Computing plan begins with network upgrades this summer, CIS chief says

Providing a “robust, secure, high-bandwidth, high-speed campus network to support the instructional and research data needs of Brown’s faculty and students” is the first goal.

by Tracie Sweeney

As early as this fall, the Brown community will see changes in its computing environment.

Members of the Advisory Committee on University Planning (ACUP) heard about some of the changes from Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president of Computing and Information Services (CIS). At ACUP’s April 29 meeting, she outlined a plan that will begin to address many of Brown’s urgent computing needs, particularly those that support the Initiatives for Academic Enrichment.

The plan will cost $30 million to $40 million over the next few years, Waite-Franzen said. Initial funds, including a $1-million addition to CIS’s base budget in fiscal year 2003, were approved by the Corporation at its February meeting.

Providing a “robust, secure, high-bandwidth, high-speed campus network to support the instructional and research data needs of Brown’s faculty and students” is the first goal. “We are in such bad shape right now that …this has to happen in the next 15 months,” Waite-Franzen said.

Network upgrades will begin this summer in several residence halls, some classrooms and University Hall to provide the foundation for the second goal – an enterprise system defined by Waite-Franzen as a University-wide database of information. Depending on the level of authorization granted to them, each member of the Brown community will have Web-based access to a variety of integrated information and services.

Brown currently has dozens of databases – not all of which are integrated, Waite-Franzen said. Some, like the system in the Registrar’s Office, are what she termed high risk because few people know how to maintain the data. Others are high risk because their age makes programming changes problematic.

“The investment we make …in a good, clean database will serve us well into the future,” Waite-Franzen said.

The third goal – academic and user support services – will “provide campus teaching and learning environments where faculty and students can easily use technology and access information in all formats,” Waite-Franzen said.

Sometime this month, representatives from WebCT and Blackboard will demonstrate their course management tools on campus at meetings that will be open to faculty, staff and students, Waite-Franzen said. CIS will select a vendor, and, with the Sheridan Center, the Library and selected faculty members, will prepare support, training and other resources so that the course management tool can be ready for faculty and graduate students to use by early fall.

This isn’t the most expensive part of the plan, Waite-Franzen noted, but “it could help Brown’s academic mission the most.”

The fourth goal of Waite-Franzen’s plan involves development and implementation of standards and policies that ultimately will result in easier-to-use services that are efficient and effective, she said.

Brown also will be moving toward Web-based access to e-mail and calendaring through Microsoft Outlook, Waite-Franzen said. Such standardization, combined with changes to Brown’s system authentication, will offer better virus control, will improve communication and network security, and will aid those who use wireless or handheld computers, those who access e-mail while traveling, and those who use Brown’s computing clusters.

Some members of ACUP wondered whether the CIS computing plan looked far enough into the future.

“There are technologies we need to watch,” Waite-Franzen said, “but we’re far enough in the hole” regarding computing at Brown that “we need to get to ground level first.”