For an institution priding itself on its roots in computer science, Case Western was in the technological Dark Ages. So Pytte, with the help of an old friend and colleague, Raymond Neff, went on a fiber-optics bender. The strategy, he explains, was to put the students on the Net first, and later have them teach the faculty how to use it. The plan worked. Today, nearly all of the university's 9,900 students and 2,000 faculty members are actively online.
Freshmen complain about dining services on campus discussion boards.
And fraternities and sororities continue to build upon Web pages they've constructed for local chapters. This past year, Case Western also garnered big points for its ongoing effort to integrate wired services into campus classes and classrooms. The music school, funded by several national grants, launched a program to help artists transfer digitized scores over the Web. And nursing students participated in a virtual classroom with colleagues in Santiago, Chile. Today, technology has permeated the entire Case Western campus.