Our purpose, broader and more dynamic, is to accommodate the changing needs of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and campus visitors by providing products and services. Whether they be information products, insignia merchandise, or candy bars, our role on campus should be driven by our customers' needs. Their needs are changing . The faculty are younger, more diverse, under increasing pressure, and more computer literate. College administrators are under increasing fiscal pressure, and notably more business oriented.
Alumni increasingly expect better stewardship from their alma maters as a condition for giving.
All these groups are more demanding. In effect, the mandate to do more with less pervades both the teaching and support functions on nearly every campus in America, and the future promises much more of the same. The teaching materials are changing . It has been said that every cloud has a silver lining. In this instance, the silver lining is unmistakably the application of new information technologies to the teaching, research, and support functions integral to academe.