On October 16th and 17th Penn State hosted the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) TechForum 2001, a conference that enabled participants from research universities nation-wide to come together to explore complex information technology service and management issues
This year's TechForum was designed around the theme Managing IT Services and Infrastructure in a Climate of Change. J. Gary Augustson, vice provost for information technology at Penn State, and Mort Rahimi, CIC CIO chair, vice president and chief technical officer at Northwestern University, delivered opening remarks to an audience of 130 conference attendees. During the two-day Forum, featured speakers, Carole Barone, vice president of EDUCAUSE and Milton Glick, senior vice president and provost of Arizona State University, addressed the challenges and opportunities facing universities in shaping the role of information technology in higher education.
One of the highlights of the Forum was a question and answer session with Penn State president Graham Spanier entitled "Conversation with a President." Other session topics included planning and management issues, providing 24/7 services, Windows 2000 migration, Web portals, helpdesk management, network security, and copyright.
CIC TechForums are annual events designed to foster cooperation and synergy among research universities by creating greater awareness of common IT goals. The CIC is a consortium of Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago that focuses on enhancing institutional events through cooperative activities. To learn more about the CIC go to: http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/index.html on the Web. To review the conference presentations please see: http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/L-IT_Dept/Ed_Prof_Ops/TechForums/TechForum2001/WelcomePage_TF2001.htm