• Task Force Membership
• Introduction
• Executive Summary
• The University and Technology in 1997
• Teaching and Learning with Technology at CUNY
• Open Learning
• Support of CUNY's Scholars and Researchers
• Infrastructure Issues
• Personnel Issues
• Administrative Systems
• A Vision for 2001
• Appendix

Co-Chairs:

Ricardo Fernandez, President, Lehman College

Marlene Springer, President, College of Staten Island

Members:

Timothy Beekman, Dynacom, Inc.

Albert DeFlorio, Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. (currently at Queens College)

Steve Evans, IBM Corp.

Christine Haile, SUNY Central Administration

Barbra Higginbotham, Chief Librarian, Brooklyn College

Michael Kress, Chairperson, Department of Computer Science,
College of Staten Island

James Murtha, Vice President for Administration, Baruch College

Eva Richter, Department of English, Kingsborough Community College

Daniel Rubey, Chief librarian, Lehman College

Dean Savage, Department of Sociology, Queens College

Laura Schor, Provost, Hunter College

Gary Strong, Director, Queens Borough Public library

Basil Wilson, Provost, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Staff:

Richard F. Rothbard, Vice Chancellor for Budget, Finance, and Information Services

Louise Mirrer, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (7/1/97- )

Anne Martin, University Dean, Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (1996-97)

Michael Ribaudo, University Dean for Instructional Technology and Information Services

Russell Hotzler, University Dean for Academic Affairs

In June 1995, the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York authorized creation of the University Library and Educational Technology Task Force. The charge was as follows:

It shall be the responsibility of the University Library and Educational Technology Task Force to make recommendations to the Chancellor on a University-wide plan for expanding the role and accelerating the use of educational technology in support of teac teaching, learning and research at The City University of New York on the eve of the 21st century.

The Task Force has now completed its work through the activity of four broadly representative Subcommittees that conducted research, reviewed current technology and reviewed existing college and university practices. The four subcommittees were:

Instructional Applications and Faculty Development
Laura Schor, Provost, Hunter College, Chair

Libraries and open Learning
Daniel Rubey, Chief Librarian, Lehman College, Chair

Research Applications
Michael Kress, Chairperson of the Department of Computer Science,
College of Staten Island, Chair

Personnel, Infrastructure and Budget
James Murtha, Vice President for Administration, Baruch College, Chair.

Each Subcommittee engaged in research methods appropriate to its subject area, including consultation with faculty, administration and students, used surveys and focus groups, and engaged outside experts as required.

Although asked to focus on the topics embedded in their names, the Subcommittees were granted considerable latitude in their investigations and deliberations, so as to assure adequate exposure of all relevant issues and consideration of overlapping concer concerns. Thus, items identified and discussed by more than one group carried particular weight with the Task Force. The reader is encouraged to refer to the Subcommittee reports for additional analysis of the issues presented here.

In the following pages, key findings of the Subcommittees are grouped together, along with recommendations for action. This final report of the Task Force is both a recapitulation of the Subcommittees' findings and a synthesis of visions, concerns and recommendations.

The Task Force affirms the timeliness and significance of this review of The City University's libraries and its uses of educational technologies in classrooms and laboratories. Mindful of both the university as a leader in urban higher education and of t the University's many technology accomplishments to date, it is recognized that:

• The City University has long demonstrated leadership in library services and in uses of technology for teaching, research, and administration through both University-wide initiatives and college investment in the bricks and mortar of technology infrastructure. That history provides a solid foundation to position us to meet and make the future.
• Current University projects, such as the Network Infrastructure Initiative, the CUNY Media Distribution System and the proposed Computer Ownership Matching Program, accurately focus attention and effort on meeting the challenges of increasing teacher/learner effectiveness through technology supports, and making the inaccessible accessible. Additional resources should be identified so that these initiatives can be continued and expanded.

While these are laudable beginnings, much remains for the University to address in order to secure its future in the digital world:

