Letter from the Director

Dear Colleagues:

Higher education throughout the world is undergoing a major transformation as individuals and their societies grapple with the fact that knowledge--more than land, labour, and capital--is the key to prosperity. The shift to a knowledge economy suggests, more than ever, the need for all of us to maintain and enhance our professional skills and competencies. As members of the community charged with laying the groundwork for the knowledge economy, those of us responsible for managing higher education's information technologies, services, and resources have a special obligation to maintain our skills at the highest level.

CAUDIT has joined with EDUCAUSE in helping the latter deliver its mission of enabling higher education's transformational changes in part by providing CAUDIT and EDUCAUSE members with opportunities for education and peer interaction. In particular, the CAUDIT-EDUCAUSE Institute endeavours to develop higher education's present and future leadership by supporting a curriculum that balances the need for technical, managerial, and leadership skills and one that enhances our members' knowledge of trends in higher education.

The EDUCAUSE Institute, on which the CAUDIT-EDUCAUSE Institute is based, is the keystone of the association's educational offerings in the areas of management and leadership development. Its focus is unique--providing those who plan for, use, and manage campus information technology and resources with the skills and knowledge necessary to manage those resources effectively. The Institute program is designed for intensive interactions among students and between students and a faculty that has been selected for their knowledge, talent, experience, and enthusiasm about our profession.

As the Institute program depends on high-quality interactions among colleagues, enrolments and class size are held to a minimum - 40 is the target number. Time for reflection and renewal, the most scarce commodity on campus, is also an integral element of the Institute program.

If you are interested in your professional development, in your career, in becoming a more valuable contributor to your institution, in becoming a more effective business partner, and in remaining current in key areas of management theory and technique, specifically focused on higher education, please join us at the 2000 CAUDIT-EDUCAUSE Institute at the Stamford Grand, Glenelg, South Australia, from 6 to 10 August 2000.

Geoffrey Dengate, Co-Director, CAUDIT-EDUCAUSE Institute
Barbara Olde, Chair, CAUDIT