Strategic Plan
2015/2016
NJEDge.Net Board of Trustees
OFFICERS
Chair: Sr. Rosemary E. Jeffries
Vice Chair: Steven Rose
Treasurer: Joel Bloom
Secretary: Neal Sturm
NJEDge.Net President & CEO: George Laskaris
PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
Joel Bloom, President, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Mira Lalovic-Hand, Vice President & CIO of Information Resources & Technology, Rowan University
Donald Smith, Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, Rutgers University
David Ullman, Associate Provost for Information Technology, CIO, New Jersey Institute of Technology
STATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Edward Chapel, Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, Montclair State University
Susan Henderson, President, New Jersey City University
Harvey Kesselman, Provost and Executive Vice President, Richard Stockton College of NJ
James McCarthy, Associate Provost for Computing and Communications, Richard Stockton College of NJ
Kathleen Waldron, President, William Paterson University of New Jersey
INDEPENDENT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Sr. Rosemary Jeffries, President, Georgian Court University
Carol Kondrach, Associate Vice President, Rider University
Neal Sturm, Vice President and CIO, Fairleigh Dickinson University
COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Steven Rose, President, Passaic County Community College
Jack Farrell, Senior Professor, Union County College
Maris Lown, Vice President Academic Affairs, Union County College
Maureen Murphy, President, Brookdale Community College
PROPRIETARY COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES
Leonard DeBotton, CIO and Vice President, Berkeley College
MEMBER AT LARGE
Laurence Cocco, Director, Office of Educational Technology, Department of Education
Taras Pavlovsky, Chair, VALE Executive Committee / Dean of the Library, The College of New Jersey
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Strategic Plan
Approved by the Board of Trustees on October 30th, 2014
Tables of Contents:
NJEDge.Net Board of Trustees...............................................................3
Preamble...................................................................................................5
Mission.......................................................................................................6
Vision ........................................................................................................ 6
Context and External Conditions..........................................................7
Guiding Principles....................................................................................8
Collaboration ................................................................................8
Academic Technology Partnership............................................9
Network Technology ...................................................................9
Assessment and Measurement.............................................................9
Strategic Goals and Initiatives.............................................................10
I. Ensure technical excellence................................................10
II. Develop an academic technology partnership.................11
III. Provide professional development opportunities...........11
IV. Foster collaboration and community building .................12
V. Be entrepreneurial..................................................................12
VI. Encourage participation of affiliate partners....................13
Members...................................................................................................14
Staff...........................................................................................................15
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Preamble
NJEDge.Net is a non-profit consortium created to support
New Jersey’s institutions of higher education in their pursuit
of excellence in teaching, learning and research. NJEDge.
Net was established in 2000 and, by 2003, had built a stateof-the-art technology network that is specifically configured
with standards-based digital education infrastructure. NJEDge
achieves economies of scale for members in providing core
connectivity services, and it is augmented with a portfolio of
high demand and value-added services that aligns with the
strategic and operational priorities of the connected membership. What truly differentiates NJEDge.Net from network
service providers is that, since its inception, the physical
network has been the enabling infrastructure to create and
foster a strong professional network through community
building between and among college and university
members, and through its affinity groups’ programs and
professional development events.
In 2011, NJEDge forged its first strategic plan around
institutional needs beyond core connectivity. This 2015/2016 strategic plan takes into account the
enormous growth the corporation experienced in recent years. It is a plan based on integrated
input from the Board of Trustees, institutional member representatives (chief academic officers, chief
information officers, chief librarians, faculty), and the NJEDge senior staff. It charts the future vision,
mission, and goals of the organization in the context of rapid growth for NJEDge and a significantly
changed technology landscape.
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Mission
The mission of NJEDge.Net is to provide a high
performance network that is second to none, as well
as collaborative resources and networked information
services to its members and subscribing partners in
support of education, research, outreach and public
service. In providing a statewide research and
education network, NJEDge.Net establishes
technology standards, achieves economies of
scale and builds community by supporting
collaboration among its members.
Vision
NJEDge’s vision is to be the leader in core networking
technology with a portfolio of services for research,
academic, and library information resources; the first
choice for the New Jersey higher education community
when seeking support in meeting the challenges and
opportunities of technology innovations; and facilitator
for institutional adoption of emerging and promising
technologies.
