Campus Profile: Lehigh University Copyright 1994 CAUSE. From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 1994. 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 date appear, 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 Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jrudy@CAUSE.colorado.edu Campus Computing Environment LEHIGH UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT: This article is based on a visit to the Lehigh University campus by editor Julia Rudy. The Campus Computing Environment department of CAUSE/EFFECT regularly focuses on the computing and information resources environment of a CAUSE member institution, to promote a better understanding of how information resources are organized, managed, planned for, and used in colleges and universities of various sizes and types. Lehigh University, an independent, academically selective, comprehensive university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has an enrollment of 4,500 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students. The University offers more than sixty majors in the College of Arts and Science, the College of Business and Economics, and the College of Engineering and Applied Science. All offer bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, while the College of Education offers graduate programs only. According to Lehigh President Peter Likins, "The most important thing we do at Lehigh is help young people learn. I don't mean 'teach' young people, but 'help young people learn'... a much broader and more holistic concept." This philosophy no doubt has influenced Lehigh's goal of using educational technology to provide a student-centered learning environment (see Likins' statement at the end of this article). Recognition of the importance of technology at Lehigh Recently Lehigh's institution-wide strategic planning process culminated in two documents that outline key strategies for the University's continued success. One of the strategies calls for the adoption of "technology" as a key theme of The Lehigh Plan.[1] A task force was established, as part of the planning process, to examine teaching and learning issues. Among its recommendations was that "faculty in all fields should consider ways to use technology to help them impart the knowledge base of their subject, so that they can spend more personal time helping to motivate students to learn and helping them to understand the subject." An educational technology task force also was empaneled to explore potential in this area. According to the plan, an educational technology strategy at Lehigh will require new commitments of resources as well as some kind of organizational structure. That organization should be devoted to educational innovations, rather than restricted to educational technology. The purpose of the educational innovations program "is not to generate innovations in isolation but to serve faculty throughout the University who want to learn how to apply innovative practices to their teaching." Additionally, one of seven capabilities the University believes are critical to the development of tomorrow's leaders and that must be part of the curriculum of every major at Lehigh is "comprehension of the role of technology in society." The plan also recognizes the pervasiveness of technology at Lehigh as one of the University's competitive advantages: the libraries have been at the forefront in adapting technology to the information requirements of the Lehigh community; the campus's digital communications network installed in 1986 was the most pervasive in America at that time and has been upgraded continually, enabling a migration from mainframe computers to workstations for a fully distributed computing approach; in the academic arena, technology-related or -supported programs in education, music, theatre, and history are well regarded, as are the Science and Technology for Society program and the Management of Technology program. Lehigh operates its own KU-Band satellite earth station and offers a master's program in chemistry by satellite as well as graduate courses for the National Technological University. Information technology organization and management Currently, the computing and communications services organization and the libraries are under the direction of two separate administrators. However, a new position is planned--vice provost for libraries, computing, and communications--that will combine the two administrative positions into one and integrate the key components of the University's information resources program. What is remarkable about the proposed merger of the library and computing/communications positions, according to Likins, is that the suggestion came from the incumbents--Bruce Fritchman, assistant vice president for computing and communications services, and Berry Richards, director of libraries. Currently Richards and Fritchman work in close cooperation, both serving on the Provost's Council, but they recognize that, in spite of cultural differences, their two organizations can better serve the Lehigh community as an integrated organization focused as one on the networked information resources environment of the future. The Lehigh Plan suggests that the proposed new educational innovations program might also operate under the auspices of the new vice provost position while functioning under the oversight of an advisory board that would include various campus leaders in this area. Thus, the line organization depicted on the facing page will look quite different eighteen months from now. Planning and implementing a client/server computing strategy Four years ago, the computing and communications services organization formed a five-year strategic plan[2] with a number of components: the introduction of workstations at an accelerated rate, extensions to the campus high-speed network, elimination of mainframe computers, installation of compute and file servers, and introduction of software that would enable a unified computer system. According to Fritchman, there were many reasons for embracing a client/server strategy: "a significantly lower price-performance ratio, the ability to incrementally add computing resources at a reasonable cost, the ability to more easily meet a broad range of user computing needs, and recognition that technological developments were favoring distributed computing." With the installation of an InteCom IBX digital switch in 1985 to provide voice and low-speed data services to everyone on campus, accompanied by an infusion of microcomputers (one for every faculty member and 200 installed in public sites for student access), the groundwork had already been laid for distributed computing at Lehigh. Thus, once the infrastructure vision was articulated through the plan, it was readily accepted by the broader community. The first step in the transition was to implement a high-speed data network in conjunction with acquiring the powerful workstations that would replace the campus mainframes. The initial implementation used Ethernet because of the high cost of FDDI four years ago, but today Lehigh's fiber-optic backbone network supports 100 