Author Description

This issue delves into the new world of facilities information. Theauthors show how to gather data and how state and other agenciesuse it. They discuss the necessity of accurate, accessibleinformation for determining and apportioning indirect costs. Theylook at its use for student recruitment and retention, and theydemonstrate how it can even be used to correlate various classroomattributes with student learning success. With twenty-first-centurytechnology, facilities data is useful far beyond traditionalbusiness affairs operations--it has become integral toinstitutional planning and operation. Facilities information, once a world of precious drawings andlaborious calculations, has been transformed by the power ofinformation technology. Blueprints securely locked in cabinets havegiven way to online systems based on geospatial informaiton systems(GIS). The result is nimble systems adaptable to purposed acrossadministrations, applications that integrate divisions--business,institutional research, student affairs--with sharedinformation.This is the 135th issue of the Jossey Bass quarterly reportseries New Directions for Institutional Research.