The self-study process is primarily about where we are, a task the steering committee undertook with respect to the curriculum by reminding itself frequently of how we got here from where we began. We have plotted a trajectory, and in this section of the report, we want to follow it beyond the scope of a self-study into a future that we know will demand much from liberal arts institutions like ours.

We can think of these demands as pressures on us as a particular institution: how will we, Colgate University, negotiate future challenges and constraints? We should also consider demands on us in a more profoundly generic sense: what role should private liberal arts education play in shaping human culture in this country and in the world? It is consistent with our origins as an institution shaped by an outwardly directed mission that we would think primarily in these more profound terms. They are more likely to inspire us to improve this institution in ways that may also incidentally render us distinctive and so secure our place in the future. More importantly, however, we should think in larger terms because it is our obligation as professional scholars, teachers, and educators to do so. This place should matter to a community beyond those of us who work and study here.

This section of our report begins with new initiatives and opportunities already planned and moves on to the issues posed for us by our physical location, describing potentials within the curriculum both to resist and to take advantage of its beauty, insularity, and seclusion. It is a mixed blessing, to be sure. Then this section considers issues of staffing and pedagogy particularly in relation to future initiatives. Finally, the most complex pedagogical opportunities, those enabled by or associated with technology, are discussed on their own in the last part of this section.

The five years since our last interim report to Middle States have been particularly active ones for Colgate, marked by a Planning Task Force Report on our fiscal future; the adoption of a new Liberal Arts Core Curriculum, adding Scientific Perspectives and Distinction to the Core; the addition of concentrations in Theater and Environmental Studies; the downsizing of the faculty by five per cent linked to renewed and sustained competitive compensation among the best liberal arts colleges; the large class of 1998; and a $158.7 million capital campaign that brought with it new distinguished chairs, endowed study groups, program enrichment, and support of facilities, technology, and equipment.

We find ourselves in 1998 with a number of opportunities that should bode well for the future. We will have the opportunity to underscore the signatures of our curriculum and the strengths of our faculty in new materials to be developed over the next year for our Office of Admission. At the same time we should be able to use the energy that has come from curricular and pedagogical thinking and new grants and gifts to build on those strengths.

Extended study For a number of years, ASTR/SOAN 354, Field Methods in Archeoastronomy, has moved a major component of a course into intensive weeks spent in the field in Mexico between semesters. Colgate’s former January "term" and its ongoing experience with study groups combine in such a course. Now a generous grant is funding the development of an "extended study" program that will encourage faculty to structure more units that extend a single course or a cluster of courses beyond the physical location of the campus and the boundaries of the academic calendar—into May, August, or January. These shorter study groups will open the study group program to students for whom it is not now a realistic possibility, and they will also permit faculty and students to take advantages of resources in domestic and foreign sites. "Society, Politics, and Religion in Israel," for example, extends CORE 174, Multi-Ethnic Israel, with a field component in Israel visiting communities and monuments in that country. Extended study might be imagined in many areas. It has particularly rich implications for areas where on-campus study can be enriched by site visits or field study in this country and abroad, for example, in courses about the New York theater or in the material culture of ancient Rome.

The Center for the Study of Ethics and World Societies As a result of our recent capital campaign, Colgate received a number of distinguished chairs, several of which will serve to underscore the international strengths of the curriculum. Colgate has also been invited to apply to the Luce Foundation for a professorship that unites technological expertise in Geographic Information Systems with a focus on communities in conflict. In addition, a recent gift will allow us to capitalize on our international focus and Colgate’s new chairs by establishing a Center for the Study of Ethics and World Societies. These ambitions bring together several elements of Colgate’s traditional strengths: the Core program, with its emphasis on ethical issues and other cultures—and now particularly Core Distinction, focused on ethical and social issues examined from an interdisciplinary perspective—combined with our long-standing interdisciplinary programs in Peace Studies and International Relations. Starting in 1998-1999, public lectures and presentations associated with the annual topic of an institute will bring five distinguished public figures and scholars from different fields to campus in the regular semester. Core distinction courses will be offered in conjunction with the topic, as will, over time, extended study. The Colgate web site will link the calendar of related events on campus to sources of information on the Internet. In May, the distinguished visitors will return for a conference the specific focus of which will change each year. Our hope is that such a center will ultimately be embodied in a facility on the campus in, say, a renovated Olmstead House.

Colgate’s setting is rural and remote, but it is also a place of surpassing beauty. Our determination to move our curriculum into issues that take us far from the campus and confront the unfamiliar will be complemented by increasing emphasis on taking fuller advantage of particular elements of where we are.

