Campus Profile: Lansing Community College Copyright 1994 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 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 PROFILE This article is based on a visit to the Lansing Community College campus by editor Julia Rudy. The magazine's Campus Profile department regularly focuses on the information resources environment-information, technology, and services- 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. LANSING COMMUNITY COLLEGE Established in 1957, Lansing Community College today is the third largest community college in Michigan, with a fall semester enrollment of over 18,000 (8,000 FTE). The College offers 2,500 different courses to prepare students in more than 500 areas of study, representing career and transfer opportunities as well as the first two years of a liberal arts education. In addition to its main campus in Lansing, Michigan, LCC offers an aviation curriculum at Lansing's Capital City Airport and a truck driver training curriculum at Fort Custer in Battle Creek. The College also has twenty- nine extension centers in mid-Michigan communities, serving over 5,000 students, and the Michigan House in Otsu, Japan, serves as an overseas learning site for LCC students. STRATEGIC PLANNING AT LCC LCC President Abel Sykes believes that "effective planning is a prerequisite for the orderly improvement and growth of any organization." Upon becoming president of the College in 1989, Sykes initiated a campuswide strategic planning effort that resulted in a formal, written master plan published the following year. That planning process, which engaged more than 300 College employees and 100 community members, became a catalyst for significant change in the College, most notable of which was a major college-wide divisional restructuring to improve institutional effectiveness and increase efficiency, while holding down costs. One of the ten task forces assembled to carry out LCC's strategic planning process focused on delivery of library services, telecommunications, computer services, instructional media services, and instructional technology. Co-chaired by Raymond Wawro, Director of Information Systems and Communication Services (ISCS), and Telecommunications Program Director James Greene, this task force made several recommendations: * build a new facility to house the library, computing, and media services; * establish a "clearinghouse" on instructional technology to serve as a resource for faculty interested in the use of non-traditional instructional methods; and * develop a comprehensive plan to: (1) establish a budget process that would allow for sufficient funding for the acquisition, maintenance, replacement, and repair of equipment in anticipation of changing technology, and (2) specify the architectural design, equipment, and cabling needed to prepare LCC for evolving internal and external communications activities. Other task forces engaged in the planning process also identified technology-related needs-e.g., ensuring that students have adequate technology skills to work in the marketplace; improving enrollment management, counseling, and student performance tracking activities through enhanced computer systems; and integrating new technologies such as interactive video, voice synthesizers, computer simulations, touch-screen programs, and distance learning technologies. Clearly, the College needed to address information technology as a strategic resource and create a plan to enable LCC to move rapidly into a networked information environment. AN AGGRESSIVE TECHNOLOGY PLAN LCC's response to this need was to hire a consulting firm (TRG, Inc.) in the spring of 1993 to evaluate IT needs, determine the College's ability to respond to the strategic master plan, propose hardware configuration alternatives and a migration plan, and estimate the resources that would be required to reach the proposed new environment. After studying the master plan, the consultants identified a number of technology-related needs as being fundamental to meeting many of the plan's goals. Those needs included: * networked personal computer access for all employees; * a campus backbone network to link all offices and classrooms on campus as well as connect the campus to community and state networks; * common internal electronic mail and electronic external access; * new ways to access information; and * new systems with more functionality and more robust databases. [MODEL NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION] Following widespread involvement of individuals from all areas of the College--through interviews, surveys, and discussion forums--as well as an inventory of faculty hardware needs and consideration of a report contributed by ISCS, TRG made a number of recommendations for how to get from where the College was to where it wanted to be, the most substantial of which was to implement a campuswide, fiber optic backbone network. The total estimated price tag was a staggering $13,459,854! How can LCC afford to implement a plan calling for an investment that represents nearly 20 percent of its annual budget? One source of funds is the result of the College's fiscally conservative approach to equipment purchases for the past several years, prompted by both a weak economy and the realization that computing equipment purchases needed to be guided by articulated institutional priorities. More than $1 million was being spent annually for equipment, with most purchases made independently at the division level. These expenditures were reduced to less than $100,000 annually for the past four years, with the difference placed in an equipment reserve fund. So although the College fell behind in technology purchases during that time, LCC was able to set aside nearly $4 million that now can be used to carry out a well-thought-out, comprehensive, institution-wide IT plan. In addition, the state of Michigan is making matching funds available for facilities projects at state colleges and universities. Since one of the recommendations of the strategic master plan included building a new information resources facility, LCC has been awarded $12.