also, the author will discuss his book, "the devil we know" and the latest events in iran. >> this week, a discussion about higher education's role in the training of information technology professionals. our guest is the president of george mason university. >> jill is with nexgov.com and is here to join in the questioning. gmu is consistently described as one of the most wired universities in america. what does that mean? >> george mason university from its early days has been very much involved in information technology. this begins by supporting the

information technology community of northern virginia and beyond and making sure that we have plenty of technology on the campus to support our students, faculty, and staff. we take information technology very seriously. it probably does not hurt that i am also a computer scientist. we view the new technologies as the pencil of old. you have got to have them. when they work, everyone takes them for granted. when anything goes wrong, people notice it because they have become so dependent on information technology for research, communicating, for doing the business of the university. >> what kind of investment does george mason make in the hardware and computers? >> we make sure it the most senior levels that there is a commitment to information technology. i have a chief officer that reports directly to me.

she sits in on all the major meetings on curriculum and other matters at the university. we send the message that information technology is important in various ways. this leads to making sure that we have the right networks on campus, that we interface with the right networks off campus, the we're constantly keeping our faculty and students up to date with the proper devices. it is a constant battle. it is never enough. whenever technology we have, there is a subset of the faculty and the staff that say there is not enough. you never catch up. we do things in so many different ways as a result of information technology. i think universities in the future are going to be segregated into two different groups, those who have got it and those who do not. those who have got it are those who have figured out how to use technology across the board. i was going to jump in here. i was once told that higher

education is really where innovation in terms of innovation technology starts. if they really discover it has lots of potential in different markets, it may move on to the federal government. that may go to state and local government. then it may make it into k through 12. what is the role of using technology and taking research and using it to innovate new uses for technology? >> if you look across higher education, particularly in the case of george mason, you see things going on across the board. you see it in the school of information technology and engineering, the college of science, the school of public policy. you also see it in the geography department and many others. i could spend a long time listing all of the places. innovation in terms of developing and using technology

is part of what we do. in the early days of computing, almost all of the innovation in terms of the new technologies came out of universities. over the years, it became where some can of the universities and some came out of the corporate world. the usage and usages have really come out of much of what we do in the universities. it is the faculty members. it is a constant issue to deal with. you want to give good technology to bright faculty and not tell them what to do with it. they will figure out the innovation on their own. we want to be careful to not put too much control on them. >> do you work with the other markets like government and industry more than ever? >> i think, more than ever. one of the university businesses is research. in our case, it is research and partnership with the corporate

sector and government. technology is the driver. it is ubiquitous. it is part of everything. i go back to the days when you view technology as separate from things. now, it is embedded in everything. everything. >> just to follow up on her question and something you said at the beginning, you said that one of the goals of gmu is to support the high-tech businesses in northern virginia. how do you do that? >> it begins with the reason of why there is a george mason university. it is a very young university. it is only 37 years old. in some sense, it grew up with the high-tech business of northern virginia. that is in terms of providing graduates and in terms of doing research and other kinds of activities with the high-tech companies. we are partnered in so many ways with the technology companies.

the technology boom of northern virginia and the boom of george mason university are in parallel. they happen at the same time. we continue to need to do that. we just opened up a new engineering building. it has a very unique characteristic. in the building, there are 20,000 square feet of corporate lease space. the companies will not be leasing space at a research park somewhere near george mason. they are leasing corporate space in a george mason engineering building. >> with technology changing so quickly, even a year ago, the technology is old. how do you keep up? >> with pain. in a sense, you have some of the faculty and programs that have to keep up with the newest technology. someone said that they have to

be on the bleeding edge and not just the cutting edge. there are lots of parts of the university that can use technology that is old, maybe two or three years old. we're always asking ourselves who needs the bleeding edge, the cutting edge, and who needs stuff that is guaranteed to work. with the nature of george mason because our students come at all ages and from anywhere around the world, the students and faculty are bringing innovation. you bring in a new faculty member in an area. you have to figure out a way to support them. if you do not, you cannot keep them. you look at the best students and faculty, they come to universities that support them with the right technology. >> you brought up international students. there is a study that is a couple of years old. i remember reading that 60% of

ph.d. students in the sciences were international. the i.t. work force is really declining. we need more people graduating with science and technology. is there a need to offer opportunities for those students to stay whether it be job opportunities or citizenship? do we need to supplement our work force? >> i have controversy opinions on that. fortunately, on one of my opinions, i am joined by bill gates. he said the same thing. i think that when someone who is a foreign student who gets a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mouth from an american university of higher education, when i hand them a degree or diploma, i should have someone further down that has a green card application and a

stapler that staples it to their diploma. we should take advantage of the fact that they are educated sometimes all the way through the undergraduate program somewhere else in the world. then they come to the united states. right now, our policy says that you have to go home during >> and take the training with you. >> i think we need to have a more aggressive approach to keeping the best and brightest to come to united states to get hired degrees in science and technology. at the same time, we must do a much better job of investing in our colleges and universities and k through 12 to develop more scientists and engineers. >> are we not doing a good job at the k through 12 level in training?