Mbps FDDI data rates, using a star configuration which Fritchman says will make it easy to make a transition to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) within the next year. The network connects thirty-one buildings, each with one or more Ethernet subnets using unshielded twisted-pair wiring. Downsizing from mainframe computers to networked workstations running under UNIX operating systems presented the next challenge. The process went much more smoothly than any of the IT staff thought it would, but according to Bill Harris, director of the Lehigh University Computer Center (LUCC), the key reason for this was the heavy involvement in planning and decision-making by users during the transition. In addition to surveying users about their needs, meetings were held with the research faculty and the Computer Intensive Needs Committee (CINC) was formed to participate in all vendor presentations, benchmarking activities, and RFP development. Other key management factors included setting goals and timelines and being willing to compromise. What has Lehigh's computing and communications organization accomplished to date? In less than two years, three mainframes were eliminated--an IBM 4381, a Digital VAX 8530, and a CDC Cyber--replaced by 150 IBM RS/6000 workstations and 10 RS/6000 servers. Basically, there are three systems--the network server, the compute server cluster, and the public workstations using the AFS file-sharing software. Each of these systems fills a specific computing need: the network server is used for e-mail and information distribution; the compute servers are used for computing-intensive applications and access to licensed software; and the general-purpose AFS workstations provide more computing power than the public microcomputers, in a windowed, multi-processing environment[3] Fritchman believed that the transition needed to be made as quickly as possible in terms of acquiring the workstation power to effectively convert to the new architecture. He had to use "creative financing" to accomplish this goal, namely convincing the treasurer to put the $2 million dollars he estimated would eventually be saved "up front" in the computing budget to acquire all the new hardware and software. Among the major transition issues were migrating the campus-wide information system (CWIS), software identification and licensing, user training and documentation (all documentation had to be rewritten!), tape and program conversion, distributed support issues, and hardware maintenance management. According to Tim Foley, associate director for LUCC consulting services, costs of maintenance for all of the new workstations could have dramatically reduced savings gained from eliminating the mainframes, but his unit was able to provide in-house maintenance and repair for considerable savings in this area. Roy Gruver, director of telecommunications and administrative systems, said there was initially a great deal of apprehension that moving to the client/server environment would be difficult for administrative computing. Ironically, the first application brought up in the new environment was an administrative application supporting the admissions office, an SCT Banner software product built in Oracle and adapted to meet Lehigh's requirements. Oracle has been selected as the relational database management system for future applications development. Lehigh's CWIS also runs under Oracle, so the experience gained by LUCC personnel in developing the CWIS has been valuable to administrative computing personnel. It has proven to be the case, however, that administrative systems are moving more slowly into the UNIX environment, and at present the administrative IBM 4381 is still running the student and financial systems. Plans are under way to convert these systems when funds can be allocated for software package purchases. Although the conversion has gone very smoothly, has been well received, and is considered a major success, it has not been without challenges. One of the primary ones, according to Carol Lidie, associate director of operations and network facilities, has been and continues to be backup (which has grown from 35 to over 100 gigabits) and, with so many smaller systems, asset management; software version control and file management are also more complex. Her group is considering a combination of strategies to meet these challenges, including using optical storage for archive-type files, introducing archive software, and investigating different backup media. There is unanimous sentiment on the part of management that the effort was more staff intensive than they had envisioned--new skills needed to be developed (UNIX, networking, workstation operations), and more tools need to be supported in the client/server environment. By and large, however, staff members were very excited when they found out what the new machines could do, and were enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with changing technologies; essentially they learned many of their new skills through on-the-job rather than formal training. Library technology According to library director Berry Richards, Lehigh's library was an early adopter of campus-wide information resources on a network server, offering basic library services online nearly a decade ago. Implemented in 1985, the GEAC-based online catalog system, called ASA, is aging and needs to be replaced. The library has been engaged in a search to replace the system, and is in an excellent position to implement a Z39.50-compliant system that will capitalize on the new client/server environment at Lehigh. Staff hope by the fall to have Windows-based clients throughout the library with the capability of interfacing with image databases. Recognizing that users need to understand that information resources are increasingly available outside library walls, last fall the staff introduced a "wide open library" concept called LiberSpace, to help users comprehend the "geography" of campus information services-- whether they are available via the network server, compact disk, or a LAN operation. To provide a simple user interface, OCLC's SiteSearch software was installed on an RS/6000 server in the computer center, enabling users to search multiple remote and online databases. Staff members have also developed a separate library Gopher server offering various information resources of interest to the user community, and are beginning to experiment with a World Wide Web server. The instructional media services department of the library manages the Instructional Media Center, which offers a collection of over 20,000 nonprint resources searchable on ASA. The department also includes the Media Services Production Center, where production services are available for various media, including video and audio, photographic and slide services, and computer-generated graphics. What's ahead? According to Fritchman, the Lehigh community is enjoying many benefits from the move to a client/server environment: greatly increased computing power, improved computer/user interface, more advanced software, and improved access to information and computing both