| |April - 201819CIO INSIGHTSHigh quality post-secondary education has never been more important than it is today. At its core, the work of higher education institutions is to transform students into critical thinkers and lifelong learners who can and will actively engage in shaping a better future for the generations that follow. The promise of higher education is for all. Our collective success matters, and the measure of that success depends on our ability to provide the same high-quality learning experience to first generation students, underserved students, working parent students, commuter students, distance learning students, and traditional students. For students, especially non-traditional students, technology is empowering. It is an ideal platform to deliver learning opportunities unattached to time and place.Mobile technology is particularly important because it is so pervasively used. As I walk across our campus, nearly every student I see is face down immersed in the content presented on the small screen of a mobile device. When we built our first-generation wireless network in 2005, our students were coming to campus with a single computing device. A decade ago, we saw about 4,000 unique devices connected to our network during peak use. In fall 2017, our students came with an average of six networked devices, including laptops, tablets, smartphones, TVs, gaming devices, and printers. Now we see an average of 42,000 unique devices connected to our network during peak usage. Our students are the early adopter target market for all major global technology brands. Technology companies target their new product releases around school semester openings. How students most effectively consume information and learn is evolving, and like it or not, it is driven by these new and emerging technologies.In many ways, we are transitioning toward the streaming model popularized by Netflix and other TV providers. In the new normal, the focus is on content, not device. Virtualization is one example of a technology that allows us to shift the campus paradigm from install everywhere to install once and consume everywhere. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) IT team has invested significant energy in developing both a virtual desktop and application catalog that allow us to provide a mobile student desktop. We use this platform to deliver a traditional physical computing lab experience to students on any device they choose, at the location and time most convenient for them to consume the service. Our students find this flexibility empowering.Maturation of emerging technologies, such as affordable commodity cloud services, can play a significant role in accelerating new research. Availability of viable cloud-based options for high speed computing and analytics can The Role of Technology on a Student-Centered CampusBy Donna Heath, Information Technology Services Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer, University of North Carolina at GreensboroWe can effectively use technology to create conditions that seed research, creative activity, critical analysis, and transition from theory to practiceDonna Heath
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