Bentley College
A Curriculum with Technology at the Core
"We needed a high-bandwidth
infrastructure to support our efforts; that’s why our
partnership with Enterasys was so important." — Joseph
Morone President, Bentley College |
Located on a sprawling 143- acre campus in Waltham, Massachusetts,
Bentley College is committed to providing students with the most
advanced business education possible. At Bentley, more than 4,200
undergraduate, 1,500 graduate, and 2,500 executive and professional
education students learn in an environment where information
technology is integrated within a broad business, arts and sciences
curriculum—empowering students with the knowledge, interpersonal
skills and experience for careers in a global economy.
Undergraduate students at Bentley can pursue Bachelor of Science
degrees in all major business disciplines and five Bachelor of Arts
programs. At the graduate level, this year Bentley introduced a new
and innovative Information Age Master of Business Administration
program that complements its Master of Science and Graduate
Certificate programs, preparing students for an information-rich and
technology- driven workplace. The Center for Executive and
Professional Education provides an additional avenue for skill
building and career development in areas that include information
design, technical communication, Internet systems management and
information age marketing.
The Challenge
Incorporating IT into Infrastructure and Instruction
Bentley College needed to upgrade their campus network to keep pace
with evolving technology. Their networking challenge was twofold. At a
strategic level, the college wanted to ensure that its graduates could
successfully integrate business processes and decisions with advances
in information technology and trends.
"Every aspect of the economy has been transformed by the
information age," says Joseph Morone, president of Bentley
College. "The result is an overwhelming and largely unmet market
need for technology- savvy business professionals." With this
prerequisite in mind, Bentley sought to incorporate information
technology into every level of their curriculum, so a state-of-the-
art network was essential.
At a tactical level, the college sought to bring network access to
each student living in its residence halls. "Our
'port-per-pillow' project required that we rewire our dormitories to
include enhanced Cat-5 cable to provide a network connection for each
student," explains Alan Cekanavich, director of systems and
networks at Bentley. "This project was an integral part of our
'Student Notebook' requirement which has been in place at Bentley for
14 years."
"We needed a high-bandwidth infrastructure to support our
efforts," Morone adds, "That’s why our partnership with
Enterasys was so important."
The Solution
An Enterasys Network Brings IT Directly to Students
Enterasys’ networking solutions provide a powerful campus-wide
communications infrastructure using both wired and wireless
technologies.
The solution centers on Enterasys’ ATM SmartSwitches for the
network backbone, and 100 Mbps access for every student living in
on-campus residence halls. Bentley also plans to pilot Enterasys’
RoamAbout wireless solutions, allowing faculty and staff to travel
anywhere on campus and retain high-speed network connectivity through
laptop computers.
"We looked to Enterasys as
our strategic networking supplier because of their service and
support, and the reliability, scalability and manageability of
Enterasys solutions." |
Network implementation was completed in two major phases, with the
physical wiring complete in the first year and the actual installation
of networking hardware completed in just over one month with the help
of Enterasys’ support services. Bentley installed 3,700 switched
10/100 Ethernet ports in its dormitories and upgraded their existing
ATM backbone while trying to push ATM to the edge.
Since the college needed plenty of bandwidth to support
applications like streaming audio/ video, interactive learning, and
other network-intensive applications, Bentley upgraded their ATM fiber
backbone to dual OC-12 655 Mbps links connecting three SmartSwitch
6500 ATM switches to SmartSwitch 6000s via OC-3 155 Mbps uplinks.
An extension of Enterasys’ award-winning SmartSwitch 6000, the
SmartSwitch 6500 is designed with high-port capacity, standards-based
routing and superior traffic and congestion management to meet the
needs of these demanding backbone applications.
In addition, a SmartSwitch Router 8000 provides high-density,
wire-speed switching and routing between campus VLANs, with two
SmartSwitch 2500s providing LANE services to the switches.
The college also upgraded the upper campus administrative and
academic building to switched 10/100. "We expect to add two more
core ATM switches with 1,700 ports in the new Smith Academic
Technology Center and then wire additional 'port-per-seat'
classrooms," Cekanavich says.
"Bentley has been a Enterasys customer for more than ten
years," explains Cekanavich. "We looked to Enterasys as our
strategic networking supplier because of their service and support,
and the reliability, scalability and manageability of Enterasys
solutions. We appreciate the ease of adding new features with firmware
upgrades." In addition, Cekanavich sites Enterasys’ migration
path to virtual networks and directory-enabled networking as an
important consideration.
Today, Enterasys’ solutions offer a network infrastructure that
enables Bentley to use advanced applications such as SAP R/3 and
web-based distance learning, bringing the benefits of
"real-world" technology into its classrooms. Hands-on
resources include The Hughey Center for Financial Services, which is a
multimillion-dollar financial trading room that puts the power of
technology and real-time data into the hands of students and faculty;
and the Marketing Technologies Showcase, a "Best Practices"
center which features a broad range of high-end applications,
technologies and activities used in marketing.
Technology in Action
Bentley’s Information Age MBA
Technology-based learning is a critical component of Bentley’s
Information Age MBA, a new program that tightly integrates information
technology and business education.
"Information technology is changing the way businesses operate
both nationally and in global markets," says Traci Logan,
Bentley’s vice president for information technology. "The focus
of the Information Age MBA is to recognize this transformation and
educate students who can successfully integrate strategic business
processes and decisions with advances in information technology and
trends."
Bentley College President Morone explains that the Information Age
MBA is a logical extension of the changes driving business today.
"Core business practices—finance, operations, marketing,
product development and more—are impacted dramatically by the
prevalence of technology and the data that technology produces,"
Morone says. "Teaching IT requires changing the business
curricula in ways that are more fundamental than simply adding a few
specialized courses on technology or building an IT infrastructure.
Technology must become a common thread throughout the program,
integrated into the curriculum and the instruction."
Bentle’'s Information Age MBA expands the curriculum to include
course work in Information Technology for Competitive Advantage, Data
Collection, Analysis and Management, Team Effectiveness and Leadership
Effectiveness while streamlining work in more traditional disciplines
like Accounting, Finance and Marketing. Logan uses SAP to give an
example of the philosophy behind Bentley’s Information Age MBA.
"Bentley has an agreement with SAP America to use their
enterprise resource planning software as an integral teaching
tool," Logan explains. "R/3 software is used within the
Information Age MBA program to teach economics, accounting, finance,
marketing and operations as an integrated core rather than as
disparate disciplines."
"Ultimately, our graduates will have a superior understanding
of business technology, but, most importantly, they’ll know how to
apply it," Morone concludes.
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