The vision suggested redirecting a number of processes to achieve more transformative ends: fund raising, facilities planning, budgeting and resource allocation, academic program development, faculty training and mentoring, student advising and counseling.

This example is fully documented on the Website cited in the preconference materials. The Websites describes the learning vision planning process at UTSA and the initiatives recommended to overcome barriers and move the university into the Knowledge Age.


University of Calgary
For five or six years the University of Calgary has dealt with substantial financial retrenchment necessitated by cutbacks in federal and provincial appropriations. Rather than merely raising more money, the University rethought its priorities. It redirected its budget and strategic planning processes, and its program review and development activities, to serve as instruments of transformation Then, with the publication of T.H.E., it had a model it could use to reshape its direction. The University has developed a campus visioning group to shape its redirection and create a new set of directions for its future.


Universite de Montreal
The Universite de Montreal has also used the challenge if retrenchment to refocus its efforts. It has been emphasizing several opportunities, including the opportunity to reduce attrition (which was roughly 40% for incoming freshmen in the first year) by enhancing its program of strategic enrollment management. It is also attempting to get its deans to take a transformative approach to new programs.


University of Delaware
The University of Delaware is widely recognized across the country for its innovative uses of information technology in support of administrative and academic processes. In most cases, Delaware has employed the tactic of redirecting existing processes to transformative ends. Several examples illustrate this approach.

Using the opportunity to create a new, one-stop shopping concept for student services, Delaware renovated an historic schoolhouse next door to campus, and deployed a new, integrated suite of software products. Using these instruments, it restructured and realigned the student/enrollment services functions to create cross-trained, multi-function customer service workers who could meet student needs for information on any issue from admissions to traffic tickets. This multifaceted redirection was achieved without great fanfare as a transformative exercise , but has been highly successful.

Delaware is among the leaders in using Web-based tools for academic and administrative applications. It is deploying many of its administrative applications through Websites.


University of Minnesota, Crookston
The University of Minnesota, Crookston was in severe financial straits. In order to revive the attractiveness of its academic programs, it undertook a serious redirection of efforts, including the shift to mandatory mobile computing for faculty and students. With everyone on campus using notebook computers, the nature of the academic interaction changed dramatically. These changes has increased the distinctiveness of the institution and increased the satisfaction of all participants.


George Mason University
George Mason University has been "driving wedges into existing academic cultures" for years. It has created new academic units which it styles as "institutes" to achieve cross-disciplinary program focus. It has created a multi-campus, distributed, interactive university serving Northern Virginia.

One of its most recent initiatives is the creation of a New Century College. In this program, students create their own self-paced degree program and extensively utilize the tools of Information Age scholarship. NCC is based in the University’s new University Learning center. This signature building integrates library, learning support, counseling, and other academic functions with student recreational and lounging space. It has the feel of an academic mall. This sort of facility is especially important for commuter campuses.

Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology has been pursuing a vision of becoming the prototypical technological university for the 21st century.

One of the mechanisms for redirecting its programs and processes was provided by the Georgia Tech Foundation (GTF). The GTF provides over $10 M per year in support to Tech in a whole variety of programmatic areas, both administrative and academic. To assure that these investments were being used strategically the GTF used a third-party evaluator to review the programs and the nature of GTF’s support. The results were used to strategically reshape and redirect a number of programs to a more highly strategic and leveraged direction.

Northwest Missouri State University
Northwest Missouri State University is one of the leaders, nationally, in the movement for continuous quality improvement (CQI). It has used its CQI initiatives to improve campus programs in both academic and administrative areas.

Recently, NMSU competed for the Baldrige Award and used the process of developing its application to refocus its quality efforts. This case is emblematic of the efforts of institutions that have launched quality and reengineering processes to shift their sights to transformation as a legitimate goal for their efforts. Quality and reengineering processes can be very important in developing campus awareness and skills that are needed for serious efforts at transformation.


Northern Illinois University
Northern Illinois University is in the process of redirecting its development and institutional advancement processes to be a greater agent of transformation. The these is simple: advancement and fund-raising can be used much more effectively than is currently the norm to raise money for investment in information technology (IT) infrastructure. By developing specific fund-raising initiatives that involve the use of IT as a transformative tool, and pitching these initiatives to potential donors with an interest in the IT industry, universities can increase both the total funds raised and direct a large share to transformational initiatives.

