This year marks 20 years since DELTA was established as an official unit within the Office of the Provost. I’ll never forget the knock on my door in Page Hall late one afternoon in 1999. I said “Come in,” but was not expecting to see Provost Kermit Hall entering my door. He asked, “Do you have a minute?” I responded, “Sure!” (What else do you say when the Provost knocks on your door?) We talked for about an hour. Kermit shared his deep belief that over the coming years, advances in technology for teaching and learning would have a profound impact on higher education.
At the time, the North Carolina General Assembly had just passed legislation fundamentally changing the way that campuses would be funded for enrollment. A key element of that legislation was that “off campus credit instruction” (aka “distance education”) would be included in the enrollment funding formula for the first time. Kermit saw this as a mandate to make distance education a core part of NC State’s academic mission, and believed that would require us to develop a teaching and learning technology infrastructure and support system for remote students which would serve the entire campus. But his vision went well beyond distance education. He reasoned that the expertise and infrastructure needed to do distance education well could be extended to serve the campus as a whole, and doing so would prepare us well for the technology revolution that was coming. I couldn’t have agreed more.
At the time, I was serving as the Associate Dean for Information Technology in the College of Engineering, a role that resulted from years of work in advancing faculty and student computing within the college. Wearing my faculty hat within the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, I had been doing some applied research on using the Internet’s Multicast Backbone (aka MBone) to share live classes across multiple sites (something we do every day today). Unbeknownst to me, that work had caught Provost Hall’s attention, and he asked if I would help him build the capacity at NC State to achieve his vision.
After discussing it with the Dean and my wife, both of whom were cautiously encouraging, I agreed to join the Provost’s team for three years. At that point we began building what would soon become Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications, or DELTA. It began by bringing together the Distance Education group from McKimmon, Video Communications Services from the College of Engineering, and the Learning Technologies Service which was jointly administered by the Libraries and the Information Technology division all under the new umbrella.
The following months were interesting, to say the least. Provost Hall had a term he liked to use to describe this initiative, which was “Time-Enhanced Learning.” Had I not gently convinced him that his description would leave more people scratching their heads than understanding the goal, we might well have ended up with the unit acronym TEL. Today that might work, but not back then. People understood the concept of distance education, even though at that time it meant recording lectures and sending videotapes to remote students. The Internet at the time was mostly hypertext (HTML) and static images, but it was evolving rapidly. Faculty and administrators could grasp the idea of “learning technologies” and in fact, there was an exciting initiative that had been started by the previous provost Phil Styles called Project 25 that was working with innovative faculty to put 25 courses in a format that could be accessed through a web browser. (Anyone remember NCSA Mosaic?)
DELTA team retreat in 2001.
I convinced Provost Hall that if we called it “Distance Education and Learning Technologies” it would be easier for stakeholders to relate to the vision. For a while, it looked like the new unit’s acronym would be DELT. That still didn’t sound right to me, and I suggested that we change the name to “Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications.” I reasoned that it would differentiate the new unit’s role from that of IT, focusing on the application of technology to a specific area (teaching and learning) rather than the underlying servers and networks. Plus, it made for a nicer acronym. The DELTA staff tire of hearing me profess that “DELTA means change,” which I’ve done year after year at our staff meetings. But they also know that it’s true, having witnessed 20 years of it.
Fast forward to March 2020, and my worn-out mantra took on a whole new meaning. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we would be tasked with moving virtually all of NC State’s face-to-face courses to an online format in a two-week period over spring break, helping instructors prepare for summer 2020 classes as online-only classes, or rapidly shift to hybrid/hyflex courses and back again to online in fall. While there were (and still are) many challenges with that abrupt transition I can almost hear Provost Hall chuckling and saying, “I told you this would be important.” I’m proud of the way that our DELTA team has rallied to support the faculty to manage the virtually 10x scaling of our infrastructure and support services. Kermit was right. Technology has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on teaching and learning in higher education.
Thankfully, the university rallied behind the Provost’s vision 20 years ago. I’m glad I accepted his call and glad that I stayed on task for much more than the three years that I had promised. I’m very proud of the team we’ve built and what we’ve accomplished over the years. I’m thankful that we’ve built the capacity and expertise to help support the faculty through the pandemic. While I wish it had never happened, I feel that we’ll come out the other end even stronger than before, and with great humility for the lessons we’re learning now.
Most of the faculty who were part of Project 25 have long since retired. Sadly, Kermit Hall passed away in 2006, not long after becoming the 17th president of SUNY Albany. Only a few who read this will remember him and his vision that gave birth to DELTA. I hope in reading the stories in this annual report that you will reflect, as I have, on how far we’ve come over the past 20 years in realizing Provost Hall’s vision. It has been a rewarding journey that I hope will continue for many years to come.
Sincerely,
Dr. Tom Miller
Vice Provost, DELTA
Senior Vice Provost, Academic Outreach and Entrepreneurship