2011 ASU HBCU Conference: Entrepreneurship: Globalization of the New South

Alabama State University Office of Media Relations & Public Information

Inspiring Faculty Grants and Contracts Workshop Coming in March at ASU at
The National Entrepreneurship HBCU Conference!

(MONTGOMERY, Ala.) -- The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Alabama State University is hosting a grants and contracts workshop for faculty members from across the nation during the university’s national Historically Black Colleges and Universities entrepreneurship conference, which occurs from March 7-10 at ASU’s Montgomery, Ala. campus. The conference is titled Entrepreneurship: Globalization of the New South.

The goal of ASU’s HBCU conference is to provide attendees the opportunity to learn about business development, entrepreneurship, grants, contracting and fellowships, with a special focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The special workshop for faculty will provide hands-on sessions that offers critical information, such as do’s and don’ts of grant writing and how to create budgets for successful proposals. The workshop also imparts help to future principal investigators and project directors of grants on how to maintain a successful award once it is funded, said Linda Phaire-Washington, associate provost for the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) at ASU.

“The faculty-focused workshop provides interactive sessions on the mission and functions of ORSP; critical information needed to navigate electronic proposal prospecting, tracking, and grant submissions to federal agencies; proposal processing through ASU; and budget preparation,” Phaire-Washington said. “We are delighted to offer these resources during the national HBCU entrepreneurship conference that is being held on our campus,” she added.

Phaire-Washington is one of the presenters at the faculty workshop. She has held numerous research, faculty and administrative positions in a variety of government, nonprofit corporate, academic institutions and national research laboratories. She serves on various advisory boards, including the National Science Foundation’s Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) in Maryland, Illinois and Washington, D.C. LSAMP alliances exist in 32 states and involve more than 100 academic institutions. The goal is to increase the number of students earning baccalaureate and graduate degrees in science, engineering, technology, and mathematic fields.

ASU’s contract specialist in its office of Research and Sponsored Programs, Dr. Jarralynne Agee, said she is excited about what this event can provide to ASU faculty and for other faculty members from across the country.

“This major event is a must for both new and seasoned faculty. Our office is proud to present a team of successful ASU faculty who will reveal the steps and strategies for participants to experience their own success at attracting local, state and federal funds,” said Agee. “Whether you are looking to win your first grant or are ready to combine collaborative innovation with the solid method needed to secure a six or even seven figure award, then this workshop is intended for you,” she added.

Agee also is a conference presenter. She has served as an assistant professor of social science at ASU and has taught courses at the University of Alabama – Birmingham, Miles College and Peralta Community College. For nine years, she worked at the University of California-Berkeley as a faculty member in the departments of psychology and African-American studies, as well as a principal analyst in its Center for Workforce Development. She has won several grant awards, including a workforce investment agency stimulus grant that gave summer jobs to more than 200 youth.

For additional information about the entrepreneurship conference, visit http://www.asu-hbcu.org.

Media Contacts:
For more detailed information on the conference or workshops, contact Tammi Thomas, at tthomas@dstincorporated.com or via 301-583-3500, ext. 239.
For media interview requests, contact Kenneth Mullinax, at kmullinax@alasu.edu or via 334-229-4104

2011 ASU HBCU Conference: Entrepreneurship: Globalization of the New South

Dillard University News: FAMU College of Law Representative on campus to talk to interested students

Dr. Fred Humhries, representing Florida A&M College of Law, will be on campus to speak with students who are interested in attending Law School.

When: Thursday, February 24 ,2011
Where: Kearny (West Wing)
Time: 11am – 1pm

Dillard University News: FAMU College of Law Representative on campus to talk to interested students

CETL International Institute for New Faculty Developers (IINFD)- ATLANTA - REGISTER NOW!

Saturday, June 18th - Wednesday June 22, 2011
Kennesaw State University.
KSU Center, 3333 Busbee Dr. , Kennesaw, GA 30144

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University and the POD Network are pleased to announce that registrations are now being accepted for the International Institute for New Faculty Developers, to be held June 18-22, 2011, in Kennesaw, Georgia (right outside of Atlanta).

Faculty development is crucial for institutions which are becoming more student-centered and need to be more accountable to the public. As a career, it is rewarding and exciting. And yet, most people in the field entered it without proper training or a qualifying degree and have faced a steep learning curve when they were starting out. To address this challenge, every two years the POD Network sponsors a week-long International Institute for New Faculty Developers.

The Institute is designed to answer questions asked by new faculty developers and to provide the resources to get them started in planning, developing, and managing programs that will be effective in strengthening teaching and learning on campus.

