Author: Gary Jones

April 2005

WCU College of Business

Space… Western’s Imminent Frontier

Chancellor, Provost Chart Course For Expanding Educational Universe

Transcending the challenge of space and distance was the emergent theme of a recent colloquy between Chancellor John Bardo and a small group of faculty meeting in one of a series of informal exchanges between WCU administration and faculty arranged by the White House.
Immediate and proximate concerns include needed space for additional faculty offices, inventory and allocation of existing classroom space, and, less immediately, planning the future of the recently-acquired 344 acres on the cusp of final approval as a state millennial campus
Chancellor Bardo announced a proposal for a new multi-story faculty office building which, if approved, would break ground in 2006 and be situated as centrally as possible on the existing campus.
Provost Carter, also in attendance, announced the acquisition of a sophisticated software suite which will enable more efficient inventory and allocation of classroom and other physical space.
Moving beyond Cullowhee’s immediate orbit, the Chancellor addressed the issue of distance education.
“There will always be traditional students, 18-to-22, attending campus,” Bardo stated, “but there is also taking place a fundamental shift. Life-long learning will truly be life-long. There will be a seamless web of education so that what is offered will match what is needed by the population—when it is needed, where it is needed.”
The graduate programs in project management and entrepreneurship were cited as current successes with potential for significant future growth.
Faculty raised a concern regarding the sufficiency of current institutional support in this area.
Provost Carter stated that the administration is addressing this issue, and noted recent improvements in managing communication and coordination of distance education specifically and the Information Technology Division generally. The nine faculty present seemed unanimous in their agreement that the re-organization of IT has been effective and praised the efforts of current management and staff (see org chart, http://www.wcu.edu/it/about.html).
Faculty asked about plans for physical WCU satellite facilities in selected Western Carolina communities.
Chancellor Bardo acknowledged that as a system, UNC still has work to do towards agreeing upon the programmatic areas that traditional campus centers could decentralize to best serve their respective communities. Some of Western’s strengths that could be offered where demand reaches critical mass include teacher education, engineering (emerging), health, and various age-related programs.
Other topics discussed included bringing Banner online (see February’s TechNews), seamless registration, enrollment growth, SACS re-accreditation, intellectual property rights, technology transfer, and (ongoing) improved campus planning and budgeting. ♦

Publication Peer Review Is Not Dead

But Competing Models Are Gaining Ground

Seeking to calm a restive audience, Reference Librarian Dana Edge acknowledged in a recent College of Business forum that her presentation title suggesting the demise of publication peer review could have been deliberately provocative.
“I might have exaggerated slightly,” the guest speaker admitted good naturedly, “but some of the ground rules are in fact changing.”
With her audience settled, Ms. Edge outlined three competing models that educators might face when seeking to publish their research—the most progressive of which, perhaps surprisingly, is currently embraced by researchers in physics, mathematics, and computer science. The arXiv.org model, now hosted by Cornell, contains several hundred thousand brief papers in these disciplines, with thousands of new submissions coming in each month.
As stated on its website, unlike articles submitted to professional journals, papers submitted to the archive are immediately available online, at no cost to the user. Also unlike articles submitted to professional journals, postings to arXiv.org are not peer-viewed.
Cornell librarians hope to explore the extension of this idea into other disciplines.
Another electronic publication approach, Although in its early stages, is the Mizzaro model. This model permits the use of electronic journals, removes the reviewing process, and claims to measure the quality of researchers' contributions.
The process maintains the quality of papers by assigning scores based on reviews of regular readers (who are also assigned scores).
During her presentation, Ms. Edge described several other electronic publication models, including the approach of Blackwell—a large publisher offering qualified support of open access, including a copyright assignment policy that allows authors to self-archive their final version of their article on personal websites or institutional repositories.
Ms. Edge concluded her presentation by summarizing recent Hunter Library initiatives and reminding the audience of several worthwhile business-related search engines through NC Live. These included Hoovers, Mergent, Stat USA, and the Conference Board Research Collection. ♦

Dana Edge, Reference Librarian/COB Liaison, updates College of Business faculty on information science advances

TechNews — Sponsored by IT and your local Technology Faculty Fellow

Competing Models Gaining Ground

Space...

Tech Worth a Try:
http://www.google.com/options/index.html (the wonderful world of Google)
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (a different browsing experience)
http://www.savethis.clickability.com/ (save and organize bookmarks online)
http://www.moonsoftware.com/ (check out the free utilities at moonsoft)
http://desktop.yahoo.com/ (download, best desktop search engine to date)

IT Division Organization Chart

Page #

Provost
Kyle Carter

Chief Information Officer
Bill Stahl (Interim)

Executive Assistant
Jenny Owen

Director, IT Planning
Deborah Justice

Assistant CIO
Gregg Gustafson

Director, Applications Development & Support
Edna Waldrop

Director, Information Technology Services
Dixie Lawson

Director, Networking, Operations & Communications
Scott Swartzentruber

Director, Web Management
Bob Orr (Interim)
(Dual Reports with Advancement & External Affairs)

Associate CIO
Director, Educational Technologies
Bob Orr

DRAFT Image

SCT Banner Implementation
Towards the Unified Digital Campus
Advancement January 2005
Finance Summer 2005
Admission September 2005
Financial Aid Summer 2006
Student [SIS] Summer 2006
Human Resources January 2007

Coming IT Events for COB this Spring

Topic Date Time Room Presenter
Basic Web Page Construction 3/09 12:30 116 Gary Jones
COB/Hunter Library Q&A 3/23 12:00 213 Dana Edge
Introduction to WebCT 4/06 12:30 116 Gary Jones
See: http://paws.wcu.edu/gjones/WCU_COB_Web_Resources_Home.htm
Published by COB Faculty Technology Fellow; sponsored by IT Services

Windows EMF

BELOW::: This is org chart E, below, I altered the org chart at bottom & made it lighter. Grouped all with arrow, saved as enhanced metafile, then inserted back into Publisher.

This story can fit 150-200 words.
One benefit of using your newsletter as a promotional tool is that you can reuse content from other marketing materials, such as press releases, market studies, and reports.
While your main goal of distributing a newsletter might be to sell your product or service, the key to a successful newsletter is making it useful to your readers.
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Much of the content you put in your newsletter can also be used for your Web site. Microsoft Publisher offers a simple way to convert your newsletter to a Web publication. So, when you’re finished writing your newsletter, convert it to a Web site and post it.

This story can fit 75-125 words.
Selecting pictures or graphics is an important part of adding content to your newsletter.
Think about your article and ask yourself if the picture supports or enhances the message you’re trying to convey. Avoid selecting images that appear to be out of context.
Microsoft Publisher includes thousands of clip art images from which you can choose and import into your newsletter. There are also several tools you can use to draw shapes and symbols.
Once you have chosen an image, place it close to the article. Be sure to place the caption of the image near the image.

This story can fit 100-150 words.
The subject matter that appears in newsletters is virtually endless. You can include stories that focus on current technologies or innovations in your field.
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Primary Business Address Your Address Line 2 Your Address Line 3 Your Address Line 4

Phone: 555-555-5555 Fax: 555-555-5555 Email: xyz@microsoft.com

WCU College of Business

This story can fit 175-225 words.
If your newsletter is folded and mailed, this story will appear on the back. So, it’s a good idea to make it easy to read at a glance.
A question and answer session is a good way to quickly capture the attention of readers. You can either compile questions that you’ve received since the last edition or you can summarize some generic questions that are frequently asked about your organization.
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If space is available, this is a good place to insert a clip art image or some other graphic.

Your business tag line here.

Organization

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