The 1994-1995 academic year was an active one for those people on CUNY campuses who were charged by their President to participate in a technology planning process. The process, an outcome of Vice Chancellor Richard Rothbard's Advisory Committee on Computing and Systems, includes several components:

• completion of an Information Technology Survey, describing what exists on campus in the areas of networking, mainframe and personal computers, instructional laboratories, faculty labs and other services, as well as technology in specialized areas such as the library, for people with disabilities, and high-end delivery of media;

• a joint meeting between designated college personnel and senior staff at CUNY/CIS, to review the survey, describe existing university-wide initiatives, and set the stage for further planning;

• development of a college Mission and Goals Statement in the area of technology, utilizing information gained from the previous parts of the process.

The first two steps have been completed by all CUNY colleges. Although budget gloom deepened with each successive meeting as the year progressed, meetings highlighted special concerns of the college involved, and offered an opportunity to review several initiatives already underway in the university aimed both at taking advantage of economy of scale and provision of service:

• Mainframe Consolidation. The goals are to relieve campuses of the burden, financial and otherwise, of supporting old and overburdened mainframe computers and peripheral equipment, and to utililize the built-in communication capability of CUNYNet to perform appropriate mainframe functions centrally. To date five CUNY colleges run their registration systems centrally, and four more are in various stages of the migration process.

• Delivery of Network Services. All colleges have upgraded T1 service within the CUNYNet environment, via NYNEX's Network Reconfiguration System. All but one CUNY college are connected to the Internet, and many have begun expanding the TCP/IP network on campus to connect the library, faculty offices, and student laboratories.

• Distributed electronic mail service. CUNYVM provides the bulk of CUNY e-mail service, currently. The university direction, however, is towards locally-based electronic mail (see Notes on E-Mail Conversion, page 16).

• Techbnology Training. Through the CUNY/CIS Office of Education and Training, a program of course offerings has been made available to CUNY faculty and staff that help position them to take advantage of new technology in areas of course development, multimedia presentations and research.

• College Coordinator Program. Present at each planning meeting held jointly with the college planning team and CUNY/CIS senior staff was the CUNY/CIS-designated Coordinator for that college. Some have been very active already, participating heavily in the student system migration projects. Others are in early stages of learning about the needs of their assigned college. Each college has been asked to assign a counterpart, for purposes of regular communication between the college and CUNY/CIS for technology issues.

The process has now moved back to the campus, where the assigned teams have been charged with embarking on a consultative process with every segment of the college community: students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The aim is to gain as much input from as wide a segment of the college community as is possible in the design of the college technology plan and, also utilizing information obtained from the process to date, form a Mission and Goals Statement for the college. Although contacting alumni may be a difficult process, it is an important one, since who better can inform us of the real technology requirements for college graduates out there in the real world?

Centrally, the process has been helpful in guiding some decisions that needed to be made on what software and services require continued support on university-wide systems, and what is now best handled at the colleges. The primary example of this is support of electronic mail service. Colleges have been encouraged, at their earliest opportunity, to provide LAN-based electronic mail service for their faculty, staff, and students, tailored to the specific needs of the college. It is clear, however, that this process will be a gradual one, happening only when the campus physical network can support it.

So that readers who wish to become involved in this process on their campus can make contact with the campus committee, the chairs are listed below for each college: