City College of San Francisco - California Competes

STANDARD III.C
II. Standard Report III.C: Technology Resources
Technology resources are used to support
student learning programs and services
to improve institutional effectiveness.
Technology planning is integrated with
institutional planning.
III.C.1. The institution assures that any technology
support it provides is designed to meet the
needs of learning, teaching, college-wide communications,
research, and operational systems.
III.C.1.a. Technology services, professional
support, facilities, hardware, and software
are designed to enhance the operation and
effectiveness of the institution.
The College’s technology responds to the needs
of the institution. Following a period of scarce
resources in the 1980s and early 1990s, the
College laid careful plans identifying the most
important project priorities for technology
spending between 1996 and 2001, during which
time two citizens’ bonds were approved, making
available the substantial sum of $24 million for
technology development. Enormous results from
this investment have been realized, especially
since the time of the last self-study team visit in
the year 2000, leading the technology committee
to report that technology has indeed enhanced
institutional operations and effectiveness. This
subsection highlights some of the ways in which
technology has achieved substantial results and
also suggests what remains to be accomplished.
[Refs. 6, 7, 8, 21]
The most important priority for investment has
been the development of the college-wide network.
Until this project was undertaken, CCSF
had a mainframe-based network with terminals
and stand-alone computers, each with different
operating systems and applications. The database
system had previously been hosted remotely
and required dumb terminals, until finally the
College invested in a new database system for
mission-critical applications such as student
records, financial records, etc. However, even
this new database system needed connectivity
in order to be accessible and useful. Thus, the
College began constructing a fiber optic network,
wiring each building on the Ocean Avenue
Campus as well as the remote campuses, floor
by floor, room by room. Then the buildings
themselves were connected on the Ocean
Avenue Campus, pulling cable through underground
conduits and into buildings, where
wiring closets linked the campus electronically.
However, the campuses were not connected,
except by dial-up communications and T-1
phone lines, so the College awarded a multi-million
dollar contract to the City’s Department of
Telecommunications and Information Services
to connect the campuses throughout the city
using underground conduits along the rail
transit lines, a project that is now more than
50 percent complete. [Refs. 20, 21]
Simultaneous to the construction of the network,
the College began a major project called
the “Desktop Rollout” project. New desktop
computers were acquired and some of the existing
later-model PCs were upgraded so that over
2,500 employees—trained in the new software
and password security procedures—could work
with standardized operating systems and applications,
share documents and data, communicate
with a fully functional email system, and have
access to the College’s Banner database system.
In addition to all of this, the 20-plus-year old
expensive and outdated telephone system was
replaced with a new system that operated not
over the old copper wiring but rather over the
new fiber optic network, using the technology
called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). These
projects were huge undertakings, involving the
planning and participation of professional staff,
contractors, and, most important, the cooperation
of the many College users. [Ref. 12]
CITY COLLEGE OF SAN FRANCISCO
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