Networking and resource sharing make a great deal of sense and are particularly important for areas and for institutions where isolation and limited resources are major concerns.

The Imperial Valley Campus has a broad and heterogeneous service area, the Imperial Valley, an agricultural region in the southeastern California desert with a total population of approximately 125,000. Small communities are dispersed over a 50-mile radius and public transportation system is practically non-existent. Imperial County has an agricultural tax base which generates limited resources for the benefit of the local community; unemployment, underemployment and poverty are a way of life for a large percentage of its population, about 80% of Mexican descent.

Calexico, California, the site of the Imperial Valley Campus, is a small community of about 20,000 inhabitants, located at sea level within the Imperial Valley. Calexico is approximately 120 miles east of San Diego, separated from the coastal area by mountain ranges with elevations of over 4000 feet. It is also within walking distance of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, a large metropolitan and industrial complex with a population of over 1,000,000 and the seat of the State government.

2. THE CAMPUS

A brief history of the Imperial Valley Campus and the reasons for its creation will provide the necessary background for understanding the significance of this project on networking and re-source sharing.

During the late 1950's, the California State Legislature approved and consequently funded the establishment of four higher education centers in what was considered then remote and isolated areas of California. Each center was charged with providing educational opportunities to popula-tions otherwise denied access due to isolation and low economic status. One of these centers was to be located in the Imperial Valley under the jurisdiction of San Diego State University. The other three centers were to be in Sonoma, Bakersfield and Stanislaus (Self-Study, 1987, p. 1).

In August of 1959, the Imperial Valley Center started operations with headquarters at the Central Union High School in El Centro, California, about 11 miles from Calexico. Teacher pre-paration was the major focus of academic instruction. In 1965, the Center was moved to Calexico to occupied the old Calexico High School site and thus the Imperial Valley Campus was created (Self-Study, 1975, p. 7).

New State legislation in the late 1960's and early 70's demanded changes in teacher prepara-tion curricula which in turn brought about the need for new faculty recruitment and additional facilities placing heavy demands on the limited resources.

Through the years new academic offerings were added, such as criminal justice administra-tion, business administration, psychology, bilingual education, Latin American Studies, translation and interpretation and others. Thus, the Center was transformed from a two-year program offering a Bachelor's degree in elementary education to a two-year upper division undergraduate institution with a fifth-year credentialing program and occasional Master programs in conjunction with the graduate division of San Diego State University-San Diego.

Because of its unique location, right at the US/Mexico border, the Campus also focused its attention on fostering closer ties with Mexican institutions. The Institute for Border Studies was created in 1983 for the purpose of encouraging and conducting research on border- related issues, to serve as a US/Mexico border information center, and to develop closer liaisons with our neigh-bors to the south (Institute for Border Studies, 1989, p. 2). An acuerdo (agreement) signed between San Diego State University and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) gave the IV Campus the opportunity to develop closer liaisons and establish cooperative programs with a major university across the US/Mexico border. An exchange program with UABC allows student from either campus to attend classes at both universities and receive credit at their home institution. Professors, researchers, and students from either institution have library privileges at both universities. The Binational Press provides a way for publication of binational/bilingual literature by both US and Mexican authors.

Presently, the Imperial Valley Campus has 15 full-time and 25-30 part-time faculty with a population of about 480 students, the highest ever. Two-third of its students are Latinos, two-third female, and many are older, re-entry students already with outside jobs and family respon-sibilities (SDSU Foundation, 1989, p. 52).

3. THE CHALLENGE

The expansion of these new programs and curricular offerings, the opening up of more complex and demanding international relations, and the broadening interests of a new and diversi-fied faculty have increased the need to expand the communications with the outside world. In order to cope with the ever-diminishing State allocated funds and to meet the technological chal-lenges of the 21st century, the campus begun to focus on the areas of networking and telecommu-nications as a way to bring to the Campus the resources and expertise needed to compete in an ever changing academic world.

