Title: College Telecommunication Plans Mini-Grants

RFA Identification Number: 96-0482

Funding Source: Telecommunications Model Applications Pilot Project (TMAPP) Funds

Term of Grant: June 15, 1997 through July 31, 1999

Funding Category: Administrative

Maximum Funds Available: $300,000

Number of Awards: 15 Mini-grants up $25,000 each

Application Due Date: May 12, 1997

The grant award specified in this Request for Application (RFA) will be for one year only. There will be no continuation funding for any award resulting from the favorable review of a grant proposal developed pursuant to this RFA.

Purposes/Uses of the Funds

These funds are to be used by colleges to assist them in the development and implementation of local college telecommunications plans. The funds are provided in the form of mini-grants ranging up to $25,000 per college. The grants are to be used to supplement existing funds for these purposes. Colleges applying for these mini-grants must identify additional funds being committed to the local planning effort.

Need

A telecommunications infrastructure is a combination of physical connections, hardware, and software that provides for the transmission and reception of data, voice, and video information services. Telecommunications planning is crucial for at least three reasons. First, telecommunications networks constitute the technological framework of the information age; second, telecommunications is redefining the nature and uses of economic resources; and third, telecommunications infrastructure expands the methods and opportunities for teaching and learning.

Teaching and learning processes are being dramatically transformed by the revolution in digital electronics. Prudent management requires that universities, colleges and schools, like corporate America, take note of their changing cultural, economic, and technical environments. The next decade and beyond will mark a historic turning point in communications and learning where the constraints of time and place become less significant. In the information age, universities, colleges and schools will be heavily dependent on telecommunications infrastructure. The physical campus will expand to include students and knowledge providers from across the nation or around the world.

Background

Why an Internal Infrastructure Is Necessary?

Every campus must have an adequate telecommunications infrastructure to fully participate in the ongoing societal changes wrought by the digital revolution. Every work site, laboratory and classroom on every campus must be connected through a campus backbone network to the telecommunications infrastructure and then to all campus and external information resources.

The internal telecommunications infrastructure enhances the teaching and learning process and facilities management of the institution by providing voice, data, video and image applications to individuals wherever those individuals are on campus-classrooms, laboratories, libraries or faculty/staff offices and dormitory rooms. Once the infrastructure is in place, every voice, data or video resource on campus is capable of being connected to every other resource, and the campus can be connected to the wide area network.

Data network systems vary not only from campus to campus, but from building to building on campus. Some campuses provide Fiber Digital Data Interface (FDDI) connections at 100 Mbps speeds to most buildings. Other campuses are limited to 9,600 bps connections, and not all locations can connect at that speed.

What Is Networking External to the Campus?

Networking external to the campus consists of the infrastructure used by a campus to reach beyond its traditional borders. The external network is composed of the digital and analog systems developed by each campus such as the Central Valley Microwave network, dial-in modem facilities, Instructional Television Fixed Services (ITFS), Internet, 4CNet, satellite uplink and downlink systems, as well as many others.

Why an External Infrastructure Is Necessary?

The external campus networking environment supports the ability of campuses to deliver instruction and support services to the community, as well as access resources external to the campus. As recent as two decades ago. The technology would have been described as telephony, batch-based and non-networked computing with some limited broadcast service.

Today, however, the robustness and ubiquitous of the technology has radically developed, thereby, permitting the definition of"community" to be expanded beyond the traditional service area boundaries of any campus, and could, in fact, now be anywhere in the world.

It is to be expected, therefore, that the delivery of instruction, as well as academic and administrative support services will become increasingly dependent upon the digital wide-area networks and its integration with existing analog audio/video technology.

The wide-area network also provides connection to the Internet which is a "network of networks" connecting educational, research and commercial institutions. The Internet will eventually develop into the National Research and Education Network (NRENY) the information super highway currently under discussion at the national level. Resources on the Internet include library and bibliographic databases and a wide variety of information and sources on thousands of topics. The Internet also supports electronic mail communications between and among faculty, students and staff, and thousands of computer bulletin boards which can be used to enhance classroom education.

Campus LAN Capacity Continues To Grow

The trend clearly is to faster campus local area networks (LANs) as they grow in both capacity and number of workstations connected. Virtually all the low-speed data PBX networking equipment of the mid-80s has been relegated to a minor role if not entirely replaced. Even the low-speed (i.e., 0.23 Mbps) Local Talk networks installed in the late 1980s are being upgraded to ethernet (10 Mbps) as quickly as campus budgets permit.

Some campuses have even replaced ethernet backbones with high-speed FDDI rings (100Mbps), while others are considering switched ethernet. However, a few campuses plan to skip FDDI technology in favor of very high-speed Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) LANs (155+Mbps) based on fiber to the desktop. Finally, campuses are installing two-way video codes which require large amounts of network bandwidth, ranging from 112Kbps to 1,536Kbps, currently at 384Kbps. Also, video Multi-point Control Units (MCUS) require additional bandwidth to conference three or more sites.

Objectives

1. Project must produce a local telecommunications plan developed in conjunction with the educational plan and facilities plan.
   
   
2. Project must conduct a college wide self assessment for information technology using a collaborative process involving the many constituents of the college community.
   
   
3. Project must demonstrate evidence that the "Baseline for Planning and Implementing an Internal-Campus Telecommunications Infrastructure Systems for the California Community Colleges" and its Appendices were used in the planning process.
   
   
4. Project must demonstrate that the "Telecommunications Infrastructure Planning" (TIP) technical standards document (developed by the California State University in February 1993 and revised in March 1997) were used in the planning process.