COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS
VISION FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Information technology increasingly affects every aspect of the work of the College, and the vocations of each of us who live, work and study here. We are, therefore, proposing a vision of the role of information technology in the mission of Holy Cross in response to that invitation to dialogue and shared responsibility:
Technology Development
Information technology has s played an important role at Holy Cross for decades, but that role is changing rapidly. Computation, the manipulation of information that gave digital computers their English name, is important, whether computers are used to calculate payroll deductions or model weather patterns. Computers are also crucial for organizing and storing information, from a registrar's database of course enrollments to a professor's bibliographies or survey return. Both these familiar applications of information technology essentially automate or improve the efficiency of familiar activities.
Increased Access to Many Sources of Information
First, the explosive growth of interconnected networks on a global scale gives new prominence to sharing and retrieving information worldwide. Our interactions with others are less restricted by separation in time and space. At Holy Cross and elsewhere, the environments where we create, store and organize information has become increasingly unified with the environment where we connect with people.
In this setting, we need to re-examine our relations to every community involved with Holy Cross: faculty, staff, students, prospective students, alumni, communities in Worcester, the Society of Jesus, and many other local, national and worldwide communities.
High-level Tools for Manipulating Information
At the same time that networking improves the physical accessibility of remote sources of information, new tools are improving the intellectual accessibility of disparate kinds of information. Some examples:
• Understanding familiar material
• Exploring materials in new ways
• Asking new questions
Technically, all of these examples are simply extensions of long familiar number-crunching applications, but intellectually they serve users at a new level. Increasingly, they liberate users from concern with the mechanics of computation to focus on more meaningful, higher-level abstractions, whether molecules, ecosystems or nineteenth-century railroads.
Impact of Technology
As technology changes the context and process of learning, the activities we ordinarily allot to classroom, library, laboratory, theater and residence hall are transformed. Consideration of information technology must become part of our planning and policy making at Holy Cross.
Equally important, we will need to ask how these momentous development influence our conversation about the moral dimension of learning and teaching, the quest for human meaning and the demands of justice. Information technology is making things different. At Holy Cross, as elsewhere, the nature of that difference and its impact on the human family remain our responsibility.
Reconsidering the Mission Statement's Questions
The four basic questions of the College's Mission Statement are each affected by information technology:
• What is the moral character of learning and teaching?
• How do we find meaning in life and history?
• What are our obligations to one another?
• What is our special responsibility to the worlds' poor and powerless?
Challenges of This Vision
To apply information positively and effectively in response to basic questions of the mission statement will require a major commitment throughout the College. Technology costs will not be the greatest part, nor will they, apart form isolated cases, be offset by cost-savings gains inefficiency. The real expense in our vision of information technology at Holy Cross is the investment in human resources that will be required as we rethink familiar habits and develop new skills. The benefits will not be measured primarily in new efficiency, but in new ways to fulfill our mission: to attract the students we want; to keep faculty and staff constantly reinvigorated and learning; to keep alumni and other friends of the College more closely involved; to open up new possibilities for services to others.