Article on Strategic Technology Planning Earns Daniel Updegrove National "Contribution of the Year" Award

An article by Daniel A. Updegrove, Yale University’s Director of Information Technology Services, has won the 1998 CAUSE/EFFECT Contribution of the Year Award. The article, titled “Is Strategic Planning for Technology an Oxymoron?,” appeared in the Winter 1997-98 issue of the journal, which is published by EDUCAUSE, an association for advancing the use of technology in higher education.

Written in collaboration with Martin D. Ringle of Reed College, the article focuses on the importance of strategic information technology planning as well as the reasons why many planning efforts fail. In addition to identifying problems, the article offers sound, practical advice for enhancing planning efforts on campus.

The award, which was designed to encourage managers of higher education information resources to share their knowledge, recognizes the outstanding article contributed to the journal during the preceding editorial year. Updegrove and Ringle will receive the award Dec. 11 at the EDUCAUSE annual conference in Seattle before nearly 3,500 CAUSE ‘98 conferees.

The winners, who were selected by the EDUCAUSE editorial committee, requested that the $1,000 award stipend be divided between Yale University’s scholarship program and Reed University’s Technology Innovation Fund. The text of the winning article is accessible on the Web at http://www.educause.edu/awards/ce/ce-award.html. The CAUSE/EFFECT Contribution of the Year Award has been sponsored since 1982 by SCT, an educational products company in Malvern, Penn.

EDUCAUSE was formed in July by the consolidation of two prominent higher education associations, CAUSE and Educom. Its mission is to promote change in higher education through the use of information technologies in teaching, research and management. The association currently serves more than 1,400 member campuses from offices in Boulder, Colo., and Washington, D.C.