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Conversation with
Rebecca Van Dalsem
Director of Technology
“Even though you’re on the right track, you get run over if you just sit there.”
Director of Technology Rebecca Van Dalsem circulates this piece of Will Rogers’ wisdom on campus e-mail and the campus lives it. The technology of the 21st century has arrived with a rush. The Priory’s goal is to use technology as a new set of tools, integrated into all academic divisions and all campus life. Students and teachers will use them when they are the best choice, and use other tools when appropriate.
A powerful telescope and an electron microscope (rarely even seen on a high school campus)areexcitingnewtools.But informa- tion technology is the most powerful addition to our high-tech toolbelt — it touches everyone
and changes the way we teach and learn.
This year, faculty and classrooms are the focus. Three to five years is an appropriate time
frame for getting comfortable with high tech classrooms, according to the schools which have been there.
Rebecca Van Dalsem, the subject of this issue’s Conversation seems at first glance an unlikely candidate to lead the way. A teacher and mother of three daughters, she holds post graduate degrees in counseling and technical theatre. Rebecca developed an interest in technology while a professor of theatre design at Skidmore College, where she was fascinated by the potential that computer technology could bring to the arts. Skidmore wasn’t sufficiently fascinated, so she began studying information systems at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute in Troy, NY. She moved into technical consulting on a variety of projects in and outside the fields of arts and edu- cation. A powerhouse of technical knowledge, she looks to short-term assignments in industry among other things to stay current.
Most of her e-mail messages are signed off with “I love cruising in cyberspace” and she is
bringing the entire WPS community along on a fantastic ride.
C. Dobervich
Thanks primarily to the interest and generous assistance of Bill and Rosemary Hewlett, the Priory last summer installed a second computer lab in the library; sixteen workstations in the science labs; ISDN (very fast) access to the Internet from all buildings; and computers in most classrooms.
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