Campus Profile: Emory University Copyright 1992 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 1992. 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 CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu Campus Profile EMORY UNIVERSITY ************************************************************************ This article is based on a visit to Emory University 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. ************************************************************************ Emory University, founded in 1837 in Oxford, Georgia, by the United Methodist Church, today is located primarily in Atlanta and comprises nine schools and colleges--Emory College, Oxford College, School of Medicine, Woodruff School of Nursing, Candler School of Theology, School of Law, Emory Business School, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Public Health. Located on 878 acres (including the Oxford College campus 30 miles west of Atlanta), Emory has an FTE student enrollment of 9,066 and employs 1,898 faculty and 11,230 staff, including Emory University Hospital and Crawford Long Hospital. The University grants degrees in nineteen major areas and eighty-nine subareas. Infrastructure--Playing Catch-Up in the 80s Until 1980 Emory was a regional institution with half its present enrollment, known primarily for its religious program and professional schools. But that year the University received a $105 million gift from the Woodruff Foundation and began to grow quickly and dramatically in size, complexity, and aspirations. In 1989, the University Priorities Committee was charged with identifying priorities for the current $400- million capital campaign. In their final report, the committee targeted several areas for improvement and support, two of which were the libraries and information technology. According to Provost Billy E. Frye, identifying these two areas for improvement was "a general recognition that Emory had grown so rapidly that it had not kept all of its infrastructure on a par with the developing quality and size of the faculty and student body." Thus in recent years Emory has worked to ensure strong leadership and development in these two areas. Vice Provost for Information Technology James W. Johnson and Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Joan I. Gotwals, both of whom report to Frye, realize that it's absolutely essential to work together on issues to support the information needs of the University. According to Johnson, "Our challenge is to help faculty and students navigate through [the] maze of information and technologies. Our vision is to join the University's principal library and computer resources in a single facility where scholars can access and manipulate the information they need--wherever it is located, whatever form it is in." Frye adds that the new Library and Information Technology Center will include not only the usual partnerships of librarians, information technologists, and faculty, but another group of scholars whose job it will be to create a laboratory to research what the needs are and what the potential is for achieving the ideal goal of the "virtual national library." To help garner funding for these efforts, Emory recently appointed Richard H. White Director of Development for Libraries and Information Technology within the Office of Institutional Advancement. In this position, White will focus efforts on raising funds for the new building as well as increasing library and information technology endowments to help fund staff positions and selected library collections. Critical to "navigating through the maze of information and technologies" is a campus-wide backbone network, which is well under way at Emory. The asynchronous broadband network implemented in the early 80s has largely been converted in recent years to fiber optics and Ethernet, an undertaking facilitated by two factors: (1) when the new phone system was installed in 1985, all inner buildings were wired for data as well as voice, laying the groundwork for converting the twisted- pair to Ethernet; and (2) building funds have provided the resources needed to replace coaxial cable with fiber and to wire the remaining unwired buildings on campus. At present there are 3,500 network connections at Emory, and a T1 connection to the regional Suranet provides Internet access. Information Technology--A Culture Change Information technology needs of the University community are largely met through the services of the central Information Technology Division (ITD), while several professional schools--notably business and public health--provide their own computing facilities and services. ITD is led by Vice Provost Johnson, who is a member of the University Priorities Committee. Since Johnson's arrival, ITD has gradually been reorganized to deliver services to faculty, administrators, students, and staff through six functional areas: academic computing, information systems, technical services, microcomputer support, telecommunications, and media services. The latter area, until recently under the library, includes a TV production facility, which the library believed would fit better culturally within ITD which has a broadband cable plant designed for cable TV. Johnson believes that it is important for ITD staff to understand the business of the institution as well as knowing the technology, and to come up with ideas to enhance that business, from both administrative and academic perspectives. "The business IT is in today is not computer applications; the business we are in is reengineering the way we do business. That's a tough transition for us to make, and it asks much of people when you make major changes in their organizations." The type of functional organization established by Johnson requires horizontal coordination rather than hierarchical control. Thus the establishment of an effective team of functional area heads who work toward delivering information technology services to the community, rather than building vertical "fiefdoms," is critical to the success of the organization. According to Johnson, "The biggest hope we have here is the extent to which we can implement a Total Quality approach in the ITD." Following the lead of Emory's Crawford Long Hospital, which is already well into a TQM implementation, ITD has been adopting the philosophy over the past year, primarily by creating a supportive environment in which functional area heads can explore its potential. Johnson describes ITD's initial Total Quality implementation as a "culture change" rather than a project orientation: "Measurement is not our first priority, but we realize ultimately we will have to have more pilot projects with measurable results." ITD has defined the major components of its pursuit of Total Quality as "focusing on our customers, a supportive work culture, continuous improvement, and decisions based on data." Johnson is chair of a committee that is in the process of developing recommendations to guide the University as it explores the feasibility of encouraging a Total Quality philosophy institution-wide. Changing the Way Emory Does Business The 80s also were a time of "playing catch-up" in the administrative information systems