Friday, June 11
Panel Sessions

Systems Thinking
Bob Powell, Continuous Improvement Associates

Bob uses the lens of systems thinking to help organizations achieve exponential process improvement and develop effective strategies and action plans. His degrees in physics include an undergraduate degree from Kalamazoo College and a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. His MBA is from Florida Institute of Technology. His experience includes serving as a software integration manager for computer-aided design of ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) and as an ASIC product engineering manager. He teaches a university course on Systems Thinking and Problem Solving. For information on the systems thinking approach, see his website at exponentialimprovement.com.

Gates Common Room (Palmer Hall)
9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m

Presentation Materials:

Systems Thinking for Sustainable Computing:
Without cartoons
Diagrams
Colorado College report

Funding IT Wisely
Dave Smallen, Hamilton College (moderator)
Joel Clemmer, Macalester College
Randy Stiles, Colorado College

According to the most recent EDUCAUSE survey regarding critical IT challenges, for the second year in a row funding IT remains the number one issue in terms of its strategic importance. As a result of the COSTS Survey and EDUCAUSE Core Data Service, we know a great deal about how we budget and spend for IT infrastructure and services on our campuses. While demands for these services continue to grow, many colleges are now facing budget constraints or cuts. How will we ensure wise use of limited financial resources for the IT needs of our institutions in the long term? Dave Smallen, co-leader of the COSTS project, will share his perspectives on what we are learning from those data and other sources of financial information. Joel Clemmer and Randy Stiles will discuss IT budgeting challenges at colleges where IT and library services are organizationally combined or separate, respectively.

Gates Common Room (Palmer Hall)
10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m

Presentation Materials:

Funding IT Wisely
Making the case for IT

Environmental Sustainability
Howard Drossman, Colorado College

Howard Drossman received his B.S. in chemistry from U.C. Berkeley in 1981 and his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1992. In the interim he studied environmental engineering at Stanford University while working as an environmental chemist at SRI International, where he studied the fate of pollutants in aquatic systems. Howard has been directing the Environmental Science Program at Colorado College since July 2000. In Environmental Science, he teaches classes in Global Bioethics, Environmental Ethics, Water, Air, Senior Internship, Capstone Experience, and Energy and the Environment. Howard has also been the chair of the Working Group on Campus Sustainability since its inception in 2002. In 1998, Howard and his wife, Julie Francis, co-founded Catamount Institute, a non-profit environmental field school in Woodland Park, Colorado, where research, education, and leadership programs promote land conservation and inspire ecological stewardship. Howard's current environmental research is in the areas of interdisciplinary curriculum development, community-based approaches to learning environmental science, chemical ecology, and aquatic chemistry.

McHugh Commons
12:15 p.m - 1:15 p.m.

Presentation Materials:

Hopeful Times In the Search for Sustainability?
Howard's PowerPoint slides

Sustainability of Support and User Expectations - Help Desk Strategies, Limits, Customer Service, and Communication
Joseph Sharman, Colorado College (moderator)
Ethan Benatan, Reed College
Janet Scannell, Bryn Mawr College

Providing excellent IT customer service at liberal arts colleges can mean supporting myriad platforms, programs, hardware types, printers, and, most of all, user "categories," from extreme beginners to computer scientists. Besides minimal standards, hardware and software inventories tend to grow. Further, supporting a ResNet now means more than just helping students connect computers to it; IT departments must patch operating systems, install and maintain anti-virus software, and remove spyware. Finally, we have been so busy focusing on technical issues that we fail to communicate well with users, who tend to be less concerned about details and more interested in knowing how long they will be out of business. How do we balance staying up to speed, solving problems, and communicating about the problems? This panel will discuss key points affecting our work, which are in and which are out of our control, and how we can make sense of them and develop sustainable strategies. We will ask the audience for best practices and generate specific ideas for the fall ResNet push.

Gates Common Room (Palmer Hall)
1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Presentation Materials:

Janet Scannell - Sustainability of Support
Joseph Sharman - Sustainability of Support and User Expectations
Documents from Colorado College's "Sustainable Computing Policy" discussions:
Sustainable Computing Policy
CC IT By the Numbers
IT Evolution and Growth at CC Since 1999
Sustainable Computing Choices
Questions and action points

Panel A - Taming the Beast: Managing the Web Before It Eats You For Lunch
Marianne Colgrove, Reed College (moderator)
Janet Scannell, Bryn Mawr College

The web is a multi-headed beast that impacts many aspects of our academic and administrative operations. It requires us to muster content, technology, and people, usually across traditional institutional boundaries. IT often finds itself in the role of pulling it all together. In this session we will discuss strategies for sustainability at small colleges, including an in-depth look at how Bryn Mawr has successfully distributed support for their campus web presence.

Kresge Lecture Hall (Tutt Science Center)
3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Presentation Materials:

Marianne's Taming of the Web Beast
Janet's Taming of the Web Beast

Panel B - Sustainability in Delivering Instruction and Support for Academic Technology and the Library
Manolis Kaparakis, Wesleyan University (moderator)
Diane Keller, Union College

Changes in the past twenty years in how information is created, stored, analyzed, and disseminated mean that the students and faculty that we serve need a set of skills and ways of understanding networked information that are very different than they once were. How are various CLAC schools approaching the development of programs to provide support for the ongoing development of these new literacies? How can we approach this opportunity in a consortial manner? What resources have we developed already on our campuses? How can we share our experiences? What are the practical training and support issues raised by this changed academic environment? How do we create and maintain a safe, stable computing environment through education?

Attendees are encouraged to fill out a brief survey at http://www.wesleyan.edu/its/survey/infolit.html.

Gates Common Room (Palmer Hall)
3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Presentation Materials:

LoLa - Learning Objects, Learning Activities
Sustainability in Delivering Instruction and Support for Academic Technology