>> this week on the communicators, a discussion about higher education's role in the training of information technology professionals. our guest is alan martin, president of george mason

university. >> host: the president of george mason university of virginia is our guest on the communicators. and jill toro is here to participate in the questioning. gm used consistently described as one of the most wired universities and america. practically, what does that mean? >> guest: it has been involved in information technology. this begins by supporting the information technology community, also making sure we have plenty of technology on campus to support our students, faculty and staff. we take information technology very seriously. it probably doesn't hurt that i, as the president, and a computer scientist. we view these technologies for our students and faculty, like the council of old, you have got to have them, it is fascinating when they work, everyone takes them for granted.

when something goes wrong everybody notices because everyone has become so dependent on information technology for research, learning, communicating, doing the business at the university. >> host: what kind of investment does george mason makes in hardware and computers? >> guest: at the senior level of the university we make sure there is a commitment to information technology. i have a chief confirmation officers who reports directly to me. she sits in on all the major meetings, curriculum and other matters at the university so we send a message, information technology is important in various ways. this leads to making sure we have the right network on campus, that we interface with the right networks off-campus, that we are constantly keeping our faculty and our students up to date with the proper devices. it is a constant battle because

there is never enough but whatever technology we have, there is a subset of the faculty and staff who say there's not enough. you never catch up. we do things in so many ways as a result of information technology. i think universities in the future are going to be segregated into two groups, those who got it and those who don't, those who figured out how to use technology across the board. >> guest: i want to jump in. i once was told that higher ed, this is a big compliment to higher education, is where innovation in terms of information technology starts, and if they really discover that this has lots of potential in many different markets, they may move on to federal government, and potentially state and local and from what i was told, k through 12. what is the terms of i read in terms of not only using technology that taking research, science, and so forth, and innovating to develop new uses

for technology that can contribute to this? >> guest: if you look across to education to george mason, you see innovative activity going on with respect to information, technology across the board. you see it, information technology and engineering, the college of science, in the school of public policy, you also see it in the geography department and many others. i could spend a long time listing places, innovation in terms of developing technology and using technology is part of what we do. in the early days of computing, almost all of the innovation in terms of new technology came out of university and over the years it became something where some came out of the university and some came out of the corporate world, large technology companies or small technology companies. the usage, the innovation and usage came out of what we did in universities. it is the faculty members, it is

a constant issue to deal with, you want to give good technology to bright faculty, that is how one them to do it. they will figure out the innovation on their own. we have to be careful that we don't put too much control on them. >> guest: reworking hand on hand on these markets more than ever? >> guest: more than ever. university business is research, in this case, research and partnership, a partnership with the corporate sector and partnership with government, in technology, that is the driver but it is ubiquitous, it is part of everything, no longer -- i go back to the days when technology was separate from things. now is just embedded in everything, everything. >> host: just to follow up, dr. merten, something you said at the beginning, one of the goals of gm you is to support the high-tech business in northern virginia, which is a high-tech

corridor. how do you do that? >> guest: the reason, is there a george mason university, george mason university is a very young university, only 37-year-old. in some sense, george mason university grew up with the high-tech business of northern virginia, both in terms of providing graduates and in terms of doing research and doing other kinds of activities at the high-tech companies. we are partner in so many ways with technology companies. the technology boom of northern virginia and george mason university are in parallel. they happened at the same time and we continually need to do that. we just open the new engineering building, school of information technology and engineering is now into a new building, it has a unique characteristic. in the building, there are 20,000 square feet of corporate lease space. so the companies are not going

to be leasing space at research park somewhere near george mason. they are leasing corporate lease based in george mason engineering building. >> host: with technology changing so quickly, even a year ago the technology is old anymore. how do you keep up? >> with pain. in a sense, you have some of the faculty, some of your programs are going to have to keep up with the newest technology, they have to be on the leading edge, not just the cutting edge, but the leading edge. there are a lot of parts of the university that can use technology that may be is old, two or three years old. we are always asking ourselves, who needs the cutting edge, who needs stuff that is guaranteed to work, with the nature of george mason, our students come at all ages from anywhere around the country or around the world. the students, sometimes find