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Context & External Conditions
Education institutions are being asked to
demonstrate their value in calculable return on
investment and other non-traditional metrics.
Accordingly, there has been a redoubling of
efforts to provide this type of empirical evidence,
as well as overall institutional effectiveness
through graduation rates and other typical
student success measures. Recently, emerging
technologies such as social media, mobile and
cloud computing, big data and learning analytics have been hailed as creating new ways to
engage with the community and more precisely
evaluate outcomes. These megatrends, which
are both disrupting and transforming education
institutions, must be included in strategic
planning.
In this context, NJEDge recognizes the need for
new forms of leadership in these times of
significant change. Meeting the community’s
emerging demands requires NJEDge to stay
abreast of these technology trends. Working
collaboratively with members’ leadership — chief
academic officers, chief information officers,
librarians, faculty and professional IT staff —
NJEDge will help forge useful innovations and a
stronger community.
More competition
The number of college bound high school
graduates continues to shrink. Meanwhile,
competition for non-traditional learners by
means of technology-enabled delivery systems is
getting more intense. Likewise, the competition
for talented faculty, as well as researchers and
the shrinking sources of funding for sponsored
research, have also intensified. Finally, colleges
and universities are competing on new
measures of institutional effectiveness and
learning outcomes, which are challenging the
community to develop analytics and the ability to
quickly act on this type of empirical evidence.
Approaches to teaching and
learning are changing
The higher education members focus on
academic excellence. The plethora of online
educational resources, paired with social and
collaborative learning processes are important
new modalities for accelerating progress with
learning and teaching. Education is always
student-centric and new technologies now allow
for personalized learning modes and
individualized educational paths. In addition,
methodologies enabled by mobile technologies
and social networking are playing a major new
role in student engagement and campus life.
Technology is a game changer in the
education environment
Consumerization of information technology,
where the end user is driving change, demands
agile and flexible responses. Faculty and
students bring their own devices and expect
them to be able to seamlessly integrate with all
academic and administrative systems. New
compliance requirements, such as requiring
services for online students to be equal to those
available on campus, pose new challenges for
course design and delivery of administrative
services.
The cost of higher education is escalating.
Across the board, constrained resources are
driving the need for more collaboration to
reduce costs and increase efficiencies. The
financial climate is challenging budgets, and
injecting uncertainty into institutional planning
efforts. Tuition increases cannot be the only
solution. Financial aid merely compounds the
situation and also influences how students think
about career paths and how they should
effectively prepare for the “new normal” in the
workplace. These challenges compel us to adopt
new models and understand how emerging
technologies can be deployed to mitigate these
spiraling costs.
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Guiding
Principles
The NJEDge guiding principles were created for the
corporation and its staff to guide the future strategy for
how NJEDge supports the membership. Collectively these
form a template for NJEDge to stay the course and assist,
separately and in tandem, the academic and technology
needs of faculty, administrators, and professional and IT
staff. The principles are organized in three groups:
collaboration, academic technology partnership and
network technology.
Collaboration
NJEDge operates a sustainable organizational model
that is driven by and in support of the New Jersey
higher education community. Collaboration is at the
heart of what NJEDge does to fulfill its mission of
building communities and sharing resources and
expertise.
Provide value for cost
NJEDge leverages the collective buying power of
the membership to achieve economies of scale
through statewide request for proposals (RFPs)
that result in favorable member buying contracts.
Through NJEDge’s participation in national
networks, the consortium has successfully
brokered services with other research and education networks across the country.
Ensure that collective know-how is used
NJEDge serves as the collective early warning
system for members on rapidly changing external
conditions. It analyzes the impact of those
changes on what members will experience, and
fosters opportunities to leverage resources and
expertise across institutions.
Deliver services collaboratively
NJEDge provides collaborative professional
development for staff and faculty at low cost. It
uses innovative approaches for dealing with
member challenges and develops and supports
affinity groups as needed, and provides the
platform to aggregate data across the
membership.
