Introduction

The charge to the Academic Applications Planning Work Group (PWG) from Superior Consultants consisted of the following statements of scope and purpose:
Scope includes academic computing applications (instructional and research, as it affects faculty and students, including personal productivity applications) at the Main Campus, the Medical Center, and the Law Center.
Purpose is to define and prioritize principal opportunities and requirements for computing resources to support the University's educational and research missions and to summarize the current means of satisfying those needs.

The PWG met four times between 22 March 1995 and 16 May 1995. At the second meeting, four subgroups were formed to focus on Administrative Support, General Purpose Computing, Education and Computing, and Library and Research Support. The reports of these subgroups, revised in consultation with the full PWG, form the main body of this report. This practical division of our task is of course artificial, particularly so in light of the revolutionary developments in electronic communications and digital information technology that form the context for our efforts. These developments are a powerful force for blurring traditional (though always artificial) boundaries, including those between disciplines and between research and teaching; the integrative potential of the new information technologies may well provide their most exciting contributions to the university community.

The reports differ somewhat in length and in style, reflecting both their differing primary authorship and also substantive differences in the topics addressed. For example, in discussing general purpose software, one deals with relatively straightforward choices from a set of commercially available products, while in discussing new educational opportunities with digital information technologies, the options to be considered are not so clearly drawn at the start. We call attention to this to prevent the mistaken impression that the the length of the reports in any way correlates with the priority attached to their content.

In addition to the four subgroup reports, the remainder of this report consists of a brief Executive Summary and a rank-ordered list of Priorities. The Executive Summary highlights central or recurring themes of the subgroup reports, together with aspects of the discussions among the full PWG that did not fit naturally within the charge of any single subgroup. The Priorities must be understood as relative, not absolute. The list contains only items that a significant fraction of the group felt were important.

Most of the detailed work of the PWG was done by Email, with the Chair serving as a central postmaster, sorter, editor, etc. We note, as a commentary on the current situation, that two of our members had no convenient access to Email, and hence had to rely on FAX, and also that more efficient electronic formats were not possible because a significant fraction of the group lacked full Internet access.

The PWG originally had fourteen members, with representatives from the Law Center, the Medical Center, and the Main Campus; from Georgetown College, the Faculty of Language and Linguistics, the School of Business, and the School of Foreign Service; and from the Law Library and the Medical Center Library. Randy Bass joined the PWG early in its deliberations, as a representative from the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable. This report reflects and documents a remarkable degree of consensus, given the diversity of disciplines and academic sub-cultures represented on the PWG. We are unanimous in our belief that each our recommendations will benefit the Georgetown community as a whole, and that the implementation of these recommendations will in fact make Georgetown as a whole more of a single community than it has been at any time in the recent past.

The members of the PWG are listed below. Each subgroup evolved a de facto chair, who coordinated efforts and drafted the subgroup's report; these leading contributors are identified parenthetically in the list.

Judith Baigis-Smith
School of Nursing

Catherine Ball
Department of Linguistics

Randall Bass
Department of English

Timothy Beach
School of Foreign Service

Naomi Broering
Medical Center Library

Gary Chase (Administrative Support)
Consulting Biostatistics
Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Education
Medical Center

Eugene Davidson
Department of Biochemistry

Martin Irvine
Department of English

William McHenry (Education and Computing)
School of Business

Stephen Moore
Computer and Laboratory Services
Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Education
Medical Center

Adam Myers (General Purpose Computing)
Department of Physiology and Biophysics

Robert Oakley (Library and Research Support)
Law Center Library

Brian Schultz
Student Representative
School of Business

Joseph Serene (PWG Chair)
Department of Physics

Elizabeth Zsiga
Department of Linguistics