• CUNY should articulate a minimum standard for access to technology for students, faculty and staff, and that standard should address on-campus as well as off-campus access issues. The University should aggressively pursue funding to support these ini initiatives.
• The University has not made broad, effective use of the range of technologies available to support and enhance instruction, largely due to unpredictable budgets and the widespread treatment of instructional technology decisions as highly decentralized departmental and program issues. CUNY should redress this marginalization by developing a new environment for instructional technology planning that emphasizes college and faculty roles in determining content while building a systemic view of teaching and learning in light of rapidly changing technologies.
• To develop a comprehensive access standard, the University should ensure the continuance of a technology planning process that incorporates the voices of the colleges, faculty, students, staff, University leadership and outside experts.
• To ensure the appropriate use of the University's existing and future technology infrastructure, a coordinated technology literacy initiative should be undertaken.
• The University and its constituent colleges should find new structures for cross-campus faculty collaboration around instructional technology projects, and faculty should be adequately supported as they venture into realms of instructional technology applications.
• The University and Colleges should review systems of faculty reward and recognition to ensure that initiatives and publication in electronic formats are supported.
• There is a University-wide need for a common set of standards for evaluating instructional technology to ensure that all CUNY students are working with the best tools to support learning objectives.
• Ever-leaner budgets have taken their toll on CUNY's libraries over the last several years. Today a critical need exists for the University to affirm renewed commitment to baseline funding levels, and to commit to annual funding for every CUNY library.
• CUNY should provide resources to continue creation of materials and support to facilitate use of technology in research and learning by people with disabilities.
• The University and the colleges should explore new uses of technology and new learning environments that technology offers to re-think and re-shape current solutions to such daunting problems as remediation and English as a Second Language Instructi Instruction, and should conceive new, network-based instructional support services that allow students to access tutorial assistance "anywhere, any time."
• Open or Distance Learning is rapidly emerging as a mainstream activity in higher education. CUNY has not yet articulated a vision in this area. Such programs have enormous potential for enhancing CUNY colleges' ability to fulfill their missions as well as for developing revenue from new populations. The University has taken appropriate first steps in setting up a University-wide physical infrastructure to support the establishment of resource sharing and Open Learning. There is now a need for free and open discussion-involving teaching and library faculty, student services personnel and students-to consider ways in which Distance Learning programs should be conceived and delivered. Coordination of those discussions is required, to assure non-duplication of efforts and shared standards.
• CUNY's research community has suffered from both infrastructure inadequacies and diminished library resources. In addition, there is a marked need for greater technology assistance in identifying and obtaining funding from grant sources, and in managing grants awarded.
• Efforts to compensate for diminished collections through expanded use of Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services are not meeting the needs of researchers and students. A fresh look at how such services can be improved is required. In addition, major impetus should be placed on creating a CUNY Digital Library to complement and extend -- not to replace -- existing library resources.
• The University's overall investment in infrastructure over the last several years, while substantial, has resulted in uneven access to technology. For example, less than 50% of full-time faculty currently have Internet access in their offices (and at some schools, access is available to only 10%). CUNY should adopt a standard that delivers Internet-based information to the desktop of every faculty member.
• Much of the existing infrastructure, especially of desktop equipment and student labs, has outlived its utility. Strategies designed to address issues of equipment maintenance and replacement cycles are essential.
• Overall, the University should seek new revenue streams to support the expansion and upgrade of its installed technology base. A number of other colleges have imposed fees on the student population as a whole, or on the subset of the population that makes disproportional use of technology resources. This is one of many strategies that should be examined.
• Shortages of well-trained technical support staff have become major impediments to achievement of the University's Information Technology mission. The University must address questions of job titles, position descriptions, hiring practices, compensation packages and working conditions.
• Examples abound of services having been improved and costs reduced through University-wide coordination and/or provision of services. In many library and technology endeavors, there are additional opportunities to consider deployment of university-wide versus college-based technical support structures, and for judicious additional use of outsourced services in certain areas.
• A proven means of cost avoidance and cost savings has been found in university-wide administrative systems. Additional opportunities exist to improve services and reduce costs through University systems development and implementation. In addition, user-friendly administrative systems that provide students with a greater ability to manage their relationship with the University are not merely desirable but required.

The Task Force believes that purposeful activity in the above areas will strengthen CUNY as a vital force and leader in public education, advancing our unique academic mission.

On the eve of the 21st century, we find ourselves a society enamored of technology. We are seduced by the allure of productivity and communication tools that can dramatically alter our existence, and are insatiable in our desire to possess and exploit this power in every aspect of our lives-home, school, workplace, and government. The digital age has arrived and we have embraced it.

Yet realities sober us. Our society is awash in data and drowning in paper, consuming our information in bits and bytes; it seems the more we "know," the more difficult it is for us to understand. The liberating technologies we so enthusiastically embrace have the potential to isolate us physically in "electronic cottages" while simultaneously propelling us into the new and unexplored community of the "global village." Unprecedented rates of change result in a vast potential for costly technology errors as product life cycles shorten and upgrade paths disappear. And rarely are we sufficiently funded or sufficiently equipped in any area to provide the level of technology we both want and need.

But if we cannot afford technology, we cannot afford to be without it. In the face of the technological explosion, the definition of an educated citizen has moved beyond proficiency in the traditional 3Rs to include the competencies of visual, technical and information literacy. And, as people live longer, the generation gap widens-perhaps nowhere more markedly than on the issue of the adoption and use of technology. Technology may ultimately help bridge gaps between generations and peoples. But if not well designed and widely accessed, technology can divide us more than ever into the "haves" and "have nots"-the information rich and the information poor. Individual finances should not automatically deny access to technology tools required for success.

For The City University of New York, with its historic mission of excellence and access, a technology agenda for this new era is imperative.

Seizing And Shaping Our Destiny

Today's convergence of technologies is driving all organizations to reinvent themselves, and CUNY can be no exception. With so much at stake, the University must be cautious and prudent, but it must not fail to act. We can not do business as usual and survive the tsunami of technology in our lives.

Aware of both the promise and the pitfalls ahead, we approach this task with the comforting knowledge that care and foresight have distinguished CUNY's technology programs to date at both college and University levels.

An early and active leader in the adoption and encouragement of technology in education, CUNY has an established track record of developing cost-effective and efficient systems that serve the entire University. The list of accomplishments dates from the c creation of a mainframe computing center in the 1970s? to the landmark moment in 1981 when, using a leased telephone cable between CUNY and Yale, the first BITNET connection was made and the academic precursor to the modern Internet was born?to the development of an on-line automated library system?to the deployment of a proprietary T/1 wide area network with 19 colleges gatewayed to the Internet at T/3 speed through the 57th Street hub? to the enhancement of that voice and data network by the development of a media distribution system as an additional logical layer? to University- sponsored faculty training programs unprecedented among public university systems of comparable size?to site licensing and mainframe migration strategies that have afforded major savings while ensuring secure and reliable systems.