Summer A May institute of Ethics and World Societies, just discussed above, combines Colgate’s international expertise and its long-standing interest in interdisciplinary study with the beauty of this place. In this latter regard, it is akin to other efforts we are making to use the campus in ways that underscore and expand Colgate’s mission. Such new efforts include Chenango!, a music festival beginning its second year in which musicians (string, brass, and classical guitar) come to Central New York for four days in June; and the Chenango Writers’ Conference, a week of intense work with nationally known writers—including our own—now entering its third year. Chenango! showcases our music program, which, like other programs in the arts, has been growing and achieving considerable professional recognition in recent years; and the Chenango Valley Writers’ Conference extends our distinctive Living Writers course—whereby writers of note come to campus in a series of talks and readings that allow students to explore the world of very contemporary writing—to include participants’ having the benefits of the visiting writers as mentors for their own creative efforts. These two new programs combine with other curricular offerings, such as field study in archeology and student summer research, described more fully elsewhere, to increase Colgate’s use of the great resource that is its campus in the loveliest months of the year.

Academic neighbors Colgate has a near neighbor in Hamilton College. Both of us are liberal arts institutions intent on creating enriched environments for students in the immediately surrounding community. After many decades in which we have each resolved to take advantage of our physical proximity by sharing resources and expertise, very fruitful discussions and collaborative grant writing have produced exciting new projects in the areas of technology and language teaching. Visiting speakers and artists are now shared and will be more regularly coordinated in the future, not only by advertising the events of one campus on another but by using the possibility of a double event to attract eminent names. Perhaps the most important advantage the two institutions afford each other, however, at a time when both are especially concerned to diversify their faculties and staffs, is that together they have an increased potential to effect spousal hires that can often be a decisive factor in the terms of a job offer to an especially attractive candidate.

Service learning Colgate faculty, staff, and students have traditionally been involved in many efforts of community outreach: members of the faculty have worked closely with teachers to enhance math and science education in local schools; Information Technology Services has established internet connections for Hamilton Central School; members of the Division of Athletics have developed exercise programs for the elderly; nearly one-fourth of our students participate annually in the wide-ranging activities of Volunteer Colgate. This recognition of Colgate as a resource for the community and region is now having an effect on the curriculum. Service learning has become a teaching strategy employed by faculty in a number of departments: Geography, Sociology and Anthropology, German, English-Theater, French, Art and Art History, Education. For example, SOAN 355, Service Learning: Theory and Applications, involves students in social and economic development projects in Madison County; and ENGL 357 Workshop in Children’s Theater, takes a play written by the class on tour to local primary schools. This formal joining of volunteer effort with academic courses is of particular significance to Colgate. We are an institution that glories in the place where our campus is located, often forgetting, however, as we do so, our privileged setting in a disadvantaged economic community. Our students benefit from the beauty of this campus, but it is not ultimately to their benefit to remain oblivious to the realities of where it is. While Colgate has as yet no organized program in Service Learning, we believe that this is an area we should monitor, at least informally, particularly since an extended study model will provide the flexibility necessary to involve students in off-campus projects.

New facilities to support elements of the curriculum are described above in section 2, but their significance in enabling us to move in directions that will strengthen elements of our curricular future should be recalled here. Olin Hall in 1990, an important upgrading and literal linking of the various parts of a science complex; Persson Hall in 1993, expanding not only the space for offices and classrooms in the social sciences but supporting the development of technologically dependent research and teaching in those fields; and a new Art and Art History building on the horizon, a building that will allow all of the practical and performing arts to grow in prominence on this campus and attract students to Colgate in the Humanities: the college is steadily moving to improve facilities for all parts of its curriculum. New facilities like the GIS laboratory in Persson or the Geology/Physics-equipped-for-computer-display lecture halls in Lathrop or the Keck Center in Lawrence will play important roles in the curriculum of the next decade. Crucial here, too, is the projected renovation of Case Library, which will not only bring together our Information Technology Services and Library resources but will physically unite the upper and lower campus.

We cannot make time in the same way that we can build buildings; but in the same way that a building does not really create space but rather organizes it, thinking about different ways to configure the temporal unit of the semester can support curricular initiatives. The extended study grant is encouraging faculty to think of course units that might be transplanted from their place within a regular semester to weeks adjacent to it, making it possible for faculty and students to travel to other sites to complete or extend a course. It may also be useful to think of doubling course units so that some academic experiences (honors work, for example, or high distinction projects) would be defined as constituting not one quarter but one half of a semester program for a student. Team teaching, discussed in 8.C below, might be best conceived in these terms, making load credit for faculty more equitable and allowing students to give a team-taught course an appropriate amount of emphasis.