on- and off-campus. With most infrastructure issues resolved for now, the next round of planning will involve increased participation by administrators and faculty, whose input will be key to defining future technology needs based on utilization considerations. ************************************************************************ Lehigh University President Peter Likins, on the educational technology revolution ... When I say that I expect the educational technology revolution to happen momentarily, you should realize that I have been predicting this for thirty years. Obviously I've been wrong for thirty years. It hasn't happened. I have asked myself why it is that I still believe this is going to happen, despite all my false expectations and despite how inherently conservative and change-resistant higher education institutions are. I think it's because of a fundamental change. Something has radically changed in higher education within the last five years (even though it's been coming for twenty years), and that is that society has reached the limits of its patience with the fact that the costs of educating people have been growing, in real terms, 3 percent a year for a hundred years. It's that kind of thinking--which is fundamentally not thinking about technology at all--that persuades me that now, finally, the educational technology revolution is going to happen. In the last thirty years, as the technology has become more powerful and more friendly and as the community has gradually become more accepting of new ways of thinking about higher education, we have greatly strengthened our research capabilities with technology and we've enhanced the learning experience for lots of young people, but we haven't transformed or fundamentally changed the fact that our principal educational mechanism is for some person to stand at the front of a class and lecture. It's that resistance to changing the basic business of the university that is at root the cause of our failures to increase productivity and the consequent inevitable increases in our costs. We're conscious of escalating prices in the 90s, but in fact it's a phenomenon that's been with us forever. It's just that until the mid- 80s, America's capacity to absorb our price increase was in some sense mitigated against market reaction. Education is an increasingly more valuable service and Americans have been getting richer, so they have been able to keep up with our cost increases. But the productivity increase in general in the American economy has been below 1 percent a year since the mid-70s; median family incomes are not growing in real terms, but our costs, and therefore our prices, continue to grow. Now the American public is telling us that we must reduce the rate at which our price increases. The only way to do that is with increased productivity. We are looking, finally, at educational technology to put productivity in the hands of the people. We have always looked at it previously as a little "jazzy extra" and now we must ask ourselves a really tough question: is there potential productivity enhancement in higher education through the use of technology? I don't know that the answer is yes, but I feel pretty confident that there is no other answer for enhancing productivity. I think we're going to be experimenting around the world, both within and outside of universities, in various private sector and government organizations, with ways to use technology to enhance productivity in education. That, finally, is going to bring the kind of powerful forces into play that will make us move. At Lehigh, we're getting there. The culture is changing. The technology has been used primarily for educational enhancement, but now we're in the middle of a university-wide strategic planning process, and we're openly speculating that technology can help us make the productivity increases we need to control our cost increases. Will this require a major resource allocation to provide the push faculty need to embrace the change? It's important to recognize that it's a lot more difficult for any institution to find resources to invest in the future in 1994 than it was in 1984. In our plan, we do indicate the necessity of committing annual resources to provide faculty with a sharper awareness of the opportunities to use technology. And, of course, there is the inevitable continuing effort to get higher-speed networking. We have done a lot of that with redirected resources from monies originally in the budget just to amortize mainframe purchases. There may well have to be again a major surge of investment in capital equipment, but I think there's something else working for us now that will create more pull from the faculty for greater technological capability. Previously we just kind of pushed it out there and asked, do you want to play? What's happening now on this campus, and I would say on many American campuses, is that there is an increasing awareness on the part of the faculty that the faculties are going to get smaller, while student bodies are not--at least we hope not. It would be a terrible thing if that played out simply through requiring that faculty teach more courses. What ought to happen is that the faculty should, little by little, begin to perceive that there are ways in which they can use, or ask their students to use, technology to be a more important part of the student's learning experience. Ideally, by the time students are seniors, they have an enormously developed capability to drive their own learning--to go to the library or sit down at a workstation to interconnect with whatever intellectual resources they need, and to learn in a student-centered way. As we shift our focus from teaching to learning--and that's the essence of the transformation that's necessary--the faculty should discover that there are a lot of resources available that they can have for a relatively small licensing fee or a small investment in training, resources that don't require tens of millions of dollars in university outlay for capital improvements. I'm inclined to think that the resource challenge we're going to face in the next five years or so is staffing up better to provide the guidance faculty need to use the technology that's there. ======================================================================== Footnotes: 1 The Lehigh Plan (CSD0912) and the Lehigh University Strategic Plan (CSD0922) are available from the CAUSE Information Resources Library. For ordering information, send e-mail to orders@cause.colorado.edu or call 303-939-0310. 2 Computing and Communication Five-Year Plan (CSD0459) is available from the CAUSE Information Resources Library. For ordering information, send e-mail to orders@cause.colorado.edu or call 303-939-0310. The document is also available electronically on the Lehigh University Gopher. 3 Mainframe to Client/Server: A Progress Report by Bruce Fritchman describes Lehigh's experience in detail, including a financial analysis. The paper is available from the CAUSE Information Resources Library (CSD0911). ======================================================================== Campus Profile: Lehigh University