These accomplishments have not gone unnoticed, having been cited repeatedly in the Governor's Productivity and Management Report and in the professional technology press. Most recently, CUNY's strategy of maximizing organizational investment in legacy mainframe systems was reported by Infoworld, a major trade journal.

The landscape of technology accomplishments in research and instruction at CUNY colleges is equally impressive: CUNY colleges and their faculties are at the forefront of major National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and other funded technology initiatives. Significant scientific and social science research using sophisticated technology tools abounds, and multimedia programs developed by CUNY faculty receive national attention. CUNY colleges are the strategic partners of schools, museums, cultural societies and other not-for-profit agencies as they venture into the modern digital world. Thus, the University is a force in higher education technology, with both national school consortia and commercial vendors soliciting CUNY and its constituent colleges as partners in electronic initiatives.

We have much to celebrate, not the least of which is the sustained conversation in recent history between the University and the broadest possible constituency of the CUNY community on essential issues of technology policy and direction. Beginning in 1991-92 with the formation of a Vice Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Computing and Technology, followed by a 1993 reorganization of University computing units into the CUNY Office of Computing and Information Services (a consolidation and modernization guided by the recommendations of the Advisory Committee), and a University-coordinated college planning effort in 1994-95, the dialogue has flowed. In 1997, the Library and Educational Technology Task Force reaffirms the importance of shaping CUNY's technology agenda in the context of this continuing conversation. For it is only in such a conversation that the vast resources of CUNY's experience, research and reflection can shape the future that we want for ourselves and our students.

The Need for a New Model

Despite CUNY's historic role and its current strides in technology, the Task Force has identified multiple areas in which planning, programming and budgeting have not kept pace with the exponential rate of change. Too often, the technology victories we so justly celebrate for their hard-won accomplishment fall short of our vast needs. The scale of the CUNY system has lent itself to the creation of highly advantaged technology pockets in some departments or at some colleges, while other departments and other colleges exist in a virtual technology vacuum.

University-wide managed systems have saved the colleges appreciable amounts of money; yet due to budgetary limitations, it has not been possible to reinvest those savings sufficiently in staff to support additional initiatives and services that create a de facto standard of technology access for all students, faculty, staff, departments and colleges. We believe that the University must take bold action now, both to assure that it will continue to take best advantage of technology tools and to insure itself and its special vision continuing prominence in the years to come.

The world of higher education is changing in ways not imagined even a decade ago. Colleges across the country face the challenge of accountability, reduction in public funding, the pressure to do more with less, and the increasing age and life demands of entering students. Research over the last few decades has shown that people learn in myriad ways, and that traditional approaches to teaching are not necessarily the most effective. Add to this the emergence of the global Internet as a source for vast amounts of information and the ensuing possibility that learning can take place anytime, anywhere, and you have an academic landscape totally unrecognizable from that of recent history.

We cannot meet the challenge of this new world or fulfill the sweeping vision we set for ourselves unless the promised impact of technology in enhancing the teaching and learning process is fully realized. Along with these enhancements can come significant opportunities for cost avoidance and cost savings. But gaining both academic and economic benefits from the new technology requires a thorough re-thinking of the ways in which we conduct the business of higher education.

Along with teaching and learning, support services have been transformed by the new technology. The roles of university libraries and librarians are evolving rapidly, to keep pace with the flood of new information now accessible over global networks. Library policies and structures must also evolve, so as to facilitate rather than impede constructive change. And the University's administrative support of students from admission to graduation can and must utilize powerful and creative system-wide technology applications to enhance services and access.

CUNY's 19 colleges have traditionally enjoyed a large measure of autonomy in the ways they deliver education to their students. That autonomy is reflected in the broad continuum of Instructional Technology (IT) capabilities across the University. Through the 1970s and 1980s, each school developed, to varying degrees, its own IT organization and its own infrastructure. At some colleges, an ambitious building program or the aggressive pursuit of non-tax levy resources led to rapid IT growth. At others, where resources were more scarce or priorities were more traditional, less IT investment occurred.

Across the colleges, there exist today human and machine resources ranging from minimally adequate to unacceptably meager. Some have campus-wide networks; others do not. Some provide email accounts to everyone; others provide them to no one. Some have many public access computer labs; others have but a few. And almost everywhere, much of the existing inventory is aging. While some schools clearly have better equipment, no location has anywhere near the resources-including staff-that it needs to realize its full potential. And everyone is looking for help.

Through our concentrated efforts, we can forge a bright future enhanced by technology. To do this, however, we must find creative ways to overcome the limitations of present funding and the practice of business as usual. Building an effective technology infrastructure is an expensive undertaking. New revenue streams must be identified and developed so that we can maintain, repair and replace technology tools deemed essential to the University's mission.

CUNY rightly prides itself on the quality of instruction that a highly qualified faculty provides at 19 colleges across a vast range of academic disciplines. However, to maintain this standard of excellence, modern technology tools must become fully integ integrated in our teaching and learning environment. The Subcommittee on Instructional Applications and Faculty Development provides us with clear direction:

We view instructional technology as a powerful tool that can, in every discipline and curriculum, enhance student learning by fostering opportunities for the exchange, exploration, and research distinguishing today's networked environments. We must aim to develop in our students computer competencies basic to academic life and life-long learning; to build as well those particular skills that strengthen students as communicators and researchers in their chosen fields of study; and, finally to assure that our students acquire the technology-related skills so vital to career mobility and success.