Though the two impulses of enhancing international emphases and taking fuller advantage of our location may appear to be the opposite of each other, they are certainly compatible. Generations of alumni, returning to this valley every spring, testify to the advantages of making this quiet place the vantage point from which to think seriously about the larger world.

At the time of the last Middle States self-study, this college was adding two or three faculty positions a year. Beginning in the mid 1990’s, however, Colgate entered an era of stasis in faculty size. (See the discussion of the move to the five-course load and the initiative to increase faculty compensation to bring it into line with other first-rank liberal arts institutions in the section on faculty, Part II, section 4 below.) In this section, we want to discuss the ways faculty resources can be deployed to staff new initiatives in the curriculum in circumstances that cannot presume significant growth.

For the past 15 years, since the inception of the 1982 interdisciplinary Core, Colgate has had the experience of appreciating how the movement of faculty into interdisciplinary teaching increases the flexibility of our teaching resources. While the Core program can be seen sometimes, from a departmental perspective, as exacerbating staffing pressures, across the institution it functions to make more efficient use of faculty resources. A department that experiences enrollment fluctuations can deploy its teaching power in the Core to make up for the drop. Especially now that Core courses are arranged in the first and second year of a student’s program, teaching Core can then be a way to foster student interest in the department’s courses.

As the discussion of the Core program in section 5.B above explains, this flexibility has been achieved through deliberate hiring practices that emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary capabilities in new faculty as well as through consistent and sometimes aggressive efforts at faculty development. These practices, originally undertaken for curricular reasons, have proven to be prudent investments against some of the constraints we now feel as well as in relation to the increasing demands on faculty to update their disciplinary expertise and to extend themselves in the direction of new developments in every field of academia.

In a period of relative stasis, Colgate’s new equal opportunity/affirmative action plan is committed to making progress in diversifying this faculty. Responding to pressures recently exerted within the student body to address this problem, the college has placed a high priority on diversity as a criterion for the relatively few tenure-stream positions we now search to fill. It has also committed many of the resources for the hiring of short-term faculty into distinguished chairs that will further this goal.

In the current situation, in which diversity has to be a priority in all new hires, interdisciplinary impulses and new initiatives for sharing faculty resources (discussed below) are relatively easy to reconcile with the strategies that are likely to be effective in achieving that goal. The Dean and her division directors can be very productively influential here, allocating new faculty lines to fields that might cross two or three departments and inviting all of them to search, making the appointment in the department that can locate a candidate who will diversify our faculty.

Departments must be encouraged to consider constructing their own interests in terms of larger institutional goals and initiatives. Faculty positions, both new and existing ones might be defined as joint appointments between departments and programs or between two departments with contractual expectations of the amount of teaching that the faculty member would do in each.

In our discussions with various departments and programs, we heard about the frustrations that are associated with cross-listing. Cross-listing of courses is a visible sign to students of the relationship of two departments/programs to one another, and such a sign has value that goes beyond what it says about the topic of the course in question. A variant form of the cross-listed course is the cognate course. We discussed several ways in which thinking in terms of cognates could be a useful exercise to consider interdisciplinary connections. One would be to have a department draw up a list of courses from other departments or programs from which concentrators would choose one. In another model, the requirement would be to add a pair of courses from another department or program, with the courses eligible being designated ones or elected freely by the student. Increasing the number of courses required for concentration from eight to nine would be a reasonable adjustment to the department’s concentration sequence when cognates became a part of it.

Many departments now recommend to concentrators and prospective concentrators through their catalogue descriptions other courses to consider as supplementary to the concerns of that department. Designating cognates and, especially, cross-listing courses are a more emphatic way to say those same things.

No consideration of a curriculum would be complete without some attention to the ways in which students engage with the coursework in that curriculum. Colgate faculty think carefully about teaching, and they are increasingly attentive to approaching it from the perspective of how students learn.

This is doubtless the result of a deliberate institutional policy. Colgate takes great care to select faculty who are good teachers and to encourage their continued attention to it. Promotion and tenure guidelines hold teaching and scholarship as equally important criteria for tenure, but add, "no degree of excellence in scholarship. . . can compensate for teaching that is not of high quality" (Faculty Handbook, p. 40; SD 2). The largest component of a tenure or promotion file is the written comments transcribed from four semesters of Student Evaluation of Teaching questionnaires. The form for annual faculty self-reports always contains a question about teaching, including an invitation to describe innovative methods and plans for the future. The biannual booklet of faculty professional profiles (the Directory of Faculty Research and Teaching Interests, SD 3) includes descriptions of their teaching interests.