they are bringing innovation. you bring someone new, you bring a new faculty member, you have to figure out how to support them and if you don't, you can't keep them. when you look at the best students and the best faculty, they come to universities that support them with the right technology. >> guest: you brought up international students. this is an older study, a couple years old. i remember reading that 60% of each student in the computer sciences were international students. is there a need because i'm sure we will touch on this, the it work force is declining. we need people graduating with science and technology. is there any fear offering opportunities for those students to stay, whether it be job opportunities or even citizenship. to supplement our work force? >> that is a controversial

opinion on that. one of my opinions, i am joined by bill gates because he said the same thing. i think that when someone, a foreign student gets a degree in science or technology or engineering from the american higher education institution, when they come across the platform and i hand them at the doctoral level a degree, there should be someone farther on down who has green card applications and a stapler, staples' the green card application to their diploma. we should take advantage of the fact that they are educated sometimes all the way to the undergraduate program. they come to the united states. right now our policies say you have got to go home. >> guest: take the training with you. >> guest: we need a more aggressive approach to keeping the best and brightest who come

to the united states to get higher education degrees and science technology. at the same time, we have to do a better job investing in our colleges and universities to -- and beyond, to produce more scientists, technologists, engineers. >> host: are we not in united states doing a good job at the k through 12 level in training, so many of the students are international? >> guest: i am not an expert on k through 12 the we are not doing a good job from what i can see in terms of making sure we expose people to these technologies and encourage them to get into careers in the sciences and beyond. we need to do a much better job on that and we need to provide the funds. go back to the sputnik age, when sputnik was floating around, we realized we had to invest in the sciences. we don't have sputnik today, we

have a little bit of sputniks all over the place the we haven't had a wake-up call. listen to some members of congress, one of my favorite people is frank, he reminds all of us that we have to invest in science and technology the way we did decades ago but we don't do it right now. we are somehow afraid to do it. we are in trouble. >> host: does gm reached out to the lower grades? >> guest: we work the lot with the k-12 system, we work with a different public school systems. when i came to george mason 13 years ago, one of the first things i did was to go and meet with the superintendents of schools in all districts around george mason. i recall many of them wondering, they never met a university president, i was there to remind them, to make a statement that we need to have a strong

relationship with k-12 so we do. our faculty, the college education and human development, faculty working consistently with the k-12 system as much as we possibly can. >> guest: i will for some numbers out at you. microsoft cut 5,000 jobs. in march, ibm cut the same number, yahoo! laid off 5% of the work force, it goes on and on. how you convince students to study in this area, all markets are having a hard time, but when they look around and say i see stocks plummeting and i see jobs being cut, why would i want to going to information technology? >> guest: this is a cyclical phenomenon. there are going to be ups and downs in any career area. now is the time to get more involved, technology is not going to go away. the information technology, it is a question of convincing people that it is worth

investing. the kind of jobs may change. more and more, i think the jobs of the future, the information technology, are those that combine high tech and high touch. we tell students not only do you need to get involved in the technology areas that you need to understand more about the user of technology. if you do that you would get jobs. in our case, in george mason's case, a lot of our technology students are already working. they are embedded in these technology companies, they are embedded in these users of technology. when they graduate they already got a job. >> guest: there's an explosion of the obama administration, what they call social networking, collaborative software, other big areas, cybersecurity, health it, something to keep students focusing on a given area, or

would you say it is smart to say more general? >> guest: you mentioned two technology areas we tell students, a lot can happen, cybersecurity and health information technology. these are two areas we put a lot of effort in. we were way out ahead on the cybersecurity areas in terms of degree programs they developed and research. clearly that is a hot area. the health it area, we are doing a lot in that area which brings together our engineering faculty and our faculty and health and human services. those are two areas, so much to be done in those two areas. >> host: this is the communicators program, our guest is alan merten, president of george mason university, and jill aitoto is joining in the questioning. dr. merten, let's look at it from the student's perspective. can you get a college occasion