....
CUNY's instructional technology program must enhance opportunity for both individual initiative and rich community interaction, and must emphasize active learning as we build environments and programs for our students that expand, rather than limit their reach.

Yet, realities fall short of this lofty vision. The University has not yet made broad, effective use of the range of technologies available to support and enhance instruction.

The Subcommittee on Instructional Applications and Faculty Development has found:

• the distribution of technology, both within and across colleges, is dramatically uneven. Student and faculty access to computer workstations, to electronic classrooms, to email, to the Internet, to training opportunities-all vary tremendously with where one works or studies.
• much of the technology that is available is based on antiquated equipment and on connections to campus networks that range from comprehensive to non-existent.
• the oldest technologies-film, video and standard desktop productivity applications-are the most widely used (and, indeed, are not all that widely used); newer technologies appear only in scattered locations.
• the use of technology in classroom instruction, whether in the form of actual faculty-developed courseware or even in electronic presentation materials, is still mostly experimental, and is touching few students' lives.

Inadequate and/or unpredictable funding to provide the necessary infrastructure, training and support is certainly a major contributing factor, but it is also true that for too long we have marginalized instructional technology decisions by treating them as piecemeal departmental and program issues. We need to develop a new environment for instructional technology decisions at CUNY which continues to support faculty in their selection of the best available materials, yet incorporates a systemic view of what is reasonable for colleges to support in the context of rapidly changing technologies. In addition, existing college models should be publicized throughout the University as examples of best practices.

Even as we lament the spotty state of instructional technology across the board, the Task Force recognizes the strides that the University has made, particularly in its software site licensing programs. Other University-initiated programs, such as the multimedia courseware development initiatives of the early 1990s and the recently proposed Computer Ownership Matching Program (intended to put computer technology into the hands and homes of our students) also provide excellent models for expansion.

We eagerly anticipate as well the opportunity that the CUNY Media Distribution System promises for the incorporation of technology-based resources and the delivery of instruction across CUNY. A capital project funded by New York State, the CUNY Media Distribution System uses a video-enhanced CUNYNet as its basic delivery medium, and allows faculty to incorporate real-time events and analog and digital sources located anywhere on the CUNY network into a presentation that can be delivered at multiple points within and outside of CUNY.

Installed at three prototype sites in 1996, the Media Distribution System will be operational at six additional senior colleges by Fall 1997. The underlying technical infrastructure is built to accommodate the coexistence of current and emerging technologies deemed appropriate to the University's instructional mission. In allying CUNY/CIS and CUNY-TV in the design of this system, the University has positioned itself to address questions of remote delivery of instruction in the digital age. As the number of campus nodes on the CUNY Media Distribution System expands, this University initiative can become a positive force for achieving the instructional technology vision articulated by the Instructional Applications Subcommittee.

As noted in the Research Subcommittee report, CUNY has gained national prominence in the use of technology to facilitate research and learning for people who are visually impaired and hearing-impaired. Limited resources have restricted the dissemination, both within and outside the University, of materials and tools developed at CUNY colleges.

Recommendations

Teaching and learning is CUNY's life force, and every activity of the University derives its vitality from that wellspring. Therefore, the recommendations in the detailed sections on Open Learning, research, infrastructure and administrative systems that follow are deeply enmeshed in the University's instructional mission. However, all of these must be viewed within the context of overarching principles of universal access to both technology tools and the technology decision-making process University-wide.

• The University should articulate a minimum standard for universal access to technology for all students, faculty and staff, and that standard should address on-campus as well as off-campus access issues. Further, creative financing strategies to ensure universal access are absolute necessities.
• To develop that minimum standard, the University should ensure the continuance of a reflective technology planning process that incorporates the voices of faculty, students, staff and University administrative offices as well as outside experts.
• The University and its constituent colleges should collaboratively address a program of technology literacy for all-students, faculty and staff alike-so that they can reap the benefits of the installed technology base, apply technology appropriately to their teaching, learning and research, and be informed participants in the technology conversation that will serve to refine the agenda identified by this Task Force.
• We should explore new uses of technology and the new learning environments that technology offers to re-think and re-shape current solutions to such educational challenges as remediation and English as a Second Language, and we should conceive new, network-based instructional support strategies that allow students to access tutorial assistance "any time, anywhere."
• The University and its constituent colleges should find new structures for cross-college faculty collaboration around instructional technology projects-for example, establishing an electronic forum for discussion and exchange of relevant materials, supporting the collaborative development of materials for key courses within discipline councils, etc. In addition, faculty should be adequately supported as they venture further into the realm of instructional technology.
• In order to ensure that students and faculty are able to realize fully the potential of technology tools at their disposal, CUNY and its constituent colleges should deploy sufficient and highly trained technical support staff in Library and instructional technology units.
• The University should reaffirm its commitment to provide assistive technology for students with disabilities, and should make resources available to assure ongoing development and dissemination of appropriate tools and materials to meet that end.
• The University community should develop a common set of standards for evaluating instructional technology, especially as we move into new, networked designs for teaching and learning.
• Finally, taking the lead from the strategic alliance of CUNY/CIS and CUNY-TV in such projects as the CUNY Media Distribution System, CUNY should continue to ensure that its considerable technology entities work together to build the most flexible possible delivery system for the high quality instruction that distinguishes CUNY.