>> i do not think we are doing a good job from what i see in making sure that we expose people to these technologies and then encourage them to get into careers in the sciences and beyond. i think we need to do a much better job on that. then we need to provide the funds. we need to go back to this but e -- we need to go back to the sputnik age. we have those all over the place, but we have not had the wake-up call. one of my favorite people is frank wolf. he reminds all of us that we've got to invest in science and technology the way we did decades ago. we do not do that right now. we are somehow afraid to do it. but we are in trouble. >> does gmu reach out to the lower grades to help? >> we work a lot with the k

through 12 system. 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 of the districts around george mason. i recall many of them wondering. they had never met university president. they wondered what i was doing. i was there to remind them and make the statement that we have to have a strong relationship with k through 12. we do. with our faculty in the college of education and human development that work with those systems as much as possible. >> i am going to throw some numbers out. as of may, microsoft cut about 5000 jobs. as of march, ibm had cut the same number. yahoo laid off about 5% of the workforce in april. it goes on and on.

all markets are having a hard time right now. but when they are savvy enough to look around and see stocks plummeting and jobs being cut, why would they want to go into information technology? which you have to remind people that this is cyclical. they're going to be ups and downs in any career area. now is the time for someone to get involved in technology. technology is not going to go away. it is a question of convincing people that it is worth investing in. the kind of jobs may change. i think they have. i think more and more of the jobs of the future in information technology are those that combine high tech and high touch. i would tell students today that you need to get involved in technology and understand more about the use of technology. if you do that, you will get jobs. in our case, a lot of our technology students are already

working. they are embedded in the technology companies. they are embedded with the users of technology. when they graduate, they have already got a job. >> there is this big explosion of what they call web 2.0. it may be social networking, collaborative software, cyber security. is there something to say for students focusing on a given area? it's harder to stay more general? -- is it smart to stay more general? >> we tell students a lot can happen with cyber security and help them permission technology. we have put a lot of effort into these areas. we have faculty members that were way out ahead on the cyber security areas in terms of the degree programs developed and the research. that is a hot area. the health i.t. area is one

where we are doing a lot. it brings together our engineering faculty and our faculty of health and human services. there is so much to be done in those two areas. it is unbelievable. >> this is "the communicators" program. our guest this week is alan merten, the president of george mason university. can you get a college education without having your own computers today? >> definitely not. i would say either without having your own computer or having access to a lot. in our case, students do not just have one computer. they have multiple computers. their world today, the world of a college student the computer is a device that helps them to communicate. it helps them in some many different ways.

it is not something separate from who they are. it is what they are. they're constantly in communication with people. i think in the past, some universities made mistakes by giving all the students a computer. different students have different needs and wants. you really want to encourage them to bring their computer or computers with them to school. some may like one set of software and another, me like another set. it was a mistake to have a homogeneity of devices. >> what do students expect from the university when it comes to technology? >> the first thing they expect is a secure, reliable, and robust network. they see themselves coming in. they bring their machines with them.

they go into the dorms or residence halls. they plugged in and expected to work. it is just like when they bring a lamp from home and plugged away again. they expect the light to go on. they have the same sort of expectations of their information technology network. we have found that it is extremely important that when freshman and others are coming to canvass the we have a staff that is there to help them. if it does not work, we have someone. they can call a hotline number and someone can come running to their room or wherever and help them to get to work. the first expectation is the reliability and security. the 2nd 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 learning and moving ahead in their career. the expectations are very, very high. they want technology available everywhere, all the time. 24/7 is not enough. they want multiple tools and multiple support. what ever they know when they came to campus, they have got to learn a lot more. they expect us to support it. >> in contrast, there is a lot of talk about extending broadband to the rural communities that do not have access. is that necessary? that is a huge chunk of potential students and i.t. work force that do not have the

experience of the lower level age groups and grades to feel, touch, and experience technology. is that an important factor? >> i think the have and have not problem is going away, maybe not as fast as some would like. as you provide more broad and support in rural districts, you give people access. once they have access, they have access to a lot of information. i think the have and have not is going away in a sense because all communities and organizations are recognizing it has to be there. it is the way you participate. if you are looking for a job today, people are looking for jobs begin to be on the internet. -- looking for jobs by getting on the internet.