A major step was taken in 1985, when a grant created BEST-NET, designed to address the need for alternative delivery systems utilizing cable TV and satellite down-links (Academic..., 1985, pp. 7- 8). BEST-NET is an acronym for the Binational English and Spanish Telecommu-nications Network, and represents an electronic consortium of colleges, universities, and research institutions in both Mexico and the Southwestern United States (Arias, 1986, pp.11-12). Funding was originally provided by a three year grant of $400,000 from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education (FIPSE) and supplemented by resources from the Western Behavioral Science Institute and San Diego State University (Arias, 1988). The project also received funding from the Digital Equipment Corporation. BEST-NET was originally created by the FIPSE grant to produce a number of video telecourses that were later made interactive using computer-mediated communications or teleconferencing. The initial courses were aimed at a Spanish speaking audien-ce and were locally created and broadcasted in cooperation with Mexican institutions such as Centro de Investigación Científica y Estudios Superiores en Ensenada (CICESE), Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Institutos Tecnológicos de Tijuana and Mexicali, the Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior (CETYS), and southwestern universities and community colleges in the United States. The first academic courses had an emphasis on the natural and physical sciences, mathematics and computer science (Annual Report, 1987, pp. 10-12).

Later on, the BEST-NET project evolved into computer teleconferencing including asynchronous communications (where comments are input and replied at different times) and synchronous interaction (where comments and replies are entered while parties are online at the same time). Presently, the Imperial Valley Campus is one of the nodes of BEST-NET and the MicroVax 3100 serves as a host computer for some of the teleconferences and computer-mediated courses sponsored by BEST-NET.

4. NETWORKING PROJECTS

A project, using California State lottery monies, was designed to enable San Diego State University-Imperial Valley Campus personnel and students state of the art campus-wide network-ing capabilities and also transparent, high speed access to all SDSU and INTERNET computing resources. The project is being carried out in two phases (Wehrmeister, 1990, pp. 3-4).

Phase 1 completed in 1989, entailed installing a MicroVax 3100 computer and a twisted-pair Ethernet network at the IV Campus library and Administration building. Ethernet is "an IEEE802.3 standard data link layer which can operate over several different media including fiber optic, coaxial cable, and twisted- pair cable" (SDSU Communications..., p. A-3). The IV Campus Ethernet network was incorporated to the SDSUNET using remote Ethernet bridges. A bridge at the San Diego Campus was connected to a bridge at the IV Campus using a 56 KB circuit through the Ericsson phone system. These bridges allow the IV Campus access to all SDSUNET resources in the same way as any building on the San Diego Campus.

Phase 2 to be completed in 1990, will expand the Ethernet network to all of the IV Campus buildings, including individual faculty offices and some classrooms. When completed, the project will connect all personal computers (IBM-compatible, Mcintosh and Apples) located at the IV Campus to the Ethernet network. Faculty members, administration, staff and students will have high speed access to the MicroVax 3100 and to the San Diego Campus computer facilities from their offices, classrooms or homes (Wehrmeister, 1990, p. 4).

At the IV Campus, the Ethernet network and its services are administered through the Computer Center in conjunction with the University Computing Services. The Computer Center Coordinator serves as a conference moderator, manages the site and sets up conference accounts, troubleshoots problems, designs manuals and handouts, and trains students, faculty and resear-chers in the intricacies of the system. For the computer- mediated courses, the manager works in close contact with the professors to set up student accounts, and to serve as a teaching assistant facilitating the introduction of the new medium to students.

Some of the current networking projects at the IV Campus include:

1. Computer-mediated courses using the VAXnotes conferencing system supplied by the Western Behavioral Science Institute, originated and tailored through the BEST-NET grant. The system permits students to access assignments, ask questions and input comments and to interact with each other and the professor. Teleconferencing courses can be offered in two ways: courses that include face-to-face lectures in conjunction with online computer interaction; and courses that include solely online interaction as the communication medium. Students and the professor inter-act, from the Computer Center, using DECmate computers, IBM-PC compatibles, and Mcintoshes equipped with Ethernet cards which are networked using a MicroVax 3100 as a host computer and the special version of VAXnotes conferencing software tailored for educational purposes (Annual Report, 1989, p. 6). Students and the professor can also communicate through their home com-puters and dial-up modems and communication software.