Made possible in large part by advances in technology, there has recently been a tremendous surge in interest across higher education in Distance or "Open" Learning programs. With respect to such programs-defined broadly as situations in which instruction occurs when learners and instructors are not in the same place at the same time-the University has a long way to go in establishing either a philosophical stance or a well-rounded set of offerings.

Several factors account for this lack of involvement.

First, the traditional model of face-to-face instruction is deeply ingrained in higher education. CUNY faculty, and their leadership and representative bodies, have voiced legitimate concerns about such issues as teaching and learning effectiveness, the m maintenance of campus life, compensation, workload, ownership of course materials developed and reward structures. The vast majority of faculty have had no experience in this arena, and little if anything has been done to educate them on Open Learning modalities. Thus, many faculty are suspicious, fearing Open Learning as a means to eliminate teaching lines and diminish educational experiences. Insufficiently familiar with either the uses or the vocabulary of technology, faculty often are unable to participate fully in the Open Learning conversation.

Second, where there is enthusiasm, there is not yet a consensus on why the University should be in the Open Learning business. One model views Open Learning courses as alternatives attractive and helpful to our pressed student body. Another holds that Open Learning offers an opportunity for an enhanced revenue stream which might be reinvested in technology infrastructure. The former model points in the direction of courses and services directed at CUNY's existing student populations; the latter suggests creating uniquely attractive offerings that would draw enrollment from a much broader geographic area at minimal expense. The two models, in terms of planning and program offerings, must be reconciled so as not to operate at cross purposes.

Overall, CUNY's efforts in this arena to date might best be described as "experimental." While many colleges have set up committees to study Open Learning, there has been little aggressive movement in making available courses or tutorials following an Open Learning model.

An additional problem is that on most campuses, the infrastructure is inadequate to support any but the most modest efforts.

Recommendations

As the University moves into greater involvement with Open Learning programs, it is clear that there is a need for joint exploration: to foster development of a college's philosophy, to provide working models, and to minimize overlapping, repetitive and perhaps competing efforts.

• Colleges should be encouraged to accelerate their investigations of Open Learning modalities, with a distinct focus on meeting the needs of CUNY's student body. The University should support those efforts with both human and fiscal resources.
• Special emphasis should be placed on developing asynchronous on-line support services to complement face-to-face campus resources.
• The Office of Academic Affairs should form a broadly representative Open Learning Planning Committee, charged with establishing a philosophy for CUNY's efforts in Open Learning and a plan for operationalizing that philosophy.
• The University should continue its efforts in improving infrastructure, with the goal of assuring ubiquitous (on-campus and remote) access to workstations, software applications, networks, email and library services.
• University staff and key college leaders should work together to assure:
  • coordination of college efforts, to mine the best ideas and to minimize duplication and competition between colleges;
  • professional development activities aimed at informing teaching and library faculty about Open Learning modalities and at helping participants formulate Open Learning courses and support services.

It is clear that the CUNY research community has suffered significant losses in recent years.

Budget cuts have had severe impact on library budgets, causing discontinuities in subscriptions to scholarly journals and monographs and in acquisition of new books. As noted in the report of the Subcommittee on Research, "[A]cross disciplines and across campuses, faculty agree that the Library collections of CUNY libraries are unable to support adequately faculty and student research."

In lean budget times, the Library budget offers an obvious target-it is always easier to cut "things" rather than people. But as noted by the Subcommittee on Libraries and Open Learning, "?significant drops in purchasing are difficult or impossible to recover from because books go out of print quickly." Further, wildly fluctuating acquisitions budgets make effective long-term planning impossible.

Existing Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery systems are inadequate to fill in the gaps. They are generally too slow or of too poor quality to meet researchers' needs. As the scholarly world moves increasingly toward digital, on-line dissemination of formerly print-published materials, there are clear opportunities for CUNY to leverage its purchasing power.

As technology becomes available to allow the movement of data and information across computing platforms over networks, CUNY researchers have found themselves with antiquated workstations and outdated network connections. That is reflected in the Instructional Applications Subcommittee report: "?only about 50% of full-time faculty have computers in their offices," and further, "?of those who do, less than two-thirds have Internet access."

CUNY's researchers in particular require access to advanced, high-end environments comprised of supercomputers and parallel processors, scientific desktop workstations and high-speed networks connecting them to each other and to the global Internet. That access is critical if CUNY researchers are to continue to contribute to the general body of knowledge and to compete nationally for grants.

Further, there is a critical symbiosis between research and instruction that accrues from student/faculty research collaboration, which in turn depends heavily on availability of adequate infrastructure.

Every Subcommittee noted the wide disparity in access to technology that exists across departments and across campuses. The absence of universal access to computing renders impossible the widespread use of technology as a broad means of communication.

Beyond the call for needed technological tools, researchers note a scarcity of other support mechanisms-to help them become familiar with work their colleagues are doing, identify potential sources of grants, provide technical assistance with proposal writing, and manage grants they have received. These are the program supports that will ensure a place for CUNY in the ranks of major research institutions.