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Academic Technology Partnership
NJEDge will work with each member institution to support the academic and technical infrastructure
needs to ensure student success. Carrying out this mission requires a faculty and professional staff
ready and eager to embrace academic technology tools and integrate them to develop sound pedagogy. It also requires a partnership between academia and campus IT. NJEDge will establish a collaborative model with which its’ staff will work with both parties.
Respond to and anticipate member
priorities
NJEDge is current and future-focused in the
field of academic technology. The priorities of
the member institutions are NJEDge’s priorities.
Mobilize members to collaboratively
take on initiatives
NJEDge fosters active member-to-member
collaboration through shared knowledge
and professional development programs. By
building a connected community where all
members share in the benefits NJEDge is able
to ensure continued support for the consortium.
Understand and respect boundaries
NJEDge develops services, resources, purchasing agreements, professional development and programs that cut across the needs of the institutions it serves while respecting the boundaries between
what is within an institution’s purview and where NJEDge offers support.
Network
Technology
Provide a state of the art network infrastructure
NJEDge maintains a robust, leading edge
statewide network that serves as an on ramp to
national and international high speed networks
for its institutional members. The network
features interoperability with standards across
the membership. In addition, the NJEDge network
supports emerging big data initiatives; advanced
research capabilities and teaching analytics.
Assessment &
Measurement
To help guide tactical planning for 2015 and 2016,
measurement and assessment of the
implementation of these initiatives, the Board of
Trustees has formed a prioritization
committee that will work closely with the senior
staff of NJEDge.Net to prioritize the 2015-2016
strategic initiatives and develop metrics to
regularly assess and measure implementation
progress and provide recommendations and
adjustments when necessary due to resource
constraints or changing external conditions that
may call for the re-prioritization of specific
initiatives.
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Strategic Goals &
Initiatives
The six strategic goals will direct NJEDge in developing and fostering excellence
in support of its members. Each goal is tied to specific initiatives with
measureable outcomes against which the organization can monitor and
measure its performance.
1
I. Ensure technical excellence for research
and advanced networking and innovation
for NJEDge and member organizations
NJEDge will be the first choice for institutional
members to turn to when addressing technological challenges. The organization will provide leadership, guidance, and advice to members regarding the potential impact and benefit of emerging
technologies. Community cloud applications and
services will leverage its reliable, statewide network. NJEDge will facilitate member collaboration
on research and development of new technology
solutions that can advance the missions of its
members.
2015 Strategic Initiatives
• Curate the most promising advanced
innovation initiatives being developed with
Internet2 as related to big science research, and
provide seminars and professional development
opportunities for the New Jersey research
community.
• Expand NJVID’s capabilities to be more of an
institutional repository.
• Expand NJVID’s integration with lecture capture
and other learning tools in support of flipped
classrooms and other emerging learning models.
• Develop cost-effective disaster recovery and
business continuity solutions that meet or
exceed members’ recovery time and recovery
point objectives.
• Expand community cloud Infrastructure-as-aService (IaaS) offerings and support in response
to members’ developing needs and specific
requests.
2016 Strategic Initiatives
• Convene and coordinate the activities of a
membership-wide research & development unit
to track technological developments that pose
opportunities or challenges for the higher
education community. The R & D team should
consist of members from all sectors of New
Jersey higher education.
• Move “up the stack” to provide cost-effective
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-aService (SaaS), and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)
community cloud offerings.
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Strategic Goals & Initiatives
2
Continued
II. Develop an academic technology
partnership that improves teaching,
learning, student success, research and
public service
NJEDge will provide professional development
programs that engage faculty and staff to better
understand how technology improves teaching
in support of retention and student success.
Current and emerging pedagogy and methods
for advancing teaching, learning, research and
public service will be shared and academic
technology tools will be aggregated and made
available in a sandbox environment to members.
2015 Strategic Initiatives
• Pilot collaborative campus-based models
among the chief information officers, chief
academic officers and chief librarians to
demonstrate that academic technology
partnership can improve instructional
effectiveness.
• Train IT staff to better understand faculty
requests for assistance in a way that improves
teaching and learning while aggregating and
leveraging technology solutions supportable by
campus IT.
2016 Strategic Initiatives
• Foster and facilitate faculty technology
integration to become part of the faculty
development process.
