University Values

It is amazing how fast lives have changed within just my lifespan of four decades. It changed at an accelerated pace within the past decade. The result is today's student population which spans from birth to age 60 live in a different world. In his 21st Century Mindset article, John Chambers stated, “We are in the midst of an Internet-driven revolution, an entirely new level of instant, complex collaboration across the global human network” (Chambers, 2007/08). Technologically-enhanced environments have put us in a day and age where we rely on a network that is comprised of facts, opinions, theories and misconceptions for our wealth of knowledge. "Knowledge is plentiful, easily accessible, and increasing at tremendous speed" (Chambers). This can be both good and bad. Good from the standpoint of having a great deal of information to use and because we have knowledge at our fingertips and employees no longer have to be in the same place due to the advancements in technology. Years ago the larger companies would wait until they could meet to solve issues so problems would sometimes linger around but today they can discuss issues immediately with telnet, video conferencing, net meeting, and even chat rooms are an immediate source of communication worldwide. Bad from the standpoint that there is almost an infinite amount of information available on the internet available for teams to use to solve problems. The immediate access to technological resources has diminished the emphasis on physical and logical application of skills. The use of learned skills should be able to be demonstrated without the use of a technical source or fact-finding research. This independent application, team collaboration, and technical acquisition of knowledge can be the catalyst to becoming a more highly-trained professional.

This speed of this technologically-enhanced world is touching multiple aspects of day to day life. One problem can have a domino effect very quickly. The rise in usage of internet chat rooms, and cell phone text messaging calls for younger individuals to decipher if they can trust who is on the other end of their conversations, if someone is trying