Recommendations

Technology plays a major role in support of research-but only after researchers are provided with the basic tool sets they need to do their work.

Recommendations in other sections of this report deal with issues of minimum technology standards and assuring faculty desktop access to technology. In addition, the University should:

• Reaffirm the central role that libraries play in instruction and scholarly research.
• Assure that all CUNY libraries are equipped with adequate technological resources to serve their communities.
• Review skills requirements for existing library support positions, with an eye toward assuring that incumbent support staff are trained to use technology to assist the user community, and that newly hired staff possess requisite skills.

With respect to Library acquisitions, the University should:

• In consultation with Chief Librarians and appropriate national standards bodies, establish formulas for base library funding levels, and encourage colleges to maintain acquisitions funding at or above those levels.
• Facilitate an ongoing dialogue among Librarians and Teaching Faculty Discipline Councils, to assure that appropriate priorities for acquisitions are in place.
• Establish as a high priority, with appropriate University funding, the creation of a universally accessible CUNY Digital Library to complement and extend existing facilities, resources and services. Opportunities for partnerships in this effort with SUNY and other higher education consortia should be actively pursued.

As acquisitions budgets are stabilized at appropriate levels and the Digital Library plan moves forward, the University should also assure that faculty and students have ready access to scholarly documents. Specifically, attention must be paid to:

• Upgrading the CUNY+ system with more powerful and flexible search capabilities and direct links to relevant Internet resources.
• Improving the quality of Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery services, by investing in state-of-the-art hardware and software that will allow efficient searching and downloading with minimal librarian intervention required.

Both a need and an opportunity exist today to create a true community among CUNY's researchers, and to offer services to that community with readily available technologies.

• The Research Foundation of CUNY, working with the Office of Computing and Information Services, should design, publish and support on the Internet a CUNY Research Home Page, which should offer:
  • lists of funding sources, funder objectives, application deadlines, etc.;
  • lists of grants currently funded at CUNY, along with names of principal investigators and brief synopses of project activities;
  • frequently asked questions about grant proposal writing and administration;
  • on-line help with proposal development;
  • on-line, searchable versions of all Research Foundation publications (including the Manual for Principal Investigators);
  • on-line versions of all Research Foundation forms for downloading and printing (and ultimately, when the infrastructure is in place to support it, electronic forms completion and submission).
• The Research Foundation should host an on-line CUNY Research discussion facility, allowing posting of questions and announcements, and asynchronous dialogue among CUNY's researchers and the administrators who support them.
• Finally, the University should review its publication strategy system-wide and provide faculty with opportunities to publish and read related CUNY papers and proceedings on-line.

There is significant variability across colleges and even, within a college, across departments, in access to technology. Owing to past college priorities and to disparities in available college funding in recent years, a faculty member's or student's acc access and exposure to technology can vary enormously from location to location.

The Subcommittee reports clearly emphasize the need to assure all members of the CUNY community appropriate access to technology and to the knowledge available on the global Internet. It is time for CUNY to address the disparities in a consistent and sustained manner.

A study of the network infrastructure available at all CUNY locations has begun. College-specific information is being gathered on wide- and local area networking, and on each college's capacity to support end user workstations. The results of that study, in combination with other available data, will form the basis for several University initiatives.

The Subcommittee on Personnel, Infrastructure and Budget used as part of its definition of infrastructure "?all those components needed to move information to and from any desktop," and specifically noted that appropriate numbers of support personnel, with appropriate training, are part of the definition. In addition, the Subcommittee on Instructional Applications points out that there is a need for greater synergy between capital budget and operating budgets: "[I]n the decade of technology's greatest expansion on CUNY campuses, very few new technology-related positions were created."

At CUNY, substantial investments in technology infrastructure have not included investment in people. To be effective, technology-no matter how sophisticated or smart-requires a staff of highly trained, committed professionals who know how to use, maintain and integrate individual platforms into a future-oriented network of resources that serves to advance the mission of the University and the needs of its faculty and students.

Standards

In the rapidly-changing universe of technology, it is in everyone's best interests to be working from a common set of standards. In the absence of such standards, individual users, departments and colleges are free to act independently, rendering collegecollege-level support almost impossible to deliver. Money, time and effort are quickly dissipated.

In exercising their freedom to purchase anything they wanted, colleges have created inventories of a multitude of brands, specifications, software titles and infrastructure operating requirements. In the best cases, colleges were able, at least initially, to hire the support staff they needed. But many departments are now finding that when incumbents leave, it is increasingly difficult to recruit qualified replacements. The uniqueness of their installed equipment and software base often means that there is no one in CUNY to call upon for help.

Similarly, absent guidance on appropriate staffing ratios based on comparative standards, departments and colleges have often created new facilities without minimal provision for supporting them.

Finally, there are within the University no published standards with respect to how much spending and how many people represent an appropriate level of support for libraries, instructional technology efforts and professional development. In the absence of such accepted standards, there is significant variability in colleges' allocations for those purposes.