For example, a donor who has made a fortune in the technology business who might give the university a $20,000 donation might be inclined to give $2 M to a creative, instructive program to use technology to increase the effectiveness of learning. Or to create an endowment for pools of instructional development specialists or for graduate students to develop learningware.

The university is rolling out these new initiatives in its next campaign.


Northern Arizona University
Northern Arizona University is a nationally recognized leader in the use of distance learning. Its distance learning network essentially serves as a "utility" for the State of Arizona to reach learners all over the state, including on the Indian Reservations. It also serves other state agency needs. Northern Arizona’s faculty have developed extensive experience in using two-way audio, two-way video techniques and redesigning instructional techniques to suit these technologies.

The university is now pursuing means to leverage these efforts and its virtual instructional development capabilities to create new learning tools that can be made part of the Western Governors Virtual University.


Regis University
Regis University is a leader in the development of accelerated learning programs for adult learners. It has established comprehensive learning partnerships with a number of major corporations, and links workplace and learning. In addition, Regis has formed a collaborative network by which shares innovative learning ideas and approaches with a number of institutions that apply these techniques on their campuses. Regis has created an innovative "New Venture Group" which is its learning R&D unit. The NVG generates a substantial profit every year through its new programs and is a creative mechanism for creating a future-oriented learning vision for Regis University and its participating educational `partners.

The newest set of challenges for Regis is how to leverage these efforts in the face of new developments in corporate learning - the emergence of perpetual learning that fuses work and learning at the desktop. These new developments are being assessed by the New Ventures Group for inclusion in the new generation of initiatives.


Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Virginia Tech is one of the most active participants in the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII), a national consortium of colleges, universities, and other parties dedicated to the use of information technology to create a new learning infrastructure.

Virginia Tech has undertaken a Cyberschool Initiative, a $10M investment in equipping, training, and motivating faculty to use technology in learning and other forms of scholarship. Tech has put almost all of its faculty through intensive hands-on training, and the result are paying off in substantial increases in the use of technology in all disciplines. In addition, they are creating new learning materials, learningware, and "snippets" of instructional material that can be used in courses in a variety of ways.

This is an excellent example of an institution making a significant, strategic investment in the face of substantial financial difficulties (reduced state appropriations over a seven-year period).


Portland State University
Portland State University has been recognized by the Pew Roundtables as one of the leaders in Information Age learning. They have focused on increasing the use of information technology in the learning process and changing the patterns of academic practice.

As a consequence, Portland State has developed learning vision groups around campus to accelerate the deployment of technology in the learning process and to expand the use of innovation in learning. They are a good example of building broadly participatory planning and innovation groups and infusing that spirit into the campus culture.


Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University redirected its career planning and academic advisement processes to transformative ends. It has created a Career Horizons Program which integrates career planning, academic advising, and personal counseling. It has developed an intrusive planning and advising system by which students create a career and academic plan which is used by faculty, career planners, and counselors to advise and guide students.

This system is a "trip wire" that enables any of a number of interveners to contact students when they deviate from their course. The program is being lauded for its early involvement of students in concretely planning their directions. Future plans call for extensive use of Website-based materials and extension of the program to K-12 learners.


Maricopa Community College
Maricopa Community College is a member of the League for Innovation in Community Colleges and is nationally known for its innovative programs. One of the important initiatives it has launched recently is the creation of a new generation of Student Information Systems. These systems prominently feature the use of student portfolios and learning management techniques. They enable a much more robust capacity to carry learners as perpetual learners throughout their lifetimes. New generations of tools such as this will be critical in the ongoing transformation of learning.


Arizona Learning Systems
Arizona Learning Systems is a consortium of the community colleges in Arizona. It is dedicated to creating a virtual community college in Arizona, with programs that are decisively competency-based.

Building on the excitement and political stimulus generated by the Western Governors Virtual University, ALS is moving forward to establish the mechanism to be a major player in the virtual programmatic network created by WGVU.