Colgate has an unusually rich tradition of pedagogical innovation. Its Core has consistently been the site of considerable self-consciousness about how to teach the complex courses devised for that program (at mid-century it achieved national attention for it), and today the Core end-of-year revision meetings are occasions when a large proportion of the faculty addresses issues of pedagogy. Attention to teaching extends as well throughout the curriculum, including not only the other two signature programs, student-faculty research and study groups, discussed above in section 5.B, but programs in the sciences and languages that have been awarded major grants, and textbooks by Colgate authors that are used nationwide. The institution supports pedagogical activity in a number of ways. A Faculty Development Council (FDC) awards annually about $20,000 for travel and other expenses of faculty learning something new that will change their teaching. (See SD 41 for a list of recent grants made by the FDC.)

With this level of self-consciousness and activity ongoing, the self-study associated with this accreditation review chose to focus its comments on issues of pedagogy that we see as related to thinking more holistically about the curriculum and about the effect of that curriculum on students.

Implicit in the discussion of the value of highlighting the interdisciplinary elements in our curriculum is the belief that students learn something important about "the complexity of human understanding" by being at a college like ours where the curriculum is arranged to be as accessible as possible in all of its variety. Consequently, the discussion of advising in section 6 above emphasizes the importance of faculty advisers considering that curriculum as a whole as well. A further development of this idea is appropriate to mention in a section on pedagogy:

This recommendation is proposing that we actively resist the tendency to see our students only in terms of the dimension that links them to the course they take from us. Our student advisers were eloquent about the value of courses or sets of courses where "it all starts to come together." More awareness of the curriculum a student is following will increase a faculty member’s respect for the way students, in a given term, often have to reconcile very different perspectives on similar material. Of course, faculty cannot do this with respect to every student every term; it is a technique that will be differentially possible and differentially productive.

One source of the spirit that energizes a Colgate faculty-led study group is that the faculty member is in close touch with all of what students are doing in their full range of courses for that term. Additionally, opportunities to attend cultural events and in some cases even lectures by other professors used in the program give faculty the invaluable opportunity to model for students attitudes of inquisitiveness and attentiveness that are associated with coming of age as an educated person.

We might also wish to address them more publicly.

Since its self-conscious decision to promote the scholarly ambitions of its faculty, Colgate has been reserved about portraying itself to the outside world as a place where pedagogical excellence is cultivated. Surely, however, it need not be feared that acknowledging our attentiveness to students will compromise our reputation as a liberal arts college with a professionally distinguished faculty, especially since an accurate account of much of what we can boast of pedagogically is motivated by the tension of reconciling our commitment to teaching with scholarly ambitions.

The discontinuation of the January term and the demise of Tier III of the general education program have reduced opportunities for pedagogical innovation and experimentation. Some faculty view first-year seminars as places where unusual strategies could be used, but with the conversion of many first-year seminars to sections of Core, that place in the curriculum for novel approaches to pedagogy has likewise been reduced.

There are, however, some compensatory developments. The new scientific perspectives courses and the distinction component of the Core program are already in place. The next part of this section discusses technology as a stimulus to pedagogical innovation; and above, in section 8.A, there are proposals for reconceiving parts of the curriculum in places and units of time that encourage thinking about teaching and learning in ways that may be unfamiliar or new to some of us.

Common to all the practices we are specifically recommending here is the idea that faculty have much to learn about teaching from each other and from their interactions with each other.

When we asked students what a liberal arts education meant to them, they responded first by talking about small classes and close contacts with faculty. For them, liberal arts and a small college with such opportunities are inseparable. Class size is also one of the main measures used by U. S. News in its rankings of colleges and universities, especially the fraction of classes under 20 or over 50. Intimate class settings are a high priority of students and a measure of national reputation, but the high valuation of them is not thereby only a thoughtless prejudice. Faculty, too, say that they are more effective in situations where they can connect directly with students.

Colgate does not now, however, have the resources to lower its student/teacher ratio and in fact monitors class sizes, often canceling classes with enrollments of five or under and discouraging those of size ten or under. Independent studies also give students close contact with faculty, but here faculty members get no teaching load credit at all. Since Colgate does not have the resources to lower its student/teacher ratio, reducing the "inefficiency" of small classes may seem good budgetary sense. It makes no sense, however, if your business is small classes, as students and parents seem to think. A more sensible response is to plan more variability in class size.