Recommendations

• The University must recognize that individual colleges will not be able to fund needed infrastructure improvements from their operating budgets. University-wide efforts to secure capital allocations from all available sources must be given greater em emphasis.
• The University should develop a common set of standards with respect to:
  • college-wide network specifications (hardware and software);
  • typical faculty and staff workstation configurations, including desktop hardware, general productivity software applications, connections to college networks and connections to the Internet;
  • the development by each college of an appropriate ratio of public access student workstations to FTE enrollment, and appropriate hardware and software configurations for student labs;
  • a staffing model that insures that each college creates and provides technical support positions in proportion to facilities created;
  • a University-standard, universally available email system, including issuance of email addresses for every member of the University community;
  • a CUNY Media Distribution System node on every campus, extensible to multiple locations;
  • a college-based Faculty Resource Center, offering a full range of state-of-the-art hardware and software for creating and evaluating electronic courseware.
• The University and the colleges should insure that the above standards are met for every faculty and staff member and student.
• Revenue streams to support standards and configurations should be identified, and colleges should be assured of University support for configurations that meet the new standards.

As technological challenges have become more sweeping and complex, the availability of technical support has been shrinking. A recurring theme in each Subcommittee report is the urgent need for additional technical staff to provide support across the broa broad spectrum of technology services.

At every college and at the University computing facility, the University employs too few technical support staff. Moreover, many incumbent staff lack the skills they need to deal with the technology that is now in place.

There is a critical need to recruit and retain additional skilled staff, and to re-train incumbent staff to meet both current and future needs.

Recruitment and Retention

Although the end user experience in computing has in recent years become easier, the "behind the scenes" work of help desk workers and network administrators has become increasingly complex. There may come a point in the next few decades when technology m management gets "easier" too. But for now, it is esoteric and demanding, and few are prepared for the task.

Market competition for highly-trained technologists is fierce, particularly in the New York metropolitan area. CUNY is not offering competitive wages, benefits and working conditions. Our competition comes both from the private sector, which offers salaries and bonuses amounting to twice or three times CUNY's salaries, and from the region's private colleges and universities, whose preferential admissions policies and tuition remission benefits carry significant added value to job applicants.

Existing hiring practices, titles and position descriptions are inadequate and overly bureaucratic to accommodate the current technological climate, and are a bad fit against today's actual position requirements. A process of leisurely recruitment schedules, combined with cumbersome appointment procedures, has resulted in lengthy and complicated searches. In too many instances, highly-qualified candidates are lost as they wait months for job offers-they are snatched up for positions elsewhere.

In order to compete for competent staff, the University must adjust its hiring practices, compensation packages and working conditions. Technology does not wait for bureaucratic, paper-intensive processes; a better way must be found to hire the people the colleges need.

Professional Development

Incumbent technical staff are often not adequately trained, especially in high-end and state-of-the-art applications. Frequently a skills mismatch exists: members of the "old school" of mainframe computer programmers, who represent the majority of technic technical support incumbents at many colleges, find their skills less and less needed, while requests for technical assistance in today's technologies go unanswered.

There are few, if any, organized University programs to train or re-train incumbents to help them develop needed knowledge and skills and stay current with technological advances. Even relatively highly-skilled staff are finding that their knowledge base is becoming obsolete as technology continues to escalate in complexity.

When entry-level staff (including CUNY students) are hired and trained at University expense, they quickly realize their value in the marketplace and leave for positions elsewhere-often at salary increases of 40% to 50% or more.

The Task Force notes that CUNY is unique among CETUS partners (CETUS, the Consortium for Educational Technology of University Systems, consists of the nation's three largest public universities-California State, the State University of New York and CUNY) in providing a University faculty development program-and that its efforts in this arena have been well-received. Programs for faculty (in computer literacy and applications, courseware development and Open Learning) are also, to varying degrees, provided by colleges. It is clear, however, that lack of funding, staff and space have severely limited CUNY/CIS' efforts, and that far more orientation and training programs are needed, especially to advance use of the more complex technologies.

Recommendations

With respect to titles, salaries and working conditions, the University should:

• Review salaries for technical support positions, and make significant efforts to reduce the salary gap between itself and its competition.
• Streamline the recruiment and hiring process for technology staff.
• Revise existing job titles and classifications (or create new ones) to allow for:
  • qualifications that reflect actual job needs and job market realities in areas such as education, training and experience;
  • greater flexibility with regard to administration and salary.

The above actions notwithstanding, the University must recognize that economic realities and technological change call for new models of providing technical support. It will not be possible for every college to staff up to meet every new need. There are a ample precedents through which University-wide initiatives and services have led to cost savings and service improvements; those should serve as models for the recommendations that follow.

With respect to University-wide initiatives, the Office of Computing and Information Services should consider the following steps:

• Enhance the University Help Desk, creating a Technology Support Desk. Call-in services should be available to end users on every college who are using University-standard hardware and software configurations. Consideration should be given to "outsour "outsourcing" portions of this service to a vendor with appropriate expertise and experience. This University Help Desk service should be designed and configured as one layer in a multi-tiered end-user support strategy that exists at every college.
• Create a multifaceted, University-wide technical training program, incorporating various modalities such as leader-led classes, video-based instruction, self-paced tutorials and training credits purchased in bulk from third party training organizations.
• Recognize that a multi-tiered training strategy, incorporating college and university efforts, is essential. Training opportunities should be made available in all boroughs, for both incumbent staff and student trainees.
• Form a Consulting Engineers Group, responsible for providing guidance to IT and administrative personnel on all aspects of CUNY standard hardware, software and network configurations. This group should be available by appointment for planning and implementation of new installations at colleges, and for emergency troubleshooting.
• Create Electronic Courseware Collaboration Teams comprised of instructional designers, graphic artists and computer programmers. These groups should be available, in response to competitive proposals, to assist college faculty in developing new electronic courseware.
• Establish an Advanced Technology Group, to identify emerging trends in technology and encourage appropriate technological change across the University. Each college should have a liaison to this group, and its findings and recommendations should be systematically disseminated at the colleges.

