Two recent publications from CIC—Information Technology Benchmarks: A Practical Guide for College and University Presidents and Report of a Symposium on the Liberal Arts and Business held last fall—are generating substantial interest from member presidents, many of whom have requested additional copies for campus officials and trustees. A third web-based publication launched in August caps a decade of work on off-campus student learning and community engagement and is expected to be a useful tool for better understanding of successful practices in these areas.

Information Technology Benchmarks: A Practical Guide for College and University Presidents. This paper, mailed to member presidents in June, was prepared by David Smallen, vice president for information technology, and Karen Leach, vice president for administration and finance at Hamilton College (NY). The booklet is a handy reference guide for presidents who must make decisions about expensive technology purchases, often without an adequate framework for judging the appropriateness of an expenditure.
     Using recently available data from the Costs of Supporting Technology Services (COSTS) project, Smallen and Leach have highlighted six benchmarks that each institution can immediately begin to use in comparing its own efforts with those of other institutions in its Carnegie Classification.
     With the support of the Verizon Foundation, CIC has been working to provide presidents and other institutional leaders with access to information, usually data-based and comparative, that can contribute to decisions about the purchase, lease, and use of information technologies.

Report of a Symposium on the Liberal Arts and Business. Distributed to members in July, the report highlights a national symposium held at Elmhurst College (IL) in November 2003. With the support of the James S. Kemper Foundation, CIC sponsored the event to address the connections between liberal arts education and professional leadership, particularly in business. The gathering was unusual in that it brought together equal numbers of college and university presidents and corporate leaders for an intensive, day-long meeting to explore how the leadership in both the corporate community and at independent institutions of higher education can learn from each other and benefit from a better understanding of the relevance of the liberal arts to careers in business.
     During the meeting, participants emphasized that more current data on the benefits of the liberal arts are essential, including research studies on the attributes claimed for a liberal arts education. Participants also identified specific initiatives that educational and business leaders could undertake both to strengthen liberal arts education and to advocate more effectively for its value.
     The report includes a summary of the day’s discussion as well as a collection of individual statements, either submitted prior to the meeting to prompt discussion or inspired by the conversation.
     Additional copies of both publications can be ordered free of charge from CIC. Contact Laura Wilcox at (202) 466-7230. The publications will also be posted on the web in the fall.

Effective Practices Exchange on Engaging Communities and Campuses. CIC launched in August a web-based “publication” that consists of a collection of successful practices at CIC institutions that promote off-campus student learning and community engagement. This web-based collection—the first of its kind for CIC—caps a decade of CIC work on these issues. It has been developed as a part of CIC’s Engaging Communities and Campuses program, with support from The Atlantic Philanthropies.
     “This is very exciting,” says Russell Garth, CIC’s Executive Vice President. “We’ve spent ten years collecting information on the effective practices of private colleges and universities—now we are finally able to share what we have learned. We expect the Effective Practices Exchange to be used as an information resource on the practices themselves, but we also hope that campuses find it to be a useful tool for better understanding student learning and community engagement.” To serve this purpose, a distinctive feature of the Exchange is its focus on discrete aspects of institutional initiatives and capacity building, rather than general descriptions of entire programs.
     The Effective Practices Exchange includes descriptions of 54 practices from 47 private institutions nationwide. Types of practices include service-learning programs, internships, community-based research, and other forms of off-campus experiential learning, as well as partnerships with community organizations or businesses that support student learning. The Effective Practices Exchange is available here on CIC's website.

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Last updated: August 2004
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