• Improve relationships between campus IT and
centers for teaching and learning by creating
meta-data standards for student success
information derived from administrative and
learning management systems in order to
facilitate comparative learning analytics and
refinement of personalized learning solutions.
• Work with community colleges to perform a
needs analysis and initial requirements for building
a statewide adjunct faculty availability database.
3
III. Provide professional development
opportunities for technical, academic and
administrative roles
NJEDge will provide a diverse array of
professional development programs for
technology and academic audiences. These will
facilitate professional, collegial and peer
discussion forums, as well as communicate and
promote NJEDge activities and programs to the
executives, professional administrators and
faculty of member institutions. Providing on-site
training regarding emerging technologies will be
the key to facilitating outcomes for this goal.
2015 Strategic Initiatives
• Design and deliver a comprehensive professional development program of webinars, workshops and white papers that are delivered by
members to members.
• Develop a program specifically designed to
engage presidents and provosts on the manner
in which the NJEDge infrastructure and services
can serve their institutions’ missions.
2016 Strategic Initiatives
• Create or acquire discipline-specific
professional development programs for faculty.
• Share best practices for adaptive learning
technologies.
• Foster closer relationships between higher
education and K-12 communities by creating
more sessions at the NJEDge Annual Conference
of interest to K-12s and participate in statewide
and regional meetings of K-12 technology leaders.
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Strategic Goals & Initiatives
4
Continued
IV. Foster collaboration and community
building across the membership
NJEDge must develop opportunities to promote
collaborations that further members’ academic
and administrative goals. Therefore, NJEDge will
continue to offer member engagement activities
to build community between the members, such
as the Annual Conference, Faculty Showcase,
Summer Luncheon, and User Services Symposium. These events, as well as smaller meetings
and online events, will provide members with
networking opportunities, especially when convened and coordinated by the EDge.Networks
(member affinity groups). NJEDge will promote
best practice presentations across the membership. A strong relationship between the Board
of Trustees, the New Jersey CIO Forum, the chief
academic officers and Virtual Academic Library
Environment of New Jersey (VALE) will collaboratively develop future projects and initiatives.
• Develop a knowledge base that enables
leveraging of skills and expertise including
sharing of staff, consultants and resources to
support a collaborative program of staff
augmentation.
5
• Create an Administrative Services EDge.Network.
V. Be entrepreneurial in the sustainable
development of new opportunitites
NJEDge will develop sustainable revenue sources
resulting in lower cost to the members through
economies of scale and greater return on
investment.
2015 Strategic Initiatives
• Pursue opportunities within the education
community to strategically increase subscribing
partners in K-12, government, non-profit
organizations.
2015 Strategic Initiatives
• Participate in the NJ Big Data Alliance and
create a Big Data/Big Science EDge.Network.
• Increase procurement of software licensing
and cloud services based on NJEDge.Net’s
advantageous consortium terms and pricing.
• Create a Security EDge.Network.
• Create opportunities for innovation related to
emerging technologies.
• Facilitate formal academic and administrative
technology peer review for members to assist
institutions in such areas as help desk services,
administrative computing, disaster recovery,
network vulnerability and Middle States
technology evaluations.
2016 Strategic Initiatives
• Provide a platform for continuous sharing of
technical resources and online educational
resources among members through
collaboration.
• Facilitate cost-effective outsourcing
opportunities with third party vendors.
2016 Strategic Initiatives
• Advance NJEDge as a lead agency for statewide
bidding and consortium purchasing.
• Grow the base of subscribing partners in order
to share costs across a larger group.
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Strategic Goals & Initiatives
6
Continued
VI. Encourage active participation
and support of affiliate partners
The affiliate program was revamped
in 2014 in order to accommodate the
growing number of companies
wanting to join the NJEDge.Net community. The updated structure enables
NJEDge Affiliates to choose a partnership level that matches their company’s
needs and budget. Companies can now
participate at Bronze, Silver, Gold, or
Platinum sponsorship.
2015 Strategic Initiatives
• Increase the number of academic
technology affiliate companies with an
educational focus.
• Facilitate more webinars and
professional development events by
choosing timely and relevant topics
responsive to members’ needs.