The University should also expand its efforts in professional development for faculty and non-technical staff. Economies of scale argue for University-wide training programs in advanced technology applications. The University should:

• Review existing campus-based professional development and training efforts, especially to identify unmet needs.
• Enhance CUNY/CIS' ability to provide faculty and staff training.
• In consultation with campus representatives, develop mechanisms for meeting unmet needs. These might include:
  • bulk purchase of training credits from outside training organizations for "resale" to colleges, in such areas as basic computer literacy;
  • University-wide courses in electronic courseware design and development;
  • University-wide courses in approaches to Open/Distance Learning.

Traditionally, a discussion of administrative systems would not appear in the deliberations of a University task force dedicated to issues surrounding libraries and instruction; however, the Instructional Applications subcommittee brings this issue forward as an essential adjunct to instruction. To assist students, faculty and staff, modern student career management tools (voice and Web-based registration, automated, self-managed admissions systems, modern billing systems, to name but a few) should be readily available-any time, anyplace. The University has had significant success in developing and implementing system-wide approaches to college management systems. Products such as the CUNY Student Information Management System (SIMS) and The City University Personnel System (CUPS) have led to improved services and significantly reduced costs.

Those systems, however, were conceived in the 1980s. In technology terms, they are old, and measured against what is possible today, they are too difficult to learn and too limited in their usefulness. Developed as stand-alone products, they can't talk to each other, and their maintenance and use are costly in dollars and staff time. Web-based front end enhancements may extend their lives, but the need to migrate from legacy systems to modern administrative systems is inevitable, and opportunities abound for improvements in technology-based programs in administration and student services.

Recommendations

With respect to administrative systems:

• The University should prepare a five-year plan to implement state-of-the-art successor products for SIMS, CUPS, FAS and similar systems. New products should take full advantage of college and University networks and the Internet, such that appropriate access is provided to students, faculty and staff at work, at home and while traveling.
• Even as modern alternatives to legacy systems are being actively pursued, college-requested enhancements to existing systems (e.g., pre-requisite checking in SIMS) should continue to be implemented.
• Special attention should be paid in all new application development to making information and services available electronically to students, both to empower them and to reduce the need for costly staff interactions.
• The University must recognize that new initiatives will require additional resources, in terms of both equipment and staffing, and these resources must be made available.

Even as we warmly welcome and actively pursue CUNY's technology future, we recognize the magnitude of our task. We must create a new paradigm that acknowledges cost efficiency as it honors enlightened academic practice-and the new paradigm can only be bui built through college-wide and University-wide collaboration and cooperation.

Our challenge is to build an educational model that balances CUNY's humanism with economic realities. Perhaps no better mechanism exists for striking this balance today than through creative implementations of the new technologies.

As technology-assisted instruction, whether on-campus or off-, synchronous or asynchronous, moves into the mainstream of education at CUNY, we must adjust in many ways: even as learning and support structures take on new dimensions, we must acknowledge, a and incorporate in all recognition and reward structures, that contributions to scholarship and curriculum development must be valued on their merits, irrespective of their appearance in traditional or electronic formats, and that Open Learning requires careful thought and negotiation of faculty roles and responsibilities.

Quoting again from the report of the Subcommittee on Instructional Applications:

At the threshold of the 21st century, The City University is poised to extend its leadership in the instructional technology arena.

Many ideas have been presented here. Some require allocation of significant new resources; others call for a re-thinking of traditional ways of doing business.

All require collaboration and cooperation among the component communities of The City University-its central administration, its college leaders, its faculty, staff and students-to assure the comprehensive integration of new technologies into the University's processes of teaching and learning.

The magnitude of our success will be directly proportional to the strength of the links that are forged among the faculty, the colleges, the administration and the community of learners that is The City University of New York.

University Library and Educational Technology Task Force:
Sub-Committee Membership

Committee on Instructional Applications and Faculty Development:

Laura Schor, Chair

Ngozi Agbim, Library, LaGuardia

John Blamire, Biology, Brooklyn

John Griffiths, History, City

Mary Koonman, Academic Computing, John Jay

Colette Wagner, CUNY Computing and Information Services, Staff

Committee on Research Applications:

Michael Kress, Chair

Sharon Bonk, Library, Queens

Dean Savage, Sociology, Queens

Frank Werber, Academic Computing, Baruch

Patricia Reber, CUNY Computing and Information Services, Staff

Committee on Personnel, Infrastructure, and Budget:

James Murtha, Chair

Pamela Gillespie, Library, hunter

Daniel McCracken, Computer Science, City

David Gomez, Administration, Kingsborough

Miltan Harry, Student, Medgar Evers

Donald Glickman, Office of Budget, Finance, and Information Services, Staff

Committee on Libraries and Open Learning:

Daniel Rubey, Chair

Sharon Swaker, Library, New York City Technical

Michael FitzGerald, Humanities, Medgar Evers

Stephen Brier, ASHP, Graduate Center

Terrence DeGrenier, Student, John Jay

Marsha Ra & Pat Young, University Library Systems, Staff