Participants at the Institute will learn from a group of outstanding presenters and facilitators from a diverse mix of institutions who are recognized leaders in the field. The 2011 Institute will take place on the campus of Kennesaw State University, Located in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Participants will save $150 off the regular Institute fee when registering by the Early Bird deadline of April 29, 2011. Fees for this five-day program include all program activities and materials, two key resources “A Guide to Faculty Development” and “How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching,” and most meals and refreshments, all at a reasonable rate. For further information or questions contact us directly at cetl@kennesaw.edu or(770) 423-6410.

See you this summer in Atlanta!

CETL International Institute for New Faculty Developers (IINFD)- ATLANTA - REGISTER NOW!

S.O.U.L. 2011 at Dillard University February 24, 2011, 11:00 a.m.

Featuring singers from
Australia, Colombia, Zambia and
The Mi’kmaq Nation of Canada

February 24, 2011, 11:00 a.m.

Dillard University
Lawless Memorial Chapel


FREE ADMISSION!

S.O.U.L. 2011 at Dillard University February 24, 2011, 11:00 a.m.

Titles in Dillard U. CTLAT Collection - Revised February 2011

Titles in Dillard U. CTLAT Collection - Revised February 2011

DU CTLAT Wordle - Dillard University Center for Teaching, Learning and Academic Technology

DU CTLAT Wordle - Dillard University Center for Teaching, Learning and Academic Technology

POD: Seeking Associate Editor for To Improve the Academy

Members of POD are invited to apply for the position of Associate Editor of To Improve the Academy, beginning in academic year 2011-12. The work involved is rewarding and of tremendous service to POD and the larger higher education community. While the duties are not overwhelming, it is a four-year commitment - two as Associate Editor and two as Editor. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, distributing the Call for Proposals, selecting reviewers, reading and editing manuscripts, communicating with authors and our publisher Jossey-Bass, and attending the annual POD conference to co-facilitate a presentation on getting published in TIA.

Essential qualifications:
●Outstanding organizational skills
●Attention to detail (including conformance with APA format)
●Excellent writing/editing and proofreading skills
●Adherence to strict deadlines
●Firm command of the faculty development literature

If you are qualified and interested in serving, please complete the enclosed application and email it as an attachment in Word or pdf format to the incoming Editor of To Improve the Academy, Jim Groccia (groccje@auburn.edu), by Monday, February 28, 2011.

POD: Seeking Associate Editor for To Improve the Academy

HBCU Library Alliance: Dillard University: Transitioning Out of the Presidency: Dr. Marvalene Hughes

February 17, 2011

Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni/ae, and Friends,

It is with careful consideration that I announced yesterday to the Board of Trustees, the President’s Cabinet, the Faculty Senate, and the Student Body, that the time has come to begin my transition from the position of President of Dillard University. I will be working very closely with the Board of Trustees on a transition plan that will culminate in Dillard's appointment of a new president.

It has been challenging and rewarding to serve “Fair Dillard” over the past six years. It was an honor to play a role in rebuilding Dillard, following its devastation at the hands of Hurricane Katrina. Because of your faith in Dillard's rich legacy, together, we have not only preserved the heritage of this stellar institution, but brought it to new heights, positioning Dillard for greater achievements in the 21st century.

In the months ahead, I will be working tirelessly to sustain and build upon our many successes, and to identify new opportunities to secure Dillard's future. We will continue to focus heavily on fundraising to enable us to rebuild Dillard’s entire campus. The cost thus far is nearly $400 million.

As I begin my transition process, I reflect upon the lessons I have learned from many years of experience in universities around the country. One very important lesson is that a university is only as great as the faculty it attracts to teach and conduct research, and the students who matriculate as learners in the educational enterprise. It is this delicate and complex relationship, between faculty and learners, which promotes learning engagement and outcomes in disciplines that are considered to be essential to the future development of a society.

Dillard University is noted for its tradition of attracting, developing, and retaining the highest level of faculty in their academic disciplines to serve as stewards supporting the portal of learning in areas that represent the university’s mission. The proper combination of superior faculty expertise and student aspirations to master their disciplines makes a university great. This is precisely the combination that creates distinctive universities.

