CLAC Institutional Report Hamilton College January 2004
David Smallen (dsmallen@hamilton.edu)
We have a new president, Joan Stewart, and with that new energy and opportunities to
revisit our institutional needs. Hamilton completed a strategic planning process 18
months ago and the context for IT is helping to achieve institutional strategic goals. One
of those goals is to be the best college in the country for developing students who can
communicate in the broadest sense - what they learn.
One of our efforts in support of strategic goals was the creation of the Multimedia
Presentation Center (MPC) <
http://www.hamilton.edu/college/its/mpc
>
, a facility with
technology and services to assist students in using all types of media in connection with
their required public presentations. Among the components of the MPC is support for the
printing of large format posters (traditional in the sciences but now spreading to other
disciplines). We use state-of-the-art printing technology and excellent support services to
meet this curricular goal. One key is that the facility is set up so that students can do most
of the process themselves. The MPC has been an important support center for
incorporating a variety of student uses of media into their academic work, including
video, scanning and audio.
An important collaborative effort is our HILLgroup
http://my.hamilton.edu/academics/hillgroup/index.html
a successful partnership of the
library and IT to support faculty and students. This effort has matured over the last few
years to an exemplary partnership for the sharing of ideas and expertise. The HILLgroup
has taken the leadership role in the planning for an information commons at Hamilton,
which will feature a common service point for support of information and technology. A
pilot will begin this spring.
Network security was at the top of our minds this year, starting with the Internet worm
effort and continuing with our battle against spyware. The solidness of our network
infrastructure was demonstrated by our ability to deal with the campus-wide effects of
these nasties, but we realize that this is only the tip of a large iceberg heading our way. A
major theme for the coming year will be enhancing network and computer security in the
broadest sense. The recent Educause book on computer and network security is useful
reading.
In January, 2004 we will be implementing new perimeter firewall policies for access to
on-campus computers from off-campus
http://my.hamilton.edu/college/its/policies_standards_plans/policies_finder.html?number
=23
We will only be opening services on a server that are absolutely necessary for the
functioning of the on-campus computer. So for example, this will block almost all access
to desktop computers from off-campus, increasingly a source of vulnerability from
outside the campus. We also expect that this change will recover some of our network
bandwidth now being used by file sharing programs. The policies were discussed with/
and approved by, our campus IT committee and announced to the campus in December.
