COLLEGES ARE URGED TO PUT GOOD LEADERS, NOT TECHNICAL EXPERTS, IN CHARGE OF TECHNOLOGY - With many colleges competing for a limited pool of skilled workers to manage their IT systems, colleges should look to candidates with strong leadership ability rather than those with technical skills, says Brian L. Hawkins, president of the academic-technology consortium Educause. Speaking at the National Association of College and University Business Officers in Chicago, Hawkins says top IT managers should be familiar with the culture of a particular institution and be able to communicate effectively with a wide range of people. For a college CIO, detailed knowledge of individual technologies is not as critical as the broader view of integrating systems across the entire institution, Hawkins says. Colleges might find effective leaders among their existing employees, by looking for mid-level administrators and faculty members who have led successful team projects. Hawkins also suggests that colleges include CIOs in top-level planning, and ensure that CIOs have sufficient resources and support to develop high-quality systems. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 25 July 00 - Edupage 27 July 00)

STATES AND UNIVERSITIES MOVE TO INTEGRATE TEACHER EDUCATION WITH THE SCHOOLROOM - The familiar K-12 is becoming more like K-16 these days as states, professional associations and public universities strive to coordinate governance, curricula, standards and assessments from kindergarten through the graduate education of tomorrow's teachers. At the annual meeting of the Education Commission of the States earlier this month, commission president Ted Sanders called for states to get past the talking stage and create entities that have real power to share decision-making on issues that affect both higher education and public schools. Copies of the new ECS report, "In Pursuit of Teacher Quality," can be ordered for $10 each on the Commission website, CLICK: http://www.ecs.org/ecs/ecsweb.nsf.

Meanwhile, with the new academic year just around the corner, schools of education are getting ready to meet the new standards announced by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education earlier this year. From 2001 onward, these standards will link institutional accreditation to the performance of graduates both on standardized tests and in the schoolroom. The new standards can be downloaded free of charge in PDF form from the NACTE website, CLICK: http://www.ncate.org/2000/2000stds.pdf. (Requires Adobe Reader)

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These reforms will have little impact without a major hike in pay scales for teachers of teachers, according to a report in last week's New York Times. The shortage of teacher educators has become so acute that graduate students in education are being headhunted by teacher's colleges before they even graduate. "Teacher educators have been notoriously underpaid," Dr. Sylvia Blake, dean of the School of Education at Manhattanville College in Purchase, told the Times. "Now, with the top of the public school teaching scale in the mid to high 80's, it's harder to find people, who would be taking a salary cut of 50 percent to teach at the college. Everybody is advertising for teacher educators. Ten years ago, there would have been 100 responses for an ad. Now we get about 20." Read more on the New York Times website CLICK: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/regional/. Then add to URL and CLICK: 071900college-teachers-edu.html.

And, for the last word on the K-16 revolution, don't forget to mark your calendar for UCEA's seminar, "Raising the Bar: Helping K-12 Schools Meet Rising Expectations," November 30-December 1, 2000, in Washington, CLICK: http://www.nucea.edu/k1221.htm. (UCEA 28 July 00)

PROFESSORS PROFIT FROM PRACTICING WHAT THEY TEACH - An increasing number of university professors are finding lucrative business opportunities outside of the classroom. These professors, especially from the field of computer science, are taking positions with startup companies or founding their own businesses. Universities such as Stanford, UCLA, and MIT, for example, have seen as much as 25 percent of their computer- science faculty exploring some kind of outside business pursuit. Many students and university officials worry that teaching will suffer as a result. In several cases professors have, in effect, abandoned their courses for their business interests, preparing lectures hastily and neglecting students' exams. However, for some students their professors' successes have translated into unprecedented job opportunities. Several universities have expressed concern about professors who lure graduate students away from their studies and into the business world, and in a few cases about successful alumni who have hired their former professors. But many universities concede that there is little they can do to prevent professors from working on the side, considering the appeal of multimillion-dollar stock options to professors, whose average salary is $56,000. (Los Angeles Times, 16 July 00 - Edupage 17 July 00)

HOME SCHOOLING ONLINE - Online courses are providing new avenues for an increasing number of children in the U.S. who are being home schooled. The number of home-schooled students in the U.S. has more than tripled since 1900 - to 1.7 million, as parents seek a more individualized and safer learning environment for their children. Many parents, however, feel unqualified in some subject areas. This is where the Internet is helping to fill a void. Online courses are used by some parents as supplements, while other parents enroll their children in online schools like the Christa McAuliffe Academy or Child U. Online schools help parents through chat rooms and e-mail, as well as provide ways in which students can socialize: pen pals, field trips and special social events. (Washington Post, 16 July 00)

CAMPUSES ADVANCE INTERNET2 - Universities involved in the Internet2 project, a test-bed for advanced applications, are experimenting with technologies such as virtual reality and distance medicine that would be impossible on the commercial Internet. The University of Pennsylvania, is creating an integrated database for digital mammograms allowing doctors to view a patient's mammogram taken years earlier in a different city. At Northwestern, researchers this summer expect to launch a technology that will allow students to view high-quality videos of professors' lectures from PCs in their dorm rooms. Meanwhile, several Internet2 universities have teamed with the National Tele-Immersion Initiative to develop virtual reality tools that would allow professors wearing 3D goggles to take part in roundtable discussions with colleagues around the world. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 2000 July 13 - Edupage 13 July 00)

COMBATING THE CRISIS IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION - "Scholarly communication is under siege. Scholars are losing control of a system that has served them well but is now on the verge of collapse. The free flow of scholarly information, the lifeblood of scholarly inquiry and creativity, is being interrupted." To combat this crisis the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have launched the Create Change website. Create Change provides:

- in-depth statistical data, summaries and background on the current state of scholarly communication;
- content that can be used to create a local Create Change Advocacy Kit;
- a database listing of the 100 most expensive journals, with editors and editorial boards, as well as a listing of SPARC- friendly journals;
- tips on how scientists and other faculty members can take leadership roles on campus to change the publication status quo;
- templates for letters librarians and scholars can write to commercial publishers to express their dissatisfaction with pricing trends. For Change CLICK: http://www.createchange.org/.

SPARC is a worldwide alliance of research institutions, libraries and organizations that encourages competition in the scholarly communications market. For more: CLICK: http://www.arl.org/sparc/. ARL is a not-for-profit membership organization comprising the leading research libraries in North America. CLICK: http://www.arl.org/. ACRL, a division of the American Library Association, is a professional association of academic librarians and other interested individuals. CLICK: http://www.ala.org/acrl/. (CIT INFOBITS June 00 No. 24 ISSN 1521-9275, CLICK: http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/infobits.html (HTML format) or http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/text/index.html (plain text format).