2016 Strategic Initiatives
• Increase the number of NJEDge events
receiving significant support from
affiliate participation (e.g., Virtualization
Day, User Services Symposium,
Simulation & Gamification in Education
Workshop, and Advanced Networking
Security Workshop).
• Increase revenue from affiliate dues by
50%.
• Include more affiliates that have
solutions for and experience with K-12
education.
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NJEDge.Net Members
HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION
Atlantic Cape Community College
Bergen Community College
Berkeley College
Bloomfield College
Brookdale Community College
Burlington County College
Caldwell College
Camden County College
The College of New Jersey
College of Saint Elizabeth
County College of Morris
Cumberland County College
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Georgian Court University
Hudson County Community College
Institute for Advanced Study
Kean University
Mercer County Community College
Middlesex County College
Monmouth University
Montclair State University
New Jersey City University
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Ocean County College
Passaic County Community College
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Raritan Valley Community College
The Richard Stockton College of NJ
Rider University
Rowan University
Rutgers University
Stevens Institute of Technology
Sussex County Community College
Thomas Edison State College
Union County College
Warren County Community College
William Paterson University
Associate Members:
Drew University
Essex County College
Felician College
Gloucester County College
Princeton University
Salem Community College
Seton Hall University
St Peter’s College
University Hosptital
K-12 INSTITUTION
Fairfield Board of Education
Madison Public Library
Montclair Board Of Education
Newark Public Schools
Passaic County Technical Institute
Saint Benedict’s Preparatory School
The Pingry School
Toms River Public Schools
Associate Members:
Bayonne Board Of Education
Bloomfield Board of Education
Bound Brook School District
Bridgewater Raritan Board Of Education
Camden Board of Education
Carlstadt-East Rutherford Board of Education
Colts Neck Township Schools
East Orange Board Of Education
East Windsor School District
Edison Township Public Schools
Egg Harbor Township Board Of Education
Hazlet Township Public Schools
High Point Regional HS Board of Education
Hillsborough Township School District
Jersey City Board of Education
Jersey City Public Schools
Keansburg Board Of Education
Leonia Board Of Education
Livingston Public Schools Board of Education
Madison Board of Education
Millville Board Of Education
Morris Hills Regional School District
Mount Olive Board Of Education
New Brunswick School District
New Jersey School Board Association
North Arlington School District
North Warren Regional School District
Parsippany Troy Hills Board of Education
Perth Amboy Public Schools
Readington Board Of Education
Red Bank Middle School
Ridgewood Board Of Education
Sayreville School District
Somerset Public Schools
Somerville Board Of Education
South Plainfield Public Schools Board of Ed.
Team Academy Charter School
Union City Board Of Education
Watchung Hills Regional H.S.
Woodland Park Board Of Education
GOVERNMENT
County of Burlington
County of Salem
County of Sussex
City of Millville
State of New Jersey (all agencies)
Out of State Higher Education
Associate Members of NJVID:
Aquinas College
Cleary College
George Mason University
Lawrence Theological
Madonna University
Associate Library Subscribed
Members:
VALE (Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey)
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NJEDge.Net Staff
George G. Laskaris
President and CEO
Vineet Phillips
Application Developer
Brian Gately
Deputy Executive Director
Blake Prupis
Production Coordinator/Verizon FIOS Project
Sheri Prupis
Vice President for Academic and Community
Initiatives
Andre Sharrief
Administrative Assistant
Sujay Daniel
Network & Information Systems Architect
Project Director, NJVID
Bruce Tyrrell
Program Manager
James Stankiewicz
Director, Internet Engineering
Joe Rearden
Business Planning Manager
Eric Kulmala
Video Engineer
Adam Adamou
Systems Administrator
Abhishek Hegde
Systems Analyst
Adrian Levins
Secretarial Assistant
Bridget Trapanese
Program Associate
Aimée Su
Marketing Strategist
Ann Westra
Support Specialist
Corrine Statia
Events Planner
Jennifer Geretz
Corporate Services Coordinator
Onaje Rabb
Production Assistant/Verizon FIOS Project
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http://www.NJEDge.Net
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http://www.njvid.net
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NJEDge.Net
218 Central Avenue, Suite 3902
Newark, NJ 07102
Phone: (973) 596-5490
Fax: (973) 596-5499
Email: njedge@njedge.net