area, with $7-8 million spent installing administrative systems in areas such as the bursar's office, general ledger, financial aid, human resources, and facilities management. These were mainly purchased systems, with major modifications made to accommodate the central offices' way of doing business. The strategic direction at this point is to upgrade these primarily second-generation transaction processing systems to meet today's needs for integrated management information systems that serve not only central offices but the ultimate end users--faculty, students, and departmental staff. Last year FOCUS, a fourth-generation report- writer program, was successfully implemented in a few key administrative user offices to provide easier and more complete access to mainframe data for management reports, and ITD has now developed a migration plan to get FOCUS to the entire campus. According to Linda Chiappe, director of information systems, "Our biggest challenge is to use our information systems base to enable Emory to become more efficient in conducting university business." The number- one key direction identified by the recent Hoshin planning exercise (see sidebar) was to "do business electronically," while the number-one key obstacle was "diversity of hardware and software to support." Chiappe sees the role of IS staff changing: "They will no longer be coders, but will be analysts, working in partnership with customers to develop applications that will help them do their jobs better." A data warehouse is being planned to provide easier access to University data for reporting purposes. Recent work on a new system for institutional advancement has demonstrated the potential to create a cross-functional system that is totally user based, one that might qualify for description as a "client-server" application. The IS staff are also working to develop a new online purchasing system that will allow users to order directly from the vendor from their desktop, taking advantage of new technologies such as electronic data interchange (EDI). Applying IT to Education and Research Under the leadership of Joan Gotwals, Emory University Libraries are laying the foundation to, in the words of Provost Frye, "transform the library into an information service that is based on information technology." The Libraries continue to make excellent progress toward their goals of increasing the number of bibliographic records available for searching in the online catalog, and to have essentially all the catalog records of the Libraries available and searchable over the campus network. This summer the Libraries took another step toward making more library resources available outside the main Woodruff Library, installing a local area network with eleven different CD-ROM databases accessible by multiple users from the Chemistry Library and the Oxford College Library as well as users at Woodruff. While the Library supports faculty and student needs for access to scholarly information, ITD provides central support for instructional computing. The division has established the goal of having 90 percent of all students using computing in a substantial way in their major areas by 1995. To accomplish this goal, ITD has put together a multi-faceted program to educate and encourage faculty to use IT in the teaching and learning process, comprising initiatives that are largely faculty driven. As a first step toward implementing the program, which includes major improvements in student computing facilities, Emory earmarked $100 of the Fall 1990-91 tuition increase to "upgrade the institutional computing resources." These funds, which are collected from several undergraduate colleges based on student enrollment, constitute the Instructional Computing Development Fund, which is administered by the ITD. The program is modeled after the National Science Foundation in that proposals are solicited, reviewed, and ranked by the Academic Computing Advisory Committee. Funds are then allocated proportionally to approved projects in participating colleges. All funded activities and facilities must be connected to the curriculum. For example, before a microcomputer lab is approved, a curriculum revision must be made demonstrating the need for the laboratory. A second facet of the program to support instructional computing at Emory is the Faculty Information Technology Center, a joint project of ITD and the General Libraries. The FITC was created as a way to familiarize Emory faculty with the latest in computing and information resources, with special emphasis on assisting scholars with little or no exposure to computing technology. The FITC provides a facility for exploring and demonstrating creative projects using a variety of imaginative computer technologies, as well as direct access to specialized computing resources for shared use. FITC also offers open seminars and awareness sessions, with a major emphasis on how to use all of the new information resources that are available, especially on the network. Another program, the Computer-Assisted Instruction Program founded two years ago by English Professor Harry Rusche, explores and develops ways for faculty to use computers in their own instruction. Funds for the program are provided by ITD through the Instructional Computing Development Fund. Twenty-two participants were selected this year-- twelve faculty members and ten graduate students--from nominations made by department chairs. Emory's emphasis on educational IT applications is nowhere more apparent than in the recently published "Campaign for Information Technology" brochure, which describes the campaign funding objective for information technology and the libraries and outlines various gift opportunities. Highlighted are dozens of examples of outstanding uses of IT in teaching and research in every academic discipline at Emory--a tribute to the innovation and dedication of Emory faculty. In their pursuit of Total Quality, Emory's Information Technology Division has articulated a vision statement to guide all of their activities and services: "We enrich the world through the diverse applications of information technologies to education at Emory University." Clearly that vision is well on the way to becoming reality. ************************************************************************ A recent major effort of ITD's Total Quality implementation was the use of Hoshin planning to identify critical quality improvements for the organization. The process involved meeting with focus groups throughout the University to capture their ideas for improvement in preparation for a four-day retreat where members of the ITD Management and Policy Committee/Quality Council considered all of the information gathered and arrived at key customer expectations. The next step will be the identification of action items that will help to fulfill these expectations and create an operational improvement plan. Peter Day, associate director of projects and planning, is shown leading the Management and Policy Committee in the process of creating an interrelationship digraph to identify key means to meet the needs identified by the focus groups. ************************************************************************