Penn State Intercom......November 15, 2001

Get the facts —
they're all online

Did you know?

* Penn State has the largest Alumni Association in the country.

* Penn State ranks second in the country in industry-sponsored research.

* Total enrollment has increased four-fold since 1960 -- from 20,816 in 1960 to 81,704 in 2001.

* Minority enrollment has increased each year in the last decade, to a total of 10.8 percent of the student body.

* The University awarded 16,313 degrees in 2000-01.

* A total of 602 new faculty positions have been added since 1996-97 -- 328 at University park and 274 at other campus locations.

* The University's total budget is just under $2.3 billion for 2001-02.

* Penn State is requesting an appropriation increase of $25.9 million from the state for 2002-03.

That's just some of the wealth of information available online in the newly updated Penn State Fact Book, part of the University's home on the Internet at http://www.budget.psu.edu/factbook/.

Newly available information includes fall 2001 enrollment statistics, fall 2001 faculty and staff counts and details of the 2001-02 operating budget.

The redesigned Web site and Fact Book update began in June and was completed about two weeks ago, a collaborative effort involving the entire University Budget Office. The finished product is about 2,000 Web pages filled with a cornucopia of facts and figures about the University, according to P. Richard Althouse, University budget officer.

Significant about the expanded Fact Book is that it depends on a database system instead of static Web pages. "That means that updated information can be fed directly to the database instead of manually changing each Web page," said Tim Whitehill, technology team leader in the Budget Office.

"We can get things out much faster and more efficiently with a lot less effort," Althouse said. "This system is at the forefront of current Web technology."

The Fact Book has answers to almost any question the general public has about Penn State in an easily navigated, user-friendly system. The site is sorted and organized into these categories: general information, students, faculty and staff, budget and finance, research, and alumni/development, along with numerous links to pertinent University sites and home pages.

For example, under general information, there's data about Penn State provided by the Office of University Relations. Subjects include public accountability, frequently asked questions, rankings and ratings, quick facts, calendars of events and information on President Graham B. Spanier, past presidents and the Board of Trustees.

Under FAQs, answers can be found on how to get an admissions application, obtain sports information, look up faculty and staff e-mail IDs and search Alumni Association information.

The comprehensive site also provides a home for Penn State's budget.

"We provide a budget-by-budget accounting of planned and actual expenditures," Althouse said. "We believe we include more detailed information about our budget online than any university in the country.

"The process also provides a substantial savings of time and money to the University," Althouse said. In the past, the University had printed copies of the budget, a hefty volume that cost $300 per book to produce, he said. Now, all that information has been transferred to the Web.

"The technology allows us to get the budget online a two full months before we were able to in the past," he said.

"Our goal is to make timely information about Penn State available to students, faculty, staff and the citizens of the commonwealth and to do so in an easy-to-use format," Althouse said. In the past year or so, since the first version of the Fact Book appeared, the site has registered about 20,000 visits, he said.

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