Watch out, Bangalore. Students at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh will work in a call-in technical-support office near campus, providing services to Yahoo employees. The students, who don’t need any advanced computer training to work in the office, can make around $10,000 a year in the job. (Hold on. If Yahoo employees are calling students at Oshkosh for technical support, who is helping me when I contact Yahoo with problems?)

Adam Kostrzak, a senior manager of Yahoo’s Global Service Desk, is an Oshkosh alumnus who set up the deal. He said that operating a helpdesk in Oshkosh was significantly cheaper than doing so in Silicon Valley. (Yahoo also has call centers in New York and India.) The jobs will go to 20 to 40 students who, the university says, will be learning valuable skills. Lou Dobbs might be pleased. —Scott Carlson

Librarians have a reputation for being flaming liberals. Left of Left. I’ve met more than one who wears the label “pinko” with pride.

So that makes one of the latest discussions to pop up on library listservs an interesting one. Yesterday, a subscriber to the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table listserv posted links for YouTube archives of the speeches given at the Democratic National Convention. Immediately another subscriber reminded people that the listserv was not to be used for “partisan purposes” and warned against “pushing the envelope” — which, the subscriber said, could lead to the ALA’s losing its nonprofit status. Other subscribers responded by saying that they were merely passing around information, and they posted links to other candidates’ YouTube speeches, in...

There is something to be said for simplicity in an ever-more-wired age. But it’s typically the old folks you hear saying something like: “I just want a cell phone that makes calls. I don’t need one that plays music, sends e-mail, takes pictures, surfs the Web, contains a map of Tokyo, unlocks car doors, plays a crafty game of poker, works like a credit card, and combs my hair.” (Somewhere in this wide world, technicians are no doubt working on the mobile beautician.)

Youngsters have been branded as gizmophiles, attached to their phones and their many uses. But a new survey from the University of New Hampshire suggests that students use their phones in limited ways — mainly for talking, texting, keeping track of time, and a handful of other basic functions.

Students in a market-research class taught by Chuck Martin, an a...

ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, has released a survey of green attitudes in IT. Granted, the number of respondents to the survey was around 80, so this may not be a statistically robust tally of green attitudes in college IT departments, but it may give some hint at what gets valued, and what doesn’t.

We skipped right down to question 5, which asked what colleges had done to be more green. Three-quarters of respondents bought new equipment, while a little over half said they turned off power on machines whenever possible, and 20 percent reworked the network for simplicity and fewer devices. A vast majority said that they were recycling machines (what “recycling” in this case means is unclear) and that they were reducing printing.

The green image is a powerful one. About 25 ...

How do you hire a chief information officer? Very thoughtfully, says Warren Arbogast on the latest edition of Tech Therapy, The Chronicle’s technology podcast.

“For me, it comes down to three things — leadership, management, and the ability to do,” he says. “When I work with people who are trying to hire a CIO, they often fall into a trap of looking for the ‘Jesus candidate’ — we have renamed it the ‘Elvis candidate,’ because that is more palatable. And that is the CIO who is all things to all people all the time, including the weekends and the holidays. Good luck.”

Look for someone who is politically savvy. Look for someone who is not just a ones-and-zeros guy. Look for someone who knows the difference between the big picture and the little picture. In short, you want a Wayne Gretzky of IT.

This episode is...

Over on Buildings & Grounds, The Chronicle‘s blog about architecture and facilities, an architect from the firm SmithGroup discusses the ways that Millennials are challenging traditional notions of campus design.

Because Millennials are always plugged in, architects have to design for impromptu study and social groups, leaving old classroom designs to be a thing of the past, writes Mark McVay, design director in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

“The old notion of a public square can now be recreated in multiple locations throughout a campus — even in the classroom,” he says. “These developments give us opportunities to increase the experiential component of learning — and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The shifting roles of...

Robert E. Dunker, the president of Western Iowa Tech Community College, joins Warren Arbogast and Scott Carlson on Tech Therapy this week to talk about why presidents should pay attention to technology. The short answer: to keep the college doors open.

“We see our face-to-face interaction going down and our online attendance skyrocketing up,” Mr. Dunker says. “As presidents, if we don’t pay attention to IT and the impact IT has on our institutions, we are going to be dead in the water.”

Mr. Dunker describes how he pays attention to what’s going on at the Detroit Auto Show or the Consumer Electronics Show, and how the college might take advantage of the technologies discussed there. For example, now that people can plug iPods into car stereos, how can colleges let people download lessons so that...

Hey, Tech Guys and Gals: Do you feel like professors, administrators, and staff members are constantly piling on the projects? When you can’t follow through on an insurmountable pile of work, do you inevitably find people saying: “See? We told you technology sucks.”

The Tech Therapists feel your pain. In the latest episode of Tech Therapy, Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast discuss how to manage the expectations of others and stop what Warren calls “the Salem Witch Trial Effect.” You’ll have to listen to the show to learn what that is:

Tampa, Fla. — No one envied Roderick J. McDavis’s uncomfortable position. Mr. McDavis got on stage to describe how he and his university had responded to a series of network-security breaches, which made headlines across the country in 2006.

“I know that the majority of you are saying I’m glad it’s him up there and not me,” Mr. McDavis told the crowd at The Chronicle’s Technology Forum today.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted the university in late April 2006 to tell administrators that their networks had been hacked. The FBI found out about the breach, Mr. McDavis said, because undercover agents on chat rooms had seen hackers bragging about breaking into Ohio University’s systems.

A series of breaches followed, which could have led to exposure of thousands of private alumni data and other records. Mr. McDavis said that Ohio University had a very...

In the latest Tech Therapy, Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast talk with Stephen J. Kopp, president of Marshall University, about a president’s perspective on technology.

“It seems to me that when the focus is on technology and not the problem or the issue that is trying to be solved, it becomes almost a barrier in terms of effecting solutions,” he says. He also says chief information officers should talk to presidents all the time — not just at budget time to ask for big-ticket items.

And what does Mr. Kopp think of a recent Chronicle survey in which college presidents reported that technology strategy was one of their lowest priorities — and least favorite subjects to deal with? “Those statistics both amaze and appall me,” he says.