Role of the Center

Rudenstine has, since he came to Harvard, supported a number of new uses for information technology, such as the complete wiring of the campus for Internet access and the creation of HOLLIS. Most recently, he verbalized the importance of the Internet as an emerging technology for teaching and the need for Harvard to pursue its uses.

"The cluster of technologies that we call the Internet has very distinctive powers--to complement, to reinforce and to enhance many of our most powerful traditional approaches to university teaching and learning," Rudenstine said in his Commencement address.

However, it seems unlikely that the central administration will play a major role in the development of new academic applications for information technology.

On the administrative side, the center is investing $50 million over the next several years on Project ADAPT, an initiative designed to revolutionize the way the University deals with administrative data.

No similar push is likely from the center for academic initiatives, according to Assistant Provost for Information Technology Anne Margulies.

"The use of information technology for academic purposes will most definitely be driven by and managed within the schools," she says. "The center's role may be to identify or work with the schools to identify areas where collaboration makes sense, and then to facilitate that collaboration."

One area in which the center may have an impact is in helping to create standardized systems across the schools to help reduce barriers to interaction, Margulies said.

Currently, certain Internet resources in some schools are inaccessible from other schools. Law School case studies, for example, cannot be accessed from within the FAS domain.

"I have heard a lot about the complexities and problems caused by our non-standardized environment," Margulies says. "One of the things the center should do is to help establish standards--not create, but help the faculties arrive at a system that will work throughout the University."

Regardless of how and to what extent the University's administration chooses to support new uses of information technology, it has already gained the support of those who may ultimately be most influential to its success: the students.

"It fulfilled its primary goals in minimizing paper waste, providing students with an instant and extremely convenient source of course material and information, as well as providing an innovative source of preparation for tests," Bribiescas says of the Science B-29 web page. "In all, I've had nothin