I became more astutely aware of the significance of the relationship of teachers/scholars/researchers and students/ learners in a university environment when I chose to announce my forthcoming transition out of Dillard University. It did not matter that I indicated to faculty and student groups in separate meetings that the transition would occur several months into the summer, or when the Board succeeds in selecting a successor. What mattered at each meeting was that we were bonded as president-to-students and as president-to-faculty. Yes, we wept together. Presidents have permission to be human. It took me a second of containing my emotions before deciding that presidents have emotional experiences just as faculty and students have. At 8:00 a.m. this morning, I had the opportunity to meet with staff representatives. Their sentiments were the same as those expressed by faculty and students.

The challenges ahead of us rest in how to convert our continuing emotional commitment to projects that will serve as a part of the permanent future of Dillard. I invite faculty, staff and students to join me in identifying projects of engagement and service. Last night, some students and I decided to plan a weekend to beautify the campus. We will organize a committee and announce a call for volunteers.

I am aware of the Greenhouse, where no follow-up plans have been announced for action. With all the expertise we have among faculty and staff in this area, we can do something together. That is one idea, and I am sure there are others, such as enhancing the balconies in our beautiful Professional Schools and Sciences Building.

Because we have only the Webpage and telephonic channels of communication among alumni/ae, I wish to address them especially. To alumni/ae around the country, you will receive some of the vigor and vitality in organizing for a purpose of advantaging Dillard.

There are many actions that must be initiated in your alumni/ae chapters. Dillard needs your support. Please submit creative ideas for alumni engagement to Ms. Adrian Guy Anderson, Executive Director of Alumni Relations, at (504) 816-4325 or via email at aguy@dillard.edu

To celebrate my departure, let us join forces in working to promote Dillard’s future. Please submit your ideas early to enable us to determine if there is a project that energizes national alumni/ae efforts and appreciation. I submit one idea in these economic crises for our students. Perhaps we can organize competitive fund-raising among chapters for scholarships. To all of you, students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae, I am deeply grateful for your response to affirm your support.

We have worked very hard to rebuild, almost to a level of 100%, Dillard’s campus. Add to that our two new Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Certified buildings, and, oddly, this campus has received an increase of 120% growth in construction under this administration. Already this sets a precedent in education. Today, every building is a transformed state-of-the-art building.

I hope you understand that I gave my best to all of you. You may expect an exit document from me before commencement.
We have uploaded a photo gallery to enable you to appreciate our journey.

Most sincerely,
Dr. Marvalene Hughes

President Hughes Photo Gallery
Please enjoy this photo gallery depicting President Hughes' journey at Dillard University over the past six years.
http://www.dillard.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=990:president-hughess-photo-gallery&catid=147&Itemid=964

HBCU Library Alliance: Dillard University: Transitioning Out of the Presidency: Dr. Marvalene Hughes

Inside Higher Ed: Blackboard's Next Phase

February 22, 2011

Blackboard built its e-learning empire on its learning management system, trading legal blows with some competitors and gobbling up others as it raced to satisfy demand for a technology that had rapidly become de rigueur in higher education.

That period of conquest is now over. Last fall, close to 95 percent of institutions had some learning management system in place, according to the Campus Computing Project. Accordingly, Blackboard’s business strategy is changing: with the company adding four new, separately licensed products to its menu in the last three years, Blackboard expects that it will soon no longer rely on Learn, its popular learning management system, to bring home the bacon.

Learn brought in approximately 55 to 60 percent of the company’s $450 million in revenue last year, John Kinzer, Blackboard’s chief financial officer, told analysts in a conference call this month. But the company expects its other products — which focus on mobile learning, synchronous communication, and learning analytics — to fly off the shelves, relieving Learn of a sizable chunk of its burden.

“Over time, clearly the other products like mobile and collaborate and analytics are growing much faster,” Kinzer said. “So we’d assume that over a three- to five-year horizon that percentage is going to be much lower than that, probably down into the 20- to 30-percent range.”

While Blackboard officials insist that this doesn't mean the learning-management platform will be viewed as any less crucial to the company, Kinzer's projection nevertheless marks a large shift in the company's identity.

For those who have been watching closely, this development should not come as a surprise. Blackboard has been laying the groundwork for this second phase over the last few years, slowly absorbing e-learning companies that are not involved in learning management and rebranding them as Blackboard imprints. Blackboard Analytics, formed earlier this month after Blackboard acquired the analytics firm iStrategy, is the latest addition to Blackboard’s inventory of acquisitions. It joined Collaborate, which Blackboard created last year after buying live-communications companies Wimba and Elluminate; Mobile, which Blackboard disaggregated from the Learn platform in 2009; and Connect, which Blackboard inaugurated after buying the notification company Connect-ED in 2008.

