Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences, Advanced Networking, and EDUCAUSE2007

This meeting will provide a forum for discussing IT support for institutional research missions. The two broad categories of concern include support for research administration and IT support for research activities. Research administration support involves pre- and post-award support, interaction with federal grant systems, regulatory compliance, and intellectual property management. Supporting research activities includes centralized versus decentralized approaches, high-performance computing, advanced networking, and informatics, as well as enabling multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and interinstitutional work.

Facing an aging telephone copper plant and rising provider costs, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania implemented a multicampus VoIP system to save more than $1 million over a five-year period while substantially upgrading functionality in the process. This presentation will outline the entire VoIP conversion process, from the planning stages through funding, implementation, and training.

New technologies and infrastructure that extend bandwidth and power to the seafloor are being developed within the Ocean Observatories Initiative of the National Science Foundation. A major component of this effort involving construction of major cabled subsea networks is focusing on science and education programs that will make use of this unprecedented interactive access to study the northeast Pacific Ocean. The last frontier on Earth—the deep sea—will be accessible to a global community of scientists, educators, decision makers, and learners of all ages. New technologies will enable new approaches to studies of ocean and earth processes that, for example, regulate global climate, absorb greenhouse gases, generate earthquakes and tsunamis, support major fish stocks, harbor life in the extreme environments of sea floor volcanoes, and form vast mineral resources.