Some departments already do this, consciously or unconsciously.

All of these are important parts of a teaching profile, but they are often omitted from the files of tenure or promotion candidates and even from the vitae or personal statements compiled by the candidates themselves for these occasions. Recording these teaching contributions is not a matter of changing criteria for promotion, salary, or compensation. It is simply the observation that if Colgate values these activities, and it clearly does, it should make sure these items are solicited and recorded. (See also section 5 of Part II on the faculty.)

Another issue with pedagogy is seeing not only mastery of the subjects of courses as an outcome but also noting what widely applicable abilities and perspectives students acquire. One department says it simply: the goal of its curriculum is to help students "learn to learn." Although not every faculty member believes in emphasizing process over content and certainly graduate schools want content, employers probably value process; and the process of how they learn has a longer term impact on students than the particulars of what they learn.

In the section devoted to outcomes assessment (see section 9 below) of this self-study, we identify some of these procedural outcomes of the curriculum.

The modest self-characterization of ourselves as a settler in a new land is not completely accurate, however. Colgate was actually a pioneer in the establishment of a Department of Computer Science in 1979 (separate from the Mathematics Department or a computer center), long before most liberal arts colleges or even many research universities had such a department. It also overlooks the extent to which we have focused investment in special projects that use technology to enhance learning. Faculty with the motivation to experiment with technology in the classroom have routinely been well supported. Moreover, the remote collaboration classroom in McGregory and the Keck Humanities Center in Lawrence, both supported by major grants (see the discussion of language teaching in the account of the language requirement in section 5.D above), are among the state-of-the-art facilities on campus, as is the GIS laboratory in Persson.

Settler or explorer, Colgate has built and maintains a technologically well-equipped campus. Faculty have access to a full array of hardware and software, connected by a high-speed network. Modern public computing facilities are available for student use, and students who bring their own computers are connected to the campus network from where they live. Many faculty are actively using or developing teaching strategies which are engaging a wide variety of computer-based technologies.

In the focus of this self-study on the curriculum, we are interested in the impact of technology on teaching and learning. We concentrate on three issues here: information literacy, encouraging pedagogical uses of technology, and concerns about the implications of technology for our community.

• recognize the value of and differences among knowledge, information, and data
• understand information structures in different sources and contexts
• recognize potential sources (of data, information, knowledge) and persist in obtaining it to meet academic or personal needs
• formulate questions, develop and apply appropriate research strategies
• develop and use language to conduct research across print and digital environments
• question, analyze, and evaluate print and electronic sources
• use information in critical thinking and problem solving
• understand public policy issues relating to information access and use (intellectual property, censorship, etc.)
• appreciate the influence of market forces on access to recorded knowledge

A number of initiatives have been undertaken by the Library to help achieve the goal of information literacy: orientation activities introducing first-year students to the Colgate University Libraries, course-related instruction of one or two invited sessions by library faculty, instruction integrated as an objective of a course, team teaching in courses of the Interdisciplinary Writing Department, separate courses in the First-year Seminar Program and the summer program of the Office of Undergraduate Studies, extended reference services, and self-service point-of-use instruction. Various forms of assessment are being used or are planned to evaluate the effectiveness and reach of these strategies and to identify further needs. Particular areas of future interest include more involvement with the Core program and more support for students undertaking honors research.

As we approach the new uses of technology, we seek areas where nagging teaching and learning challenges can be overcome. For example, software was written to enable the rapid creation of multimedia exercises for language teaching. These exercises result in the eager engagement of student in language practice for longer periods, improving their understanding, and ultimately leading to faster acquisition of language skills. Earlier acquisition of language skills means that students can progress more rapidly to the literature of the culture, or participate in a study group. The final result is a total experience that is deeper, richer, more challenging, and more lasting.

Because of its rural isolation, Colgate is particularly fertile ground for the use of technology to connect the campus with the rest of the world. We have already mentioned the Mellon-supported remote collaboration classroom. The first cross-school courses, special meetings, and guest lectures to use this system occurred in the fall of 1997. Colgate’s signature off-campus study groups provide us with contacts at numerous institutions abroad, which could be exploited for collaborative efforts via technology. Such a pilot project is underway with the University of Freiburg (the location of the German Study Group). Since approximately one third of all Colgate students spend at least one semester abroad, this area has great potential.

