Campus Computing News

By Dr. Maurice Leatherbury, Senior Director of Academic Computing

New Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Grant Announced

The Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board recently announced a new round of grants to Texas higher education institutions, this round being dubbed "HE4" (the fourth such grant opportunity for higher education since the inception of TIF.) UNT is eligible to receive $616,687 under this non-competitive grant program that includes all two- and four-year colleges and universities in the state. Last year we received $739,004 from TIF's "HE3" grant: that money is being spent on training central Web support personnel, wireless laptops for classroom training, three additional videoconferencing rooms, online personal storage space for students' files, new WebCT servers, and some production equipment for the Center for Distributed Learning.

Use of the funds

The HE4 grants, for the first time, allow us to hire personnel in order to develop "academic programs that fully take advantage of telecommunications [that] may require high levels of interactivity, high-quality multimedia and attention to design." Specifically, we can hire subject matter experts, instructional designers, curriculum development specialists, content/course conversion specialists, and programmers under this grant. Other allowed uses of the funds are for training staff and faculty on using technology in the classroom and on developing web-based curricula, distance education training, and "enterprise integration." We must respond to the HE4 RFP by August 2nd, the grant period starts on August 30th, and we must have all of the funds spent by August 30, 2003.

Dr. Philip Turner has discussed the grants with the other deans and with Dr. Kesterson and one major use of the funds will probably be to fund additional course and program development for delivery using WebCT. Additional funds may also be used to pay for the large increase in our WebCT license costs next fiscal year. However, no final decisions have been made on the disposition of the funds from the grant. The grant will be discussed at the June 18th meeting of the Information Resources Council.