An example of a course offered in a combination of face-to-face and online interaction was one of Dr. Alfredo Cuéllar's classes, a student teaching seminar, where students met each week for a three-hour lecture, but had to interact through the computer during the week, imputing comments and answering questions posed by the professor and the other students. An example of a course solely offered through computer conferencing was "Anthropology of the Border" taught by Dr. Duane Metzger, from the University of California at Irvine. Students from the University of Arizona and the University of California at San Diego could take the course for credit. Also, there were "observers" to the course from other institutions such as the Institute for the Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University, the University of California-Mexus, and CICESE in Ensenada, México (Arias, 1988, p. 15).

VAXnotes software was also installed on the Vaxcluster Instructional UCSVAX at the San Diego Campus so that distributing conferencing is possible between the two campuses. For exam-ple, a class taught at San Diego State University-San Diego can be accessed by students using computers at the IV Campus or from home using dial-up modems and communications software such as PROCOMM or KERMIT. "To a significant degree, teleconferencing frees education from the social constraints of time and place" (Polkinhorn, 1990, p. 7).

Presently, at the IVCMCV node, there are approximately 100 student accounts in four com-puter-mediated courses.

2. Computer-mediated teleconferencing using the VAXnotes branching structure. Telecon-ferences can be set up on any subject and generally are open-access with several topics being discussed simultaneously. Anyone within the network can access the conference, read the topics and comments and reply. This setup makes full use of the topic-reply and branching structure for specific responses to particular topics. Teleconferences involve a combination of VAXnotes, E-MAIL, and PHONE. A great deal of experimentation was carried out by the BEST-NET mana-gers with the conference structure to determine the most productive way to utilize the VAXnotes branching structure. Several Mexican and United States institutions are participating in this BEST-NET project: San Diego State University, California State University at Bakersfield, University of California at Irvine, University of California at San Diego, University of Arizona, Pima College, University of New Mexico, Arizona State, California State University at Los Angeles, and Texas A& M at Kingsville. Some of the conferences set up for BEST-NET on the IVCMCV node include: Diffusion, Ethnobotany, International Telecommunications, Long Term Development of Societies, and Tecnológico. An annual World Food Day Teleconference is set up at the IVCMCV node by the Director of the Center on Food and Hunger Education with national and international participation. The Instituto Tecnológico de Mexicali, for example, has several conferences scheduled for this fall such as Circuitos Lógicos, Sequencing Machines, Field Programmable Controllers. There are about 100 accounts set up at IVCMCV for the Tecnológicos from Mexicali and Tijuana.

3. Access is possible to outside networks such as: a) MELVYL, which consist of an online catalog containing a database of several million bibliographic records of books and other library materials housed at the nine UC campus libraries, the California State Library, and the Center for Research Libraries; and a database listing titles to several hundred thousand periodicals and other serials at all UC campuses, Stanford University, the University of Southern California, the 19 campuses of the California State University system, the Center for Research Libraries, and the Getty Center. The online catalog can be searched through all bibliographic entry points and in-cludes books, periodicals, non book materials, etc. Boolean searches are possible and searches can be delimited by location and date; b) INOPAK, the online catalog of San Diego State Univer-sity Love Library. When fully implemented, through the use of a remote port, the IV Campus will be able to search this online catalog through several entry points, and determine the library's holdings and status of the materials; c) CERFnet, the California Education and Research Federation Network which provides interactive, high speed access to INTERNET, the backbone network connecting other national and international networks such as BITNET, a worldwide general pur-pose academic network (Davison, 1990, p. 891). Through the use of the INTERNET Protocol (IP), dissimilar hosts can communicate with each other.

4. E-MAIL (electronic mail), one of the most popular uses of INTERNET, is a message delivery service allowing users to send and receive communications electronically. A user can send messages to other users on the same host computer or to users on any other host on the network which includes electronic mail within its services (Guide to Campus..., 1990, p. 6). When fully implemented, all offices at the IV Campus will have access to E-Mail services and the system will be used, among other things, for official communications to and from San Diego, collegiate interchanges, and informal messages.

5. ITFS. Courses are telecommunicated using ITFS (Instructional Television Fixed Service) microwave transmission system. ITFS affords the opportunity to enrich the educational environ-ment through the provision of expertise not available locally. For example, specific courses supplementing major and minor fields are taught at the San Diego Campus to a group of students and are, at the same time, broadcasted to the IV Campus where another set of students, under the supervision of an instructor, views the lectures, and can communicate interactively answering and asking question to the lecturer in San Diego. The same technology is used by the Media Techno-logy Services at the San Diego Campus to broadcast films or videos to be shown at the IV Campus by faculty request, for classroom, educational or entertainment purposes. All classrooms at the IV Campus are now in the process of being wired and equipped for interactive transmission and question and answer communications.