As far as the U.S. higher education market goes, several business analysts who monitor Blackboard described this shift as a natural phase in the evolution of a company that has reached the edge of the earth and can only continue to grow by building on existing territory (the K-12 and international higher ed markets are still rife with unclaimed lands, officials point out). When you can no longer sell your core product to additional customers, the analysts said, you have to sell additional products to your core customers — that is, if you want to keep expanding. And Blackboard, a publicly traded company, does. (Desire2Learn, a private company that also sells license-based platforms, is taking a similar tack for the same reasons, according to Kenneth Chapman, its director of product strategy.)

So what does all this mean for the hundreds of nonprofit colleges that use Blackboard Learn as their primary learning management provider?

Nothing bad, said Scott Berg, a research analyst with the investment bank Feltl & Company. As a general rule, “If you have more solutions from a single vendor, you end up being able to drive more out of your business,” Berg said. Therefore, as Blackboard enters the business of analytics software, mobile applications, and other in-demand technology, campus officials might be grateful for the option of continuity, he said.

Meanwhile, colleges that only want — or can only afford — Blackboard’s learning management platform should not worry about having their interests marginalized, Berg continued. While the new products might be expected to be big new revenue streams, they are still designed to be “wrapped around” Blackboard Learn, he said. “Without a core LMS product sale to a potential customer, Blackboard has almost zero opportunity to upsell its other products,” said Berg.

Of course, that raises the question of why Blackboard didn’t just bake its analytics, mobile, and synchronous communications tools right into the learning-management system. Ray Henderson, president of Learn, said the company decided to sell those products separately so that the company could invest more money in them without having to raise the licensing fees on Learn — a tack that has gotten Blackboard in trouble with customers in the past.

Selling the applications separately allows the company to make them sophisticated enough to keep up with competitors while not simultaneously blowing up the price of Learn and shutting out customers who can’t pay for the fancy new tools, Henderson said. More products don’t just mean more revenue streams for Blackboard, he said; they mean greater choice for customers.

In fact, Blackboard’s strategic shift might represent a greater challenge for the company than for its clients. Any company that plans to bring in 70 percent or more of its revenue from sources other than its core product is taking a risk, said Lou Pugliese, a former Blackboard executive who is now president of Moodlerooms. (Moodlerooms competes with Blackboard by providing services to institutions that use Moodle, a leading open-source platform.) “The higher ed market is moving away from overly complex products, add-ons, and features,” said Pugliese. “They’re sticking to the core LMS … everything else is, to some extent, a nice-to-have.”

Trace Urdan, a senior analyst with the investment firm Signal Hill, said there is no guarantee Blackboard will be able to sell enough non-LMS products to realize the sort of diversification of revenue streams that Kinzer described in the conference call earlier this month — especially given the budget cuts on many campuses, to which technology departments have hardly been immune. “Analytics is kind of cool and all, but people were living without it,” he said.

The fact that Blackboard is staking so much of its anticipated growth in the domestic higher education market on the success of its newer products could put colleges in a better position to haggle, Urdan added. “The whole notion of the market being saturated and [Blackboard] being reliant on new products to build their revenue stream — maybe the negotiating power is shifting a little more toward the client and a little bit away from Blackboard,” he said. This might be especially true given the gradual erosion of Blackboard's market dominance in recent years.

Henderson, the president of Blackboard Learn, emphasized that even if the company begins relying less on learning management revenues to balance its checkbook, Blackboard will not divert any money from improving and maintaining its learning management platform — and will, in fact, continue increasing the amount it spends yearly on research and development for Learn. Henderson added that additional revenue streams could allow the company to be more flexible when negotiating discounts with its learning management clients.

For the latest technology news and opinion from Inside Higher Ed, follow @IHEtech on Twitter.

— Steve Kolowich

Inside Higher Ed: Blackboard's Next Phase

University Business Models of Efficiency Application 2011

Does your department measure up?
If the answer is "Yes!", here's your opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

University Business presents Models of Efficiency, a national recognition program honoring colleges and universities that meet the higher education business and technology challenges of today's campus.

Something powerful is happening in higher education! New approaches are streamlining operations to deliver superior service to students in less time and at lower cost than previously possible.

Innovative models of efficiency are replacing the resource-draining, time-consuming practices of yesterday. Models of Efficiency not only do more with less, but do it better.

Simply put, a model of efficiency is an administrative practice or procedure that uses technology and smart business processes to provide superior service to students, while optimizing resources.


Applications are being accepted now for the 2011 program.

University Business Models of Efficiency Application 2011