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Demographic Summary: Union University is located in an urban setting of Jackson, TN, population 100,000.

Union is a private, four-year, coeducational liberal arts-based university offering bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. Union is ranked 15th among universities in the South. Union has more than 4,200 undergraduate and graduate students from 44 states and 33 countries. The gender breakdown is 60% female 40% male. The student body is 72% Caucasian/White, 17% African American, 1% Asian, 1% Hispanic. Most students were in the top 25% of their high school class. The average ACT score of accepted students is 25. The student to faculty ratio: 11:1 The Faculty is ranked 3rd in the South by US News and World Report. 84% of Faculty have a terminal degree. Administrative Filter Policy Behavioral: Integrated Policy Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Union has had an environment that embraces technology for several years. Students and staff are required to use email and the university has formal acceptable use policies and expectations for all members of the staff and student body. The policies in place were years in the making and had committee review and approval from the senior leadership team of the university. Planning Behavioral: Intelligent Planning Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent We are in a period of emphasizing technology use within the learning environment as a whole. There is a committee of faculty, staff, and administrators whose goal is to examine current models and set goals for technology expansion on our campuses. Each year the Department of Information Technology, which includes the Office of Instructional Technology, takes a survey of students, faculty, staff and administrators to see how well the technology is serving the needs of the campus. This survey is key to the planning of future growth and understanding how to best meet the needs at every level of the university. Budget Behavioral: Integrated Budget Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated While technology budgeting has come a long way in the past decade, we still have plenty of room for improvement. Approximately 2% of the overall budget is given toward technology improvements and maintenance (not including employee salaries and benefits). Long term plans are made, but long term financing is not always considered. For instance, replacement of outdated equipment is often overlooked in the planning process. We had a 3-year replacement cycle for all computers on campus and it was removed 5 years ago. We have been told the replacement cycle is returning this year and so far it has. We are given a budget for capital improvements such as new equipment and infrastructure. Admin. Information Behavioral: Integrated Admin. Information Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent The university is using many campus-wide software programs to increase the efficiency of the faculty, staff and administration. Some of the solutions are cloud based and others are hosted locally. The campus is moving toward a paper free campus for all offices, but that move has met some resistance. New systems have been introduced in the past 2 years and widely accepted.

However, most of these systems have been required and not requested. The IT staff has done a great job of making sure there is ease of access to all systems, both local and off-site.

Curricular Filter Electronic Information Behavioral: Integrated Electronic Information Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent In the classroom, students and faculty use technology frequently, but not all lessons are built around the technology. One area that has seen a major shift in technology usage is the campus library. More books and articles are being read online than ever in history. With that change in culture must come a change in our libraries. Union is building a new multi-million dollar library at this time and it will be the most technologically advanced building on campus. Students are requiring more and more from the campus technology and they are the ones driving the faculty and staff to become more technology minded. While some faculty are hesitant to use the technology, there is a wealth of technology and training at their fingertips, waiting to be explored. Assessment Behavioral: Island Assessment Resource/Infrastructure: Island There has not typically been a lot of technology assessment on our campus. There are some reporting tools at use now, but they are not campus wide. A new printing system allows students to see how much they print and copy, but the system is not used on all campuses and in all buildings. There are few other systems in place, but they are relatively new to our staff and students. Curricular Integration Behavioral: Island Curricular Integration Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Technology is used in many classes, but not many classes are dependent on the use of technology. This is changing every year. I have many more professors who seem to not be able to teach at all when the technology isnt working. This can be good or bad, I suppose. One key factor in the increase of technology use by our faculty is that every classroom on every campus has technology installed. Each room has access to basic technology such as a projector, computer, document camera, DVD playback and Wi-Fi network. Several classrooms have Promethean systems and other technologies that increase the interactive state of the technology. The university made a conscious decision 2 years ago to make sure every classroom had adequate technology and that each subject area had the technology needed to teach effectively. This commitment to instructional technology has had a great impact on our campus and the faculty are becoming more and more tech-savy. Teacher Use Behavioral: Integrated Teacher Use Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent All faculty members are required to check email and have a Moodlerooms version of each class. This is essential in communication with students and to keep the work visible at all times for the students. Faculty and staff also use other campus systems regularly to track student grades and assess classwork. All faculty have access to technology both on campus and off campus. Email, Moodlerooms and the campus ERP (enterprise resource planning) software are easily

accessible through any web browser or smartphone. Computers are provided for all faculty and many have other devices that are also university provided, such as iPads or tablet PCs. Student Use Behavioral: Integrated Student Use Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Student use of technology is on the rise as well. Students use technology frequently and most are dependent on using technology for communication with faculty, staff, administrators and other students. Moodle forums, student email, Facebook groups, and Twitter hashtags are several of the ways students are communicating with others on campus. However, classroom technology use is not always required. Some subject areas do have technology requirements, while others discourage the use of technology, by students, in the classroom. Students have access to a wealth of technology. From wireless networking to student cloud storage; campus computer labs to video chats. The resources are ready and available for our students.