people who do not give a newspaper delivered at home get their information through the internet. they expect us to support it. when we opened a new residence hall, that has got to be clicking information technology from the first moment. >> you talked about the students being always on-line and connected. is there a downside to that? >> yes, there is. we try to remind students that it is great to have the technology, but it is more important to sit across the room with their friends and sit and talk with them. i worry a little bit when i walk across campus and see six people who are talking to themselves on their cellphone. i think that is great. but i want more of them sitting down with their friends learning

about different things. we have students from 140 countries. i tell the students not to miss that. make sure on a regular basis you have a shot at learning from those students. >> how can the university encourage social interaction? >> with all of the technologies we have, we do things. in some academic programs, you have team projects. you put together the teams. you bring people from different nationalities, ages, genders together on the same team. there are ways you can do that. that comes down to the individual faculty member. you tell the students that you are in an i.t. world, but you are also in a world where your interrelationships with people in the long run are going to be more important. i have a confession to make. as a computer scientist, i

figured that because technology was going to boom, that human interactions and skills would be less important. i was completely wrong. i think the ability of a student or anyone to interact with others is probably more important now. i.t. has come monetized -- has made human interactions a commodity. they are treating the distinguishing characteristics. you had better have the i.t. skills, but the human skills are more important than ever. >> what does that mean for distance learning? i am sure that george mason supports that. >> distance learning is important is it is a part of something. -- distance learning is important if it is a part of something. people ask about getting a

degree completely over distance learning. my somewhat sarcastic comment is that you can hire them, but i do not want to hire them. i want them to have that interaction. there are certain things that you can teach and learn in a distance learning environment. but there are other things that only come across if you are sitting around a room with people and looking at how they are interacting. we downplay the phrase "distance learning" after i came to the university. we call it technology supported education. sometimes that can happen with distance learning. sometimes it happens in a classroom or a talented faculty member uses technology in the classroom for the purposes of helping people learn something unique. we have built our buildings with that in mind. inside the buildings, there is the ability to bring technology into more and more of the classrooms.

there is technology supported education. sometimes distant and sometimes not. >> what about e-mail communication between faculty and students? do you encourage it? >> it is important. a faculty member has got to create a certain amount of discipline. tell the students that the consent e-mail's all day or not long, but i will respond to them between 4:00 and 5:00 every afternoon. just because you send me something at 4:00 a.m. because you are still up, i do not feel obligated and will not respond to you until sometime later. e-mail communication has really become extremely important as interaction between students and between students and faculty. the faculty have to bring some discipline to it. >> the virginia tech shooting,

getting the word out on something like that to the students, what does gmu have in place for that kind of thing? >> we have quite a few things. our situation at george mason and a few other places, and given what happened on 9/11, given the sniper we had in the greater washington area, we have had -- we are farther along on the learning curve on these kinds of issues. when the 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 using technology. you sign up for a george mason system that will alert you on your cell phone, on every device you have got, that there is something going on and this is what you should do.

we said in the middle of that terrible incident about how we might have handled it differently. we already have a lot in place because of 9/11 and because of the local sniper activities in the greater washington area. >> i know there is a lot of worry from students about getting jobs and being able to find jobs in the work force. i work mostly in federal i.t. i know that the government is hard up for technology workers and more so than industry that can pay more. how this government in the industry compete for this graduates? do you see them coming in and trying to recruit them before they are marketable to the work force? >> if you go back to 2000 and 2001, i was one of a group of

people that were on a national academy of science and engineering study on the future of the work force. we wrote a book. we are very proud of what we did. one thing we are specifically proud of is that we send out a warning that there were going to be a lot of retirements in the federal government, particularly in the areas like cyber security. something had happened. they're going to be a lot of opportunities. i think the federal government's situation today is one where there is a lot of capacity and jobs. the key for government or anyone who wants to hire the best and brightest like a george mason student is to get on campus. i go back to my days as a professor in michigan and beyond. companies or government agencies that want to hire students, if all they do is show up during the placement times, they have missed the boat. they've got to get to know the

faculty members. they've got to get to know the students when they're freshmen and sophomores. we have had some fascinating experiences. we hire a lot of an adjunct faculty members to teach in our classes on technology. a lot of those adjunct faculty members are people from local corporations. they do a good job as a teacher. but i have also learned that they do a good job as a filter. they look out in the classroom. they are learning who the best students are. i can have them come visit my company. i think the government needs to do more of that. >> there are some interesting initiatives that the government has been doing recently. they may be too few and far between. one was announced recently where they set up competitions in high schools and colleges on cyber

security. students are actually competing to showcase their skills in the area. at the same time, at the end of the process, the government will be awarding scholarships, providing access to jobs. we are seeing who the best of the best are and recruiting them at younger ages. >> more of that has got to happen. the mental state has got to change. we used to think about people going away to college. if we used to use that phrase as if someone was going to go away to be cloistered for four years, escape upon graduation, and then go look for job. those days are gone. we used to think of someone did not get a degree in four years that there was something wrong with them. i kid with the dean of the vocational school that if they get a degree in four years, there's probably something wrong with them because they have not

had a part-time job. >> we're almost out of time. how has the plethora of online information changed the world of textbooks? >> it has created an alternative to textbooks. in some cases, you can see that the professor's way of teaching is to bring the internet and all of its sources into the classroom. the textbook used to be the only outside set of information. it has become less and less of the dominant source of information. i will give you a good example. we had a fascinating group of faculty in the history department, probably the best in the country, the work for the center for history and new media. they are changing the way that history is taught. when we went to school, we had a history book. they now have access