Campus Pipeline @ Valdosta State University

History

In June 1999 Valdosta State University's President approved the arrangement with the Campus Pipeline (CP) company for their product.  VSU was one of CP's first schools nation-wide and the only one in the University System of Georgia, even as of this date.  Many other University System of Georgia schools have expressed an interest, but none have gone ahead and accepted the product.

After the President's approval, Thomas Archibald, Assistant to the President for Technology,  Joe Newton,  a technology support person traveled to a CP orientation meeting in Salt Lake City in July 99.  Thereafter Mr. Newton installed the software on a Sun E450 server at VSU and manages the system on a day-by-day basis. (The Sun server is an E450 with dual processors, 450MHz, 4MB memory and 90 GB hard disk (10 x 9GB) Hard Drive.  It was purchased via State Contract for $45,000 and some memory has since been added.)

VSU had been planning on developing a 'portal' product in-house, so when the CP reps showed-up with this software which interfaces with their Banner Student Information System, it met their needs.  VSU looked at other portal products, but the Banner interface was the compelling reason to go with CP. The version of CP that VSU has is at no-cost under what CP calls their 'grant' model. This means that CP's corporate sponsors (Dell Computer, Amazon.com, and others) subsidize the product and their ads show-up on the CP Web screens. Otherwise the cost would have been around $300,000.

Implementation

Implementation Scenario - discusses installation in Dec.99, testing, and opening to campus Jan. 00, also provides links to white papers from CP 

Test Group Instructions - excellent presentation to first users chosen to test drive the system, also has link to online user survey (excellent idea!) 

System diagram - graphic representation of equipment connections (technical info) 

Additional Information

White Papers - Access to white papers on Benefits of CP and Faculty Concerns

Valdosta State University - campus home page

Campus Pipeline - vendor site, allows access to fictional "Wasatch College"  (in Utah our university is at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains)

Schools with Campus Pipeline Implementations - vendor provided information.  Also includes information about the Campus Pipeline Web Platform and about the company.

Our thanks for this information go to -

Louis Levy, Vice President, Academic Affairs
Thomas Archibald, Assistant to the President for Technology