its own ITFS system as well as through the Oregon ED-
Net system. CTV's telecommunications facilities include a full-motion
system (one-way video and two-way audio) and a compressed motion system
(two-way video and audio). Media services staff in the Learning Resource
Center support the CTV classroom and studio, broadcasting, receiving,
and production facilities

Among other innovative uses of networking technology are the online
computer modem classes offered by Chemeketa. Students and instructors
have access to the classes 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so job
schedules, child care responsibilities, and personal choice can be
accommodated. Although the modem classes have some expenses that
traditional classes do not, there are cost savings in that students in
these classes do not need space in already full classrooms, or parking
spaces in crowded lots, and they provide their own computer hardware
from their homes. Eight of these classes are being offered this fall.

At present, Chemeketa spends 5 percent of its overall budget on
information technology, evidence of its commitment to this critical
resource. In light of Oregon's looming budget crisis, can the college
maintain what it has begun? President Segura thinks so: "We will sustain
what we've created by vision and leadership, and beyond that by
ownership of the Chemeketa community. That's how we make things happen
here. We truly believe in that phrase in our vision statement--
'undaunted by limitations'--and we will continue to work to get the
right things done."
Campus Profile: Chemeketa Community College