[8] million in matching funds for their building and related projects. The College studied TRG's recommendations and adapted them to an LCC migration plan which is now under way. The plan is being implemented primarily under the auspices of the Computer and Communications Committee, chaired by Wawro and Greene and made up of working groups charged with seeing through the various migration plan components. Leaders of the working groups all meet together bi-weekly to ensure coordination and communication and avoid duplication of efforts. A look at the groups and their charges is, essentially, a look at the migration plan. (1) PCs for Faculty--This group was charged with determining the hardware and software workstation configurations to be made available to all full-time faculty. PCs and software have already been delivered and installed. (2) Training--This group was asked to determine the training that should be made available, based on migration plan recommendations and the software selected by the PCs for Faculty group. (3) Student Lab Upgrades--This group was charged with identifying existing student labs with obsolete equipment and determining the hardware and software systems configurations to be installed in these labs. To date, nearly all student labs have been upgraded. (4) Network Plan and Implementation--This group's charge is to determine the voice, video, and data requirements for each room on campus and serve as an advisory committee to the vendor that is designing the network. A partnership with IBM has been defined and the network is scheduled for completion by June of 1995. (5) E-Mail and the Internet--This group was charged with determining the steps to be taken to gain full access to the Internet and exploring network-based electronic mail and office automation packages. An Internet connection has already been established. (6) Telephone--This group was asked to explore the latest telephony technology and determine the extent to which that technology should be available at LCC. A decision has been made to go with a distributed phone switch to replace the current centralized switch. (7) Mainframe--This group will determine the detailed hardware configuration needed to replace LCC's existing IBM 3083 mainframe and establish a timeline for installing the new system. TRG recommended upgrading to a used ES9000 Model 190 as a temporary solution, with the plan to migrate to a UNIX environment when adequate client/server solutions are available for legacy administrative systems. (8) Laser Printers--This group was charged with determining the basic requirements for standard laser printers, which they have accomplished, and are awaiting the installation of the network. A NEW INFORMATION RESOURCES ORGANIZATION While its IT environment was being evaluated, LCC was also engaged in widespread restructuring, as mentioned above. Through that process, a recommendation was made to combine the offices of ISCS and Institutional Research and Planning. According to Executive Vice President and Provost Valeriana Moeller, to whom the head of the new, combined organization reports, "It was important that the result of this merger be a truly integrated organization, really merging functions rather than just bringing the two units under one individual." Once again, LCC hired TRG to help facilitate this integration process. A new model has been proposed (and is very likely to be approved) which represents a team approach, built on a collaborative decision-making process. The infrastructure for the new organization is the networking and communications capability made possible through the integration of voice, video, and data. Four primary teams--Customer Support, Software and Hardware, Planning and Innovation, and Networking and Communications-- will each consist of secondary teams (with the exception of Networking and Communications). The secondary teams are depicted in the organizational diagram (facing page). The primary teams will not have designated leaders, in order to encourage collaboration across all teams. The College is also considering the possibility of incorporating telephone/voice technology, student lab technical support, media services, and the library into this emerging "information resources" organization. Thomas Franke, who will head the new organization, believes that the function of planning and managing information technology should lie in an enterprise-wide unit, rather than a division, to reinforce the view of information as a shared institutional resource. What is significant about the proposed new information resources organizational model is that it allocates human resources to planning as an ongoing function, recognizing that the high demand for and cost of technology make it critical to devote time and energy to formal planning for IT. In addition to a strong planning function, the new model incorporates a more centralized approach to instructional technology support, which heretofore has been lacking. According to Wawro, the restructuring will also help to meet a growing need to provide more support for students. "ISCS as construed wasn't able to do that," he says. "The new organization will support constituents all over campus, not just administrative users." A planned "data warehouse" will facilitate access to information in the College's administrative databases, currently not accessible to most faculty and staff. LCC's homegrown administrative systems, which have been highly successful over the years, will be replaced with purchased packages as client/server applications become available in the marketplace. Wawro agrees that this direction is an important one, and adds: "If you don't like change, you're in the wrong field!" INSTRUCTIONAL AND LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY Although LCC had fallen behind in networking technology in the last few years, it continues to be a showcase for technology in many academic areas. Through its membership in a network of mid-Michigan educational institutions, LCC will soon be able to use fiber optic technology to send and receive live courses and staff development programs. This interactive fiber-based television system is the first of its kind in the state. The Geographic Resource and Environmental Technology Program uses large computer database systems and computer technology to do extensive analysis work, and this program's technology lab was recently awarded a half-million- dollar grant for GIS software from Integraph Corporation. In addition, LCC operates a Midwest CADAM and Unigraphics training center as part of its Computer Integrated Manufacturing Program. As a result of LCC's strategic planning process, a Center for Teaching Excellence was established earlier this year to "inspire and enable faculty to enhance teaching potential and effectiveness." The center, which is becoming a focal point for demonstrating and facilitating the use of instructional technologies, uses a collaborative approach to bring faculty in contact with excellent instructional practices and technology. The library, also, has historically been progressive in technology utilization, joining OCLC in 1975 and being one of the first community colleges to have an online public access catalog and circulation system, installed in 1981. This aging system now needs to be replaced, and a bid for a new library system will be acted on as soon as the network has been completed. Elenka Raschkow, Director, Library Information, is eagerly awaiting the network's implementation which eventually will enable students and faculty to access the library online catalog system, periodical indexes/abstracts, full-text databases, interlibrary