Thursday, October 4, 2001

6 Boston-Area Colleges to Coordinate IT Services By ANDREA L. FOSTER Six small colleges in Boston -- known collectively as the Colleges of the Fenway -- are the latest group of higher-education institutions to decide to coordinate academic- and administrative-technology functions. The consortium of colleges in Boston's Fenway neighborhood is seeking a $2-million grant from a private foundation to create a shared computer network, which it hopes to have installed by the end of next summer, said Claire Ramsbottom, who coordinates programs that are shared among the Colleges of the Fenway. The colleges made the decision primarily to save money, but they also hope the change will increase bandwidth capacity for students, she added. "If we could get on to a common system with enough firewalls for sensitive information, then there's an enormous amount of savings we could effect there," said John F. Van Domelen, president of Wentworth Institute of Technology, one of the Colleges of the Fenway. He said the colleges are collectively spending about $7-million to $10-million on information-technology services each year, including hundreds of thousands of dollars on licensing fees. After the network is installed, the consortium will move toward sharing technology-support services, like help-desk functions and faculty training. Eventually, the colleges will be hooked up to Internet2. The collaboration will allow the colleges to use technology to serve their unique student populations, Ms. Ramsbottom said. The Colleges of the Fenway are within a 15-minute walk of one another, and they have a combined student population of about 7,000. Aside from Wentworth, the consortium is composed of Emmanuel, Simmons, and Wheelock Colleges; the Massachusetts College of Art; the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences; and the Medical Academic Scientific Community, a nonprofit corporation established to improve the medical and academic area in the Longwood neighborhood, next to Boston. A lot of colleges are coordinating or thinking about coordinating information-technology functions, said Lawrence G. Dotolo, president of the Virginia Tidewater Consortium for Higher Education. "The IT revolution can be puzzling, and it's good to see what other institutions are doing, and to work with them," he said. "Otherwise, a lot of money could be spent on technology that might not be worth it in the end." Background articles from The Chronicle: 5 Boston Colleges Join Forces to Seek Economies of Scale (11/1/1996) 5 Colleges in Boston to Combine Some Operations to Cut Costs (4/5/1996) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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