without having your own computer today? >> guest: definitely not. either your own computer or access to computer. in our case, the students don't have just one computer, they have multiple computers. their world today, the world of a college student, even before, this computer is a device that helps them communicate, and it helps them in so many different ways. it is not something separate from who they are, it is what they are. they are constantly in communication with people. i think the universities in the past, some of them made mistakes by giving all the students the computer. >> host: y? >> guest: each different student has different needs, different wants, what you want to do is encourage them to bring their computer or computers with them

to school. some may like one set of software and another may like another set of software. this idea to create homogeneity of devices was a mistake. most of them backed away from that. >> host: what do students expected university? >> host: >> guest: they see themselves coming in and they bring their machines with them and they go into the dorms, the residence halls, and they plug in and expected to work, just like -- they bring a lamp from home and take that land and put it next to a place where they can plug the lamp in, they expect a light to go on. they have the same sort of expectations of their information technology network. what we have found that is extremely important to us, when

freshmen and students come to campus, we have a staff that is there to help them. we have someone they can call a hotline number, someone can come running to their room or running to wherever it is and help them -- the first expectation is in a sense, the reliability and security. second expectation is they expect the faculty and staff to be competent users of information technology. they understand how to use the technology to give them the most possible support for them learning and moving ahead, expectations are very high. >> host: free wireless broadband? >> guest: yes. they want technology available everywhere all the time. 24/7 isn't enough. they want multiple tools,

multiple support. they know that whatever they know when they came to campus, they have got to learn a lot more and expect us to support -- >> guest: in contrast there's a lot of talk about the world community's extending broadband in the world community to don't have access and schools don't have access. is that necessary? a huge chunk of potential students, potential its workforce that just don't have the experience at the lower level age groups and grades to really feel the experience of technology. is an important factor? [talking over each other] >> guest: the have and have not problem is going away, not as fast as some people -- as you provide more broadband support, you give people access and once they have access, they have access to a lot of information. they haven't had -- it has not

gone away but it is going away by all communities, all organizations recognize it has got to be there. >> guest: the administration especially. >> guest: is the way you participate. if you are looking for a job today, the way people are looking for jobs is getting on the net. it has changed. a number of people today who don't have a newspaper delivered at home, they get information through the internet and they expect us to support it. you should see, when we open a new residence hall, that thing has got to be clicking information technology from the first moment. >> host: you talk about students wanting to be always on-line, always connected. is there a downside to that? >> guest: yes, there is. we try to -- we try to remind the students that it is great to

have that technology, but what is more important for them is to sit across the room with their friends and look at their friends and talk to their friends and go to discussion. i worry a little bit when i walk across campus and i see -- i asked six people who are talking to themselves, on their cellphone. i think that is great but i really want more and more sitting down with their friends, learning about different things, particularly 140 countries, don't miss that. make sure on a regular basis you are having a shot at learning from one of those students. >> host: besides you saying that out loud how can the university encourage social interaction? >> guest: with all the technologies we have, we do things in certain of our academic programs.

you have team projects, you put together teams, bring people from different nationalities are different ages or different genders, there are ways to do it but that comes down to the individual faculty member. we tell the students you are in and it world but you are also in a world where and relationships with people are in the long run going to be more important. i have a confession to make. as a computer scientist i figure by right now, because technology was going to bloom, humans interaction, human skills were going to be less important. i was completely wrong. i think the ability of a student to or anyone to interact with others is probably more important now because it has come out of a lot of the interaction, human skills, human interaction on the ones that are really making a difference, they

