Sessions and Presenters


Map key located here.

Wednesday, June 20th

Welcome

9:00 - 9:15
Maxey
Auditorium
34


Lisa Perfetti, Associate Dean of the Faculty, Whitman College



Keynote:  "Maps vs Compasses: Liberal Education, Computers, and Living on the Edge of Chaos"

9:15 - 10:30
Maxey
Auditorium
34


W. Gardner Campbell, Director of Professional Development and Innovative Initiatives, and Associate Professor of English, Virginia Tech

Panel Discussion:  "Responding to Chaos"

11:00 - 12:15
Maxey
Auditorium
34


Suzanne Aber, Director of Information Technology, Trinity College
Ellen Borkowski, CIO, Union College
John Bucher, Chief Technology Officer, Oberlin College
Carl Heideman, Director of Process and Innovation, Hope College
Dan Terrio (Moderator), Chief Information Officer, Whitman College

The panel will discuss the keynote and how we may apply it to our work. This session invites audience participation.


Peer Sourcing:  Strategies for Creating a Local Cloud

1:30 - 2:15
Olin 157
38


Janet Scannell, Director of Computing Services, Bryn Mawr College
Joe Spadaro, CIO, Haverford College

Bryn Mawr and Haverford have been neighbors and academic collaborators for over 125 years, but until recently they have had autonomous technology infrastructure. Over the past two years the colleges have been exploring peer sourcing and cloud sourcing as equally valid options for improving services and decreasing cost. Joe and Janet will share the strategic framework that is guiding these decisions and will engage a conversation about the future of peer sourcing among liberal arts colleges.

Concurrent with:

Maxey 104
34


Supercharging the Help Desk

1:30 - 2:15


Rebecca Sandlin, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Bowdoin College

The Bowdoin College Help Desk is changing services, staff and space to meet the advanced demands of clients, i.e., Apple Store, BYOD and 24-7. IT is reducing stress and becoming more effective with a new education program and organizational structure, both of which are increasing leadership roles, responsibilities and career potential.

ISIS:  No Cost, High Quality, Collaborative Professional Development

2:45 - 3:30
Olin 157
38


Barron Koralesky, Associate Director of ITS, Macalester College
Jason Parkhill, Director of Academic Information Technology Services, Colby College
Marsha Schnirring, Associate Vice-President for Scholarship Technology, Occidental College

ISIS - Information Services Instruction Support - is a national network intended for librarians, instructional technology consultants, teaching and learning center staff, teaching faculty and others who are charged with bridging the fast pace of change in technology, scholarly communication, networking, and publishing with teaching, learning, and research in the liberal arts. This community is built on a foundation of collaboration and peer-based professional development. ISIS is free to join and focused on sharing the strengths of its members, who now number almost 200 people from 60 CLAC-like colleges.

At this session, we will cover how ISIS was formed and the unique organizational structure that has allowed it to grow considerably, yet stay very flexible and lightweight. We will give an overview of the monthly webinars and other efforts toward networking and peer-based learning. Then we will outline some ideas for the future. For the second half we will engage the session participants in a discussion about ISIS, questions about it, how to promote it to your staff, suggestions for its future, as well as other methods to leverage our community to provide high quality, low cost professional development.

Concurrent with:

Maxey 104
34


The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:  A Team-Based Approach to Portfolio Assessment


Richie Trenthem, Associate Director, ITS, Rhodes College

How can we manage a growing number of systems and technologies when our staffing levels stay the same? How do we know if our portfolio matches our capacity? How can we make adjustments to improve the balance? Rhodes College has developed a simple measurement system to help answer these questions. The system involves a multidimensional scoring rubric and a collaborative exercise, both aimed at determining the maintenance costs of our various systems. The output has proven to be a crucial tool for planning and communication. The system has helped Rhodes mitigate risk, evaluate projects wisely, build consensus, communicate better with customers, and generally make the most of their small staff. It's also a lot of fun, thanks to an irreverent scoring key and gloves-off approach to the exercise.



Thursday, June 21st


Concurrent Roundtable Sessions

9:40 - 11:10


One of the best parts of smaller conferences like CLAC is the chance to talk to peers about common areas of interest. For many of us, the biggest regret about these conferences is that there's not enough time to really dig deeply into these discussions. Now's your chance! Room facilitators will be leading 4 concurrent sessions. At the 40 minute mark (10:20), we'll pause to give you the opportunity to switch topics.

--> Remember:  You'll attend two sessions, switching topics at 10:20

Olin E129
38







Olin 160
38



Olin E135
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Olin 161
38



Analytics/Business Intellegence

Session Facilitators:
David Gregory, Chief Information Officer, Smith College
Randy Stiles, Special Advisor for the President - Business Analytics, Colorado College
Jolee West, Director of Academic Computing and Digital Library Projects, Wesleyan University



Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity

Session Facilitator:
Michael Quiner, Director of Enterprise Technology, Whitman College


Project Management/Project Portfolios

Session Facilitator:
David Saacke, Chief Technology Officer, Washington and Lee University



Training and Support Materials

Session Facilitator:
Rich Hinz, Developer, Application Support, Whitman College

Moving to the Cloud

11:30 - 12:15
Olin 157
38


Jeff Clark, Director, IT Enterprise Systems, Skidmore College
Scott Payne, Director, Academic Technology Services, Amherst College
Glenn Stauffer, Director, Enterprise Services Group, Swarthmore College

Representatives from three institutions will discuss managed hosting or cloud-based infrastructure services. Each presentation will be under 10 minutes, leaving time for Q&A and a chance to learn from each other.

