Sustaining Technological Change at Liberal Arts Colleges

Funded by the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust

March 2001

The rapid growth of information technology makes it increasingly difficult for colleges to undertake the exploration of new technologies while simultaneously providing appropriate support for basic computing services. As a result, many institutions, especially small liberal arts colleges, forgo such explorations and find themselves increasingly unprepared to deal with technological change.

The Murdock Trust recently made a grant of $398,000 to Reed to address this issue. The project will include exploration of new software, hardware, and online services as well as new training techniques. The goal is to enable faculty, students, and staff to identify and learn how to use innovative technologies in the most efficient and timely ways. The results of the project will be shared extensively with other colleges in the Northwest via electronic media such as the World Wide Web. We view this initiative as the first step towards a sustainable model of innovation that will address the problem of technology evolution both now and in the future.

The grant will run for 3 years, beginning in April 2001. Initial acquisition of new technology products and services, recruitment of consultants and temporary staff, and implementation of faculty development activities, will take place in Year One. Dissemination of product evaluation results and other collaborative activities would begin in Year Two. An assessment of the project's impact would be conducted in Year Three.

Funding to explore technology innovation is an ongoing college need, of which the proposed project is the first step. A collaborative proposal to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation submitted by Reed, Occidental, Swarthmore, and Vassar Colleges for $1.2 million was approved last fall. Approximately $300,000 of those grant funds will be applied at Reed towards the proposed technology innovation project. The grant from the Murdock Trust completes the funding plan for the next three years.

Past grants from Murdock and other foundations have helped Reed develop technology initiatives that have, at the end of the grants, been supported by the College. For example, a 1995 grant from the Culpeper Foundation allowed us to hire, on a temporary basis, an instructional technologist to help faculty explore and incorporate new technologies into their teaching. With the conclusion of the grant in 2000, the position was added to the College’s budget. The success of the campaign for Reed College, strong investment performance by our endowment, and careful fiscal management made this step possible.

In the long term, the College hopes to establish a Technology Innovation Fund (TIF) to provide faculty members and students with the means to explore new technologies, implement special projects, and test ideas that require resources beyond those now available at the College. We have already raised approximately $300,000 for the Fund and have received a pledge for another $1 million.