are creating the distinguishing characteristics. you had better have all the it skills, but those human skills are more important. >> guest: what does that mean for distance learning? it plays an important role, how does that fit into the picture? >> distance learning is important if it is part of something. when people say to me, they have done this over the years, what about people getting a degree completely over distance learning. you can hire them. i want them to have that interaction. there are certain things you can teach and learn. they will come across, looking at how they are interacting,

distance learning after i came to george mason. it was technology supported education, sometimes technology supported in education can occur, distance learning, in some cases it happens in the classroom, a talented faculty member uses technology for the purposes of helping people learn something unique and we build our buildings with that in mind. inside the buildings, the ability to bring technology into more and more of the classroom so there's technology supported education, sometimes distance and sometimes not. >> host: what about in telecommunications? >> guest: a faculty member has to create discipline, you can send me e-mails all day long or all night long as it may happen. i am going to respond to them

between 4:00, and 5:00. just because you send me something because you are still up, i don't feel obligated. not only that but i am not going to respond to that. e-mail communication has really become extremely important, interaction between students, between students and faculty. they have to bring some discipline. >> host: dr. merten, virginia tech shooting, getting the word out, what does gm you have in place? >> guest: we have quite a bit in place. this is the situation in george mason and other places. given what happened on 9/11, given a sniper that we had. we are farther along on the learning curve on these issues.

when a sniper incident occurred, when the incidents occurred at virginia tech, we were farther along because we had to be. we had notification systems in place. >> host: using technology. >> guest: use sign up for the george mason system that will alert you on your cell phone caller you on every device you have got, this is what you should do. the middle of that terrible incident, how would we have handled it differently? different discussions on that. we have a lot in place because of 9/11 and because of the local sniper activities in the greater washington area. >> guest: there is a lot of worry from students in getting jobs. once they are out of the education system, being able to

find jobs in the work force. i report the mostly on federal it, the government is hard up for technology workers, in a lot of ways more than industry who can pay more. how does government and industry compete for those students that are graduating and do you see them coming in and really trying to recruit them before they reach the time -- in the workforce? >> guest: if you go back to 2000/2001, a group of people in a national academy of science, engineering study, the future of the it work force, we wrote a book, we are proud of what we did. something we are specifically proud of is to send out a warning that there was going to be a lot of retirement in the federal government, particularly in areas like cybersecurity, and something had to happen, there were going to be a lot of opportunities. i think the federal government

situation today is one where there is a lot of capacity and a lot of jobs. the key for government, the key for anyone who wants to hire the best and brightest george mason student is to get on campus. i go back to my days as a professor at michigan and beyond, these government agencies that want to hire students, if all they do is show up during the placement times, they have missed the boat. they have got to get to know the faculty members. they have got to get to know the students when they are freshmen and sophomores. the experiences, we hire a lot of adjunct faculty members to teach in our classes, technology and others. all of those adjunct faculty members are people from the local corporations. they do a good job as a teacher but i have also learned they do a good job as a filter.

they look out in the classroom and they say wait a minute, i am teaching this class, learning to the best students are. i have them come to visit my company, i have them as potential people. government needs to do more of that. >> guest: interesting initiatives government has been doing, probably too far and few between. they set up -- one in britain and was announced recently, they set up competition in high-school and colleges, cybersecurity, students are actually competing to showcase their skills in the area and at the same time, government at the end of this process will be awarding scholarships, providing jobs or at least access to jobs, and seeing who the best of the best are and recruit them at a pretty early age and. is enough of that happening? using technology -- >> guest: the mental state has got to change. we still think about people going away to college. we use that phrase that somehow

or other, high-school graduate was going to go off someplace and the cloistered for four years, to escape, graduation dates and go out and look for a job. those desjardins. we used to think that if someone didn't get a degree in four years there was something wrong with them. if someone is a student of engineering, they get a degree in four years, there's probably something wrong with them because they haven't had -- >> guest: second transcript. >> host: how has the plethora of on-line information changed the world of textbooks? >> guest: it has created an alternative to text books. you can see in some cases the professor's way of teaching is to complete the internet and all i