Private Liberal Arts College

• Need an institutional strategic plan: vision, objectives, goals– need to really understand our mission– do we really want to embrace this expensive

technology in a big way? • if so, how do we pay for it?

– we found ourselves coming back to this need again and again during our discussion

• A comprehensive consideration of resource allocation is necessary– numerous competing items

• salaries

• infrastructure support

• capital campaign resources

• financial aid

• others

• Benchmarking; best practices– we mention these because there was a great

deal of concern about the real costs of “studying” the value of information technology for our small institution

– the world does not stand still as we evaluate– is there a way we can leverage other studies to

answer our questions regarding value?

• Information Technology as a component to attract and retain faculty– the importance of web access– the value of an electronic library– NSF currently requires some submissions be

made via the Internet

• Information Technology as a component to attract/retain students– does technology influence students’ choices

about attending an institution?– is a single “point of access” truly important to

students?

• Does Information Technology give a competitive advantage or just meet expectations?

• If Information Technology is adopted and used how shall we deal with intellectual property rights issues?

• Faculty evaluation: salary increases and promotions– shall the use of information technology by the

faculty enter into the promotion equation?– how do we handle situations where faculty

simply do not wish to use information technology in their teaching