Page 14 - College Planning & Management, March 2019

SMART CAMPUSES
• Network computing technology has made campus life much easier for today’s students, such as location-based systems to find lost textbooks and other personal items; using a digital device to pay for meals at a self-service cafeteria; or finding the time, location, and cost of various student activities.
• Arizona State University’s football stadium has installed sensors and cameras to improve operating efficiency and entertainment value for fans crowding into the stadium, which
is undergoing a $300-million-plus renovation. The technology now allows the university to gather information that measures water usage, finds restrooms in need of plumbing repairs, monitors the rate of concession sales to get a better gauge on demand for food and beverages, and even assesses noise levels to determine the loudest fans in cheering contests.
The University of Texas at Austin
• The University of Texas at Austin runs the largest microgrid in the country, pro- viding all of the electricity, cooling, and heat for the school’s 20,000,000-square- foot campus with 150 buildings. The university has expanded the facility over the years to accommodate growing energy needs.
• The use of WiFi and IoT technologies
has made great strides in providing greater campus security and safety in recent years. Networked video cameras, digitalized LED lighting systems, digital identification card readers, geofencing, and other technologies are being employed on many academic campuses.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Colleges and universities are jumping
on the autonomous vehicle bandwagon
in order to reduce traffic congestion, increase road safety for drivers and pedestrians, and lower carbon emissions from gas-powered vehicles. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plans call for the installation of sensors on traffic lights on a designated road to create an autonomous vehicle testing zone. The University of Michigan also has built a 32- acre testing site for self-driving vehicles.
MORE CAMPUSES
ARE USING GEOFENCING
TO ENGAGE, PROTECT STUDENTS
As more colleges and uni- versities adopt the smart campus concept, geofencing has become one of the more popular technolo- gies used among institutions.
Geofencing is the practice of using global positioning systems and radio frequency identification technology to create a specific virtual geographical area, allowing software to set off a response on mobile devices when entering or exiting an area.
Both large and small institu- tions are increasingly embracing this location-based technology as a means of boosting student enroll- ment, promoting campus events, increasing safety and security,
and locating students’ misplaced or stolen smartphones and other digital devices.
Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico
REBUILDING AND REBRANDING A SMART CAMPUS
College instructors pacing back and forth while speaking to students seated in big lecture halls—the “sage on a stage”—is becoming a thing of the past. Virtual labs, digital ports, remote learning, and other technological advances are making it easier for students to learn beyond the traditional classroom environment, while giving their in- structors new and better teaching tools and methods, as well as greater reach outside a single classroom.
Tecnologico de Monterrey (Tec) in Mexico serves as a classic example of how technolo- gy is taking higher-education institutions into the digital age and changing the pedagogical landscape.
The modernization plans of Latin America’s largest university resulted from a decision to rebuild the University’s Mexico City campus
in the aftermath of a major earthquake that struck the city in 2017. The powerful earth- quake killed thousands and destroyed dozens of buildings in the city, including virtually all of the buildings on the Tec campus.
Rather than simply replace the destroyed school buildings with similar structures, an
14 WEBCPM.COM / MARCH 2019