Amherst College: Scott Payne will recount the experience of deploying an instance of BigBlueButton, an open source web conferencing tool, and the streaming of live events with the Wowza video streaming server application that was initiated by Academic Technology Services at Amherst College in January 2011. This presentation will use data to demonstrate how Amazon's EC2 can be used to develop highly cost-effective, flexible, and scalable services that can either run external to an institution's infrastructure or dynamically scale in-house capacity.

Skidmore College: Digital storage at Skidmore has grown significantly as it has at other institutions. In addition to storing more individual and institutional data, Skidmore is also facing pressures to expand access to certain information from handheld and tablet devices which are used each and every day. Skidmore is a member of Internet2 and has recently contracted for the initial Internet2 Net+ service which is a contract with Box.com for 20Tb of usable storage which will be a major component of Skidmore’s storage portfolio going forward. This presentation will cover the Box.com solution and contract, as well as demonstrate interfaces.

Swarthmore College: To illustrate the infrastructure and platform components that make up Amazon Web Services, Glenn Stauffer will discuss our strategy to incorporate AWS into our overall computing infrastructure. Specific implementation examples include test and development systems, content streaming, highly scalable web applications, and cloud storage.

Concurrent with:

Olin 130
38


The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service:  Past, Present, and Future


Randy Stiles, Special Advisor for the President - Business Analytics, Colorado College

The EDUCAUSE Core Data Survey (CDS) has roots in the COSTS survey that was created and led by Dave Smallen and Karen Leach at Hamilton College. During the past two years, CDS been substantially changed and its evolution continues with invitations from EDUCAUSE staff for member input. In this session, Randy Stiles-- a participant in the Working Group on CDS that contributed ideas for CDS revisions and a member of the current Advisory Group for CDS that is providing suggestions for communication and enhancements related to CDS-- will update the CLAC community on the current state of the survey. Special focus will be on reporting, both the centralized reporting provided by EDUCAUSE staff and the user reporting tools that are in development now.

The 2012 State of Mobility in Small Liberal Arts Institutions


Roberta Lembke, Director of Information and Instructional Technologies and Interim Director of Library Services, St. Olaf College
Tony Palomino, Director of Computer User Services, Reed College
Brian Rellinger, CIO, Ohio Wesleyan University
Sue Traxler, Associate Director of Information Technology Services, Carleton College
Jolee West, Director of Academic Computing and Digital Library Projects, Wesleyan University
David Sprunger (Moderator), Director of Instructional and Learning Technology, Whitman College

Without a question, mobile computing has become a dominant force in the IT landscape. For the last several years, the "drumbeat" of the importance of mobility in higher education has been clearly heard through venues such as the New Media Consortium's Horizon Report. More often than not, however, these reports and articles exemplify and speak to medium or large higher education institutions. Meanwhile, in small liberal institutions, as more and more students, faculty, and staff become immersed in mobile computing (with or without IT's involvement), what is our response? What could/should it be? Is it to make our wireless networks robust enough to handle the demands? Is it to make our websites mobile ready, create stand-alone apps or both? Is it to proactively explore how to present, take notes, and annotate in and out of the classroom, or should we let large institutions blaze these trails first? All of these things? Some? None?

This panel discussion will explore issues that surround the 2012 state of mobility in our small liberal arts environments, with perspectives from Carleton, Ohio Wesleyan, Reed, St. Olaf, Wesleyan,... and yours!

Concurrent with:

Maxey 104
34


Understanding and Managing the Risks of Analytics

1:30 - 2:15
Maxey 207
34


Randy Stiles, Special Advisor for the President - Business Analytics, Colorado College

This session will provide a high-level overview of the risks of analytics initiatives with a particular emphasis on the risk of poor data and information quality. Specific examples from CLAC responses to the EDUCAUSE Core Data Survey will be discussed. Participants will be asked to brainstorm strategies for data quality assessment and improvement.

Sampling the Future with Occidental College


Marsha Schnirring, Associate Vice-President for Scholarship Technology, Occidental College

Re-imagining our library building as an Academic Commons meant choosing to privilege the use of resources for teaching, learning, and research over the resources themselves or access to them and realigning the work we do accordingly: a long, arduous, but rewarding process.

After a short, high-level overview of the organizational changes made at Oxy this past year, to set the stage, presentation attendees will divide into small working groups. Utilizing three futuring methodologies—scenarios, brainstorming, visioning—participants will explore a number of ‘fantastic’ future changes in higher ed and their potential impact on the structure and focus of information organizations.

Concurrent with:

Maxey 104
34


Keeping the "E" in ERP:  How We Implemented and Maintain our Enterprise System

2:45 - 3:30
Maxey 207
34


Greg Diment, Chief Information Officer, Kalamazoo College
Jason Kraushaar, Associate Director, Administrative Computing, Kalamazoo College

Take a trip back to the Zoo with Kalamazoo College as we explain our governance, organizational structure and strategies for implementing and maintaining Ellucian’s ERP system called Colleague.