6. ILL. Interlibrary loans is one of the most effective ways in which a small and isolated library can tapped the bibliographic resources of the larger and more specialized libraries in the US and abroad. ILL is accomplished using state-of-the art technology through the use of OCLC services, fax machines, and E-mail. The Online Union Catalog (OLUC) of OCLC system is a database of over 8 million records, created by the cataloging efforts of OCLC member libraries, the Library of Congress, and the National Library of Medicine. For each record there is a list of all libraries that hold that particular item. The OLUC is used to access the bibliographic and non-book holdings of member libraries in the US, which includes all major research, academic, special, public, and governmental libraries; the ILL subsystem of OCLC allows member libraries to borrow and lend materials rapidly and efficiently. A new super fax machine (Fujitsu DEX EXPRESS 7800) has been installed at the IV Campus which is connected to the CSUNET, California State University Network, a X.25 packed-switched network, connecting all 19 campuses of the CSU system (Smith, 1990, p. 1) through the Ericsson phone system. The installation of this high speed, high volume fax machine will streamline communications, not only with the CSU system but with any other institution in the US and beyond. One of the principal uses of the fax machine will be for interlibrary loan purposes to enable the IV Campus to send and receive ILL requests, such as photocopies of journal articles, within minutes of the request having being generated. Fax administrators can subscribe to CSUNET's electronic mailing list to receive information on changes and updates in the network.

4. CONCLUSIONS

The Imperial Valley, at the end of the 20th century, is very much like a Third World region, isolated and dependant predominantly on an agricultural economy largely controlled by few multinationals and absentee landlords, with serious problems of unemployment, underemploy-ment, poverty, and illiteracy. For the last thirty years, the IV Campus reflected also this sense of isolation and neglect, very much like a Third World institution, yet through networking and re-source sharing, this sense of isolation has diminished significantly as the IV Campus has increased opportunities to be connected to San Diego Campus and to access the resources available to all California State University units.

Today, the IV Campus faculty/student/computer formula is the richest in the system; compu-ter literacy and the use of new technology for research, administrative, educational, and recrea-tional purposes is now a reality. Increased efforts to provide the necessary training and support activities should not only reduce isolation, but increase the potential for professional growth which will translate into more effective teaching and better prepared graduates ready to take their place in a rapidly changing world.
 

REFERENCES

1. Academic Master Plan 1985-1990. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1985.

2. Annual Report 1985-86. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1986.

3. Annual Report 1986-87. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1987.

4. Annual Report 1989-90. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1990.

5. Arias, Armando and Beryl Bellman. Third Year Evaluation of BEST- NET. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1988.

6. "BEST- NET Programs Aid Bilingual Instruction." UC MEXUS NEWS (University of California Consortium on México and the United States), Spring/Summer 1986.

7. Davison, Ned, "What's BITNET," Hispania, September 1990.

8. Institute for Border Studies. IBS. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, (1989).

9. Guide to Campus Computing for Faculty and Staff. Calexico, CA: University Computing Services, San Diego State University, 1990.

10. Polkinhorn, Harry, "Long- Distance Fiction: Computer Teleconferencing in the English Department." Computing Digest (University Computing Services, SDSU, San Diego), Summer 1990.

11. SDSU Data Communications Handbook - Fall 1989. Calexico, CA: University Computing Services, San Diego State University, 1989.

12. SDSU Foundation. Annual Report 1988-1989. Calexico, CA: San Diego State University, 1989.

13. Self-Study 1975. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1975.

14. Self-Study 1987. Calexico, CA: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State University, 1987.

15. Smith, Gordon and Laura Guillory. Memorandum to all Library Directors on G-4 Fax Status. State of California, Trustees of the California State University. August 10, 1990.

16. Wehrmeister, Mark, "IVC Added to SDSUNET," Computing Digest (University Computing Services, SDSU, San Diego), January 1990.

17.  "New Developments in Data Communications at SDSU" Computing Digest, (University Computing Services, SDSU, San Diego), September 1990.