We are also exploring ways that technology can be used to enhance and strengthen our interdisciplinary focus. Teaching in the array of subjects required in a interdisciplinary course can be a challenge for even the most able faculty member. One recent success story tells of an enterprising faculty member who was able to bring in several scholars to "chat" with her students online about topics which were relevant and important to the course material but not within her field of specific expertise. Other faculty are using web-based presentations and courseware to experiment with integrated course environments, online images, class discussion groups, and dynamic syllabi connected to special resources. The most successful of these experiments are showing that, as an augmentation to traditional classroom techniques, these efforts can encourage students to engage more deeply and converse more and longer with the faculty member and other students about the material.

An example of both the intense student involvement fostered by the use of technology and also service learning can be seen in CORE 116, Critical Analysis of Health Issues: AIDS. Students in this course use electronic databases, statistics packages, mapping tools, demographic studies, and other information resources to study and map patterns of population, poverty, and the AIDS disease in the area where they live. Students then reach out to their local officials for information and education, ultimately designing their own plan for AIDS management and publishing it publicly on a course web page. These reports are often so compelling and complete that health officials request access to the materials the students have prepared.

Without the graduate assistants and large technical support staffs of a research university, Colgate is more dependent on faculty members themselves to be familiar with hardware and software. Colgate is fortunate to have a core of entrepreneurial faculty who have found imaginative ways to employ technology in classrooms, studios, and laboratories and are leading the way for their colleagues. We have also begun experimenting, with the support from a second large Mellon Foundation grant, with a system of faculty mentoring for colleagues wishing to explore pedagogical uses of technology. The mentors work as a team, consulting individual faculty members on their needs and how those needs are best addressed by the range of technological resources appropriate to their particular area of the curriculum.

The Information Technology Services organization is also committed to answering the expanding demand for support of curricular initiatives. The ITS staff has recently reorganized to shift support to academic endeavors as we near the completion of an intensive business systems implementation. ITS staff has been modestly augmented, specifically to support faculty. Librarians are also a support resource, working actively to consult with faculty on approaches to capitalizing on information resources and providing ongoing assistance. As is the case with other colleges, the exponential growth and the relentless, rapid pace of change in technology mean that demand for training and help will undoubtedly outstrip the ability to provide all of it, at least in the near term. The faculty, ITS, and the Library must continue to work together to ensure the success of curricular initiatives.

We are keen to adopt technology in the curriculum where is makes sense and are proceeding eagerly to do so. At the same time, we are thoughtful about what these changes in teaching techniques and communication mechanisms will mean for us as a community of scholars. Technology can provide a means of drawing a community closer together and connecting it to the outside world. These new modes of communication can also be invasive, a distraction, or even isolating.

One widely recognized effect of electronic communication is to lower barriers between people. Although there is plenty of faculty-to-faculty and student-to-student e-mail traffic on campus, there has been much less e-mail between students and faculty. We have already observed in section 5.A on the concentrations how creative uses of e-mail could help communication with concentrators in large departments. The same is true for an instructor and the students in his or her course. E-mail distribution lists and web pages for individual courses could be a part of every course. Multi-section courses, such as the Core courses, could use e-mail regularly for announcements. Indeed, since most members of the campus community now check their e-mail as often as, or even more often than, their regular mail, it may be time to put more general campus notices on the network; some groups already do this.

Faculty understandably may have concerns that wider use of electronic communications will invade their time to do other work. If a faculty member has 16 e-mail messages to answer in the morning before class, what happens to the time he or she sets aside for office hours or preparing? In one respect, electronic media are less intrusive than other ways to communicate; but to a significant degree, the ease of operating a system so adjacent to other systems where we all spend time (e-mail uses, generally, the same terminal as our word-processor and many databases) and its immunity from other time constraints (one can "talk" forever in cyberspace, send the same message easily to many people at a time, and initiate a message any time of day or night) makes it potentially an easy way to waste time.

The pace of technological change on the campus has also been raised as a concern. Forces in the technology market combined with aggressive development of tools and infrastructure have resulted in both technological riches and a weariness of change. Faculty worry about the time required to learn and relearn ever-evolving software packages. Some are reluctant to develop course materials, knowing that their efforts can be wiped away when the systems that operate them are upgraded out of existence.

We want to adopt technology carefully and consciously. A mentoring system and strategies for faculty and students discussing what works well and what does not should be a part of the process whereby we promote its uses. As a community we must also strike the right balance between staying current and being prudent about the expense of the money and energy required to implement changes.