Support Filter Stakeholder Involvement Behavioral: Island Stakeholder Involvement Resource/Infrastructure: Emergent One area where we are failing as an IT department is in communicating with our stakeholders (faculty, staff, administration and students) about the technology available to them and about the changes being made in the technology offered. Several are aware of changes and are involved in the planning process, but this is not the majority of our stakeholders. Most are only involved to the point of complaints when something does not work right and typically dont see the improvements and changes being made on a daily basis. One example of this is in the area of internet bandwidth. Students have complained about how slow the internet is for as long as I can remember. The bandwidth was doubled last year and we never mentioned the difference to those who had complained the most. Some students mentioned noticing a difference, but the bulk of students still complain. We must do a better job and involving our campus as a whole in the planning and communications process. Admin. Support Behavioral: Integrated Admin. Support Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated The administration is very active in discussions revolving around technology integration and implementation. There are formal meetings, at times, to discuss the future of technology for our campus. IT is supported, however, more support could be given, especially in the area of financing. We do have a voice with senior leadership of the university, as one of the leaders also sits on the technology committee. Training Behavioral: Integrated Training Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Most staff members receive some sort of technology training each year. Training is offered in a variety of areas including classroom technology use, Moodlerooms, video chats and more. Multiple dates are given for staff to receive training, however, many never take advantage of the opportunity. Support from deans and senior leadership requiring training would be helpful. Technical/Infrastructure Support Behavioral: Integrated Technical/Infrastructure Support Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent We have done a lot of work in the last two years to simplify the support process for our faculty, staff, administration and students. It is very simple for help requests to be made via an online

form, desktop software or by calling the IT helpdesk. Most of the campus has not problems using one of these forms of communication for gaining support. We have multiple full-time persons to handle the support for all campuses. From infrastructure to basic computer problems, we have staff to handle each issue. Connectivity Filter LAN Behavioral: Intelligent LAN Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Our staff has become accustomed to using the Local Area Network and the Wide Area Network to access technology and communicate with others inside and outside of the university setting for several years now. Our phone system is a Voice Over IP (VOIP) and every staff, faculty and administrator has a VOIP phone on their desk. Video chats are becoming more common and video conferencing for larger groups has become a way of life. All campuses have Polycom video conferencing systems and we have expanded our Polycom infrastructure in the past 2 years to make video conferencing easier for all of our students. All faculty, staff and administrator accounts have access to local network drives and data transfer via the local gigabit network. Our attention to detail in the upgrading of our infrastructure has made a major improvement for our campus. WAN Behavioral: Intelligent WAN Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Our IT staff provides comprehensive services for all on campus. Much like the improvements made in the LAN, our WAN has been significantly upgraded in the past few years. Increased bandwidth from our Internet Service Provider (ISP) and increased dedicated bandwidth between the main campus and our 3 extension campuses has made connectivity a breeze. All staff, faculty, administrators and students have access to the many great tools and systems thanks to the consistent nature of our infrastructure. Internet Access Behavioral: Integrated Internet Access Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent The internet is used very frequently by our faculty, staff and administrators and almost constantly by our students. Student bandwidth is ever on the increase due to the increased usage. The one down side to internet usage is the lack of use in the classroom by our faculty. I think we have plenty of room for improvement. I would like to see assignments move away from simple PowerPoint presentations and toward presentations using systems like Prezi or VoiceThread. The good news is that we have internet access available in all classrooms, offices, labs, common areas and even in most outdoor grassy areas and athletic facilities. Wireless internet covers 95% of our campus and 100% of our buildings, including dorms. The challenge is to get students to use it for more learning and less Xbox. Communication Systems Behavioral: Intelligent Communication Systems Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent As mentioned in a couple of other places in this evaluation, email is essential on our campus. All faculty, staff, administrators and students have email accounts. All staff email is hosted locally and student email is hosted by Microsoft as a cloud service. The campus considers email the only official means of communication between students and staff. Email is vital for our campus to operate.

Innovation Filter New Technologies Behavioral: Island New Technologies Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent When new technologies are introduced to our staff or faculty, they are generally accepted, but on a limited basis. For example, we moved to Moodlerooms last year from Blackboard. We saw Moodlerooms as a better product that offered a more comprehensive learning environment for our students. After months of research by a committee of IT staff and faculty, the decision was made. It was received well by all faculty members until it came time for implementation and training was required. Thats when we heard the most complaining. Our faculty didnt like change. I would like to see our faculty embrace new technology and help us push the change instead of being drug along by the IT staff toward the next goal. When we introduce a new technology we are very systematic in rolling it out and it will be standardized across the university as a whole. We try hard to make sure all faculty experience the same systems no matter the department or area of instruction. Comprehensive Technologies Behavioral: Integrated Comprehensive Technologies Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated I think we align with the definition given on the Maturity Model Benchmarks sheet for Comprehensive Technologies as Integrated. Our technology is comprehensive, but most are not using advanced techniques with technology. We see mostly PowerPoint or email being used with classes. Moodlerooms is used but only because it is required. Technology is available, but we have not reached the full potential in use. There is so much more that our systems can do. We have Promethean Activpanels in many classrooms and most think nothing about using the interactive aspect of the classroom. Conclusion As an IT integrator, there are many frustrations when trying to convince faculty, staff, administrators and students to use or fund technology. However, during this evaluation of our university, I have had the opportunity to look back over the last few years and realize just how much progress has been made. Seven years ago when I joined the staff at Union we had less than 20% of our classrooms outfitted with technology of any kind. Many professors still used overhead projectors with transparencies and they still loved their chalkboards. We have made leaps and bounds in our technology use and integration with 100% percent of classrooms having technology and many of our faculty using it comfortably. We still have a long way to go toward meeting our goals, but we are planning for the future and we will succeed as long as we keep planning and working toward the common goal of providing the best possible education for our students.

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