loan, and networked CD-ROMs from labs, faculty offices, extension centers, and homes. She acknowledges, however, that the technology is moving so fast library staff are having difficulty finding the time to learn how to use it. Training LCC students and faculty in Internet tools will be a major challenge, but one that will be shared with computing staff. Raschkow and Wawro agree that cooperation between the library and computing organization has never been better, and as the networked information environment grows, there will be even greater need to collaborate in the future. Greene believes the new building planned to house all of the components of information resources (including media services and the library, whether or not they are part of the new information resources organization) will encourage interaction and common staffing for services increasingly driven by technology. The new building will also be the hub for the fiber optic cable of the voice, video, and data communications network for the entire campus. Having reached a plateau in their planning endeavors and being well on their way to "leapfrogging" into a networked information environment, LCC is in a good position to assess what they have learned so far from their experience. Franke reflects, "We didn't want to just have consultants come in and talk to a few leaders and then generate a report, so we involved several hundred people in the process. It's taught us that if you have widespread involvement you not only achieve better decisions, you also have a lot more satisfaction. One drawback, of course, is that you take more time to get it done." Moeller agrees, but feels the extra time it takes is well worth it: "A process of this magnitude cannot be rushed. People need to have the opportunity to express their ideas. If you don't have people behind the process, it just won't work." So far, for Lansing Community College, it's working just fine. ************************************************************* SIDEBAR LANSING COMMUNITY COLLEGE PRESIDENT ABEL SYKES: "WE DON'T HAVE A CHOICE ..." When asked why Lansing Community College has devoted so much time to restructuring and why it is prepared to spend more than $13 million on information technology investments over the next five years, President Sykes responded: We don't have a choice. I suppose we could have decided just to stick with the old wayof doing things. It would certainly have been a much more comfortable way! But given what we know about teaching and learning and the role of technology in the learning process, given what we know about the use of technology for facilitating just the operation of an institution, we knew we really had to make major changes. We did some forecasting about what our needs would be in terms of resources if we simply continued to move in the same direction, doing business the same way. Our projections in 1990 indicated that five, six, or seven years out we would not have been able to maintain our level of operation as we had been doing. So we were forced to make changes, to some extent, by the results of that forecasting and the realities of what was going to happen. We decided to take a look at the whole picture and see what kind of changes we ought to make. We had a number of sessions with people at the operational level and simply did some reorganization, reduced some of our overhead, reduced our number of divisions, consolidated here and there. We were fortunate, however, that people began to understand why we were making all of these changes and, although they became very anxious about it, we tried to develop a number of assurances that would alleviate some of their anxieties. For example, we said that when we made these adjustments, there would be no lay-offs; we would make adjustments on the basis of reduction of staff, but through attrition. Promising no lay-offs allowed a quid pro quo arrangement, where then we could retrain people and move them from one place to another as needed. So we don't replace with new hires, we replace with current, retrained staff. You have to replace; if you don't, you are held prisoner by where people happened to be and that does not balance your organization. We're beginning to reach the point where we can provide the kind of technology that many of our people aren't really prepared to take advantage of yet. That's why we're starting a lot of training sessions for faculty so we can get them up to snuff, so that we can avoid situations where students will come here with equipment that's more state-of-the-art than what some of our faculty have. We can't teach like that! We have to think that our investment in the network and being able to access information on the network will benefit students; that's why the network is being implemented here. So how will it impact students? First, it's going to connect the campus and focus our resources more effectively so that we can respond to students much more efficiently than in the past. Then, too, we should be able to have more collaboration among our colleagues across the campus and bring more minds to bear on the challenge of how to better serve students, as opposed to each individual division going off on its own to do that. The network will also enable students to communicate more efficiently with their faculty, getting the information they need. There are things we want to do professionally that the network will help us to do, as well. An example is the ability of faculty to easily pull up the necessary data from the system to advise students, or to make students able literally to matriculate more easily than they have done in the past because of networking across the system. The network will also provide opportunities for faculty to utilize new and different techniques in terms of teaching, as opposed to being "talking heads" in front of a classroom all the time. All of this is going to be beneficial, and it won't happen without the kind of technology we've been talking about. Students being able to connect to the Internet will open up all kinds of opportunities. The ability of Lansing students to access and communicate information around the world will place them where they ought to be--not just citizens of Lansing, but citizens of the global environment. That's going to be great! And we also recognize the importance of having access to good information for decision making, as administrators. That's the kind of thing that is critical if an institution is going to be much more efficient. In the final analysis, we're not only going to be more efficient, but we are going to save money in the process. And perhaps even more than money, we're going to help a lot of frustrated people not be in the dark trying to find the right answers without benefit of the right information. Campus Profile: Lansing Community College 2j4:"Word Work File D 806 TEXTMSTEXTMSWDBosoft Word&Word &3  2 @@$Use Jeff Hansen2c2STR