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Forthcoming book
Re-engineering Higher Education by e-Architect Enterprise Design
By
Armando Arias, Ph.D.
2025
This book (albeit, “How to manual”) is a direct response to California’s Governor Newsom’s quest to find high-teach solutions for what the pandemic has exposed, namely, placing 21st demands on decades-old technology (see, Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government).
Bringing to bear his 40 plus years of high-tech experience:
Collaborating with senior engineers on the development ARPANET (precursor to the Internet)
Providing vision and leadership for the advent and application of DECNET (a privatized version of early Internet through the Digital Equipment Corporation)
Founding BESTNET as a global consortia of universities, corporations and R&D entities housed at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute
Coupled with having served as a start-up team member for over a dozen brand new universities (nationally/internationally)
Dr. Arias provides an e-strategy for modernizing State institutions of higher education and for furthering public engagement through the use of active knowledge models, e-enterprise architecture (systems engineering) as a new paradigm for reorganizing higher education for the State of California.
In Re-engineering Higher Education in the State of California by e-Architect Enterprise Design: A How To Manual, Dr. Arias presents the idea of transforming university-systems (University of California, California State University and the California Community Colleges) into real-time "thinking university-systems" through the application of Enterprise Architecture and Systems Engineering as tools for aligning IT such that they are fully supported by a real-time enabling infrastructure designed to create real-time "What if?" scenarios that respond to rapid social change, such as, pandemics.
The C-19 virus pandemic has caused major contradictions in the State of California over the future of higher education. Just prior to the pandemic the overwhelming perspective was that the State needed more capacity to serve the growing numbers of students coming up through the ranks. The California State University allocated a 4 million dollar budget to study the placement of a new campus, and the University of California, San Diego, entered into a provisional arrangement to open a campus in National City, just south of downtown San Diego, but now with thousands of students left holding the bag, many are losing trust in what higher education has to offer, in short, all bets are off, the populace has it in their minds that “everything must be re-engineered” especially higher education.
In this book Dr. Arias proffers a new paradigm for looking at the future of California through the use of Enterprise Architecture and Systems Engineering stemming from his experiences in creating numerous public and private universities and other vanguard projects for the social good to create further understanding, inspire meaningful dialogue and empower communities to take action in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion.
As evidenced by his long history of creating innovative technologically-centered projects, the first part of this book examines how it is Dr. Arias collaborated with senior members of ARPANET (precursor to the Internet) as an associate in the School of Management and Strategic Studies (SMSS) at the renowned Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI) in La Jolla, CA. Concomitantly, the book describes his contributions to the earliest forms of computer communications software as a human factor analyst in the design and application of VaxNotes a platform delivered over DECNET an encapsulated online environment for collaborative research, work and education that acted very much like the Internet, but was operated by invitation only.
It was through these experiences at WBSI and while performing networked-work human factor analysis for the Digital Equipment Corporation that Dr. Arias founded BESTNET (Binational English & Spanish Telecommunications Network) as an international consortia of institutions of higher education, corporations and private entities.
While the book spends little time focusing on the history of his special projects it springs forward by centering more on lessons learned not only through the special projects aforementioned, but also on his ability to implement technological innovation at brand new as well as transforming universities over several decades.
On the Emergence of a New Paradigm for Looking at the Design of a Real Time Thinking University System
Aligned with the core values of a powerful Vision Statement to be a student-centered, research-focused, service-oriented and a public university the Multi-University will transform California and a diverse global society by educating, generating and disseminating knowledge and creative works, and engaging in public service.
The book grapples with the current atmosphere surrounding the development and implementation of ideas found in recent Strategic Plans to include top-level, goals and objectives. Dr. Arias points out that Strategic Plans are for the most part considered static, and their blueprints seemingly unchanging. By adapting Enterprise Architecture (through real time IT) Dr. Arias’ vision of the university of the future is a “thinking enterprise” as an emergent, complex adaptive system requiring an agile approach designed to adapt to large-scale rapid social change caused by pandemic and/or other massive precipitating factors.
Understanding the relevance of moving from the idea of a university that adapts new technologies to a new paradigm for looking at the future of California is an overarching theme to this book with these ideas in mind:
· Transforming the university-system(s) into a thinking enterprise through the application of Enterprise Architecture as a tool for IT
· Viewing today’s university and its’ relationship to their respective systems as well as regional community as a modern day landscape or research setting for applied (real time) research
· Engaging the community through transformation through prioritizing resource allocations between various competing demands for resources (in real time) due to such phenomenon as pandemics
· Develop road maps for community engagement & service learning and rapid social change
· Develop road maps for leading modernization efforts in this country and beyond (esp. in the borderlands)
· Develop road maps for acquiring skills and specialties in the workforce required to operate the university for the future
· Focus on the university’s aspects for change
Concomitantly, high-quality information is the key to designing, organizing and leading a vibrant and successful brand new university. Despite the large quantity of data that is collected by institutions of higher education, planners struggle to obtain information that helps them make decisions. While operational processing systems help capture, store, and manipulate data to support day-to-day operations of organizations, reconciled systems -- sometimes referred to as data warehouses or business intelligence (BI) systems -- support the analysis of data, thus, enabling decision making.
With the advent of big data systems, institutions of higher education should turn to enterprise data management frameworks to manage and gain insights from the vast amount of data collected. While storage costs themselves are relatively affordable, the bigger challenge has been finding an appropriate mechanism to manage the data as many technologies (e.g., relational databases, data warehouses) have limitations on the amount of data that can be stored.
This book lays out a practical approach to a virtual maquiladora (global assembly consortia) that works with experts from all over the world, but is centered on world-class thinkers in California (University of California, Silicon Valley and the Jet Propulsion Lab), and Baja California Norte (namely the Colegio de la Frontera Norte and the Instituto Tecnologico) where Dr. Arias has conducted similar special projects over his career. In several chapters Dr. Arias focuses on realizing the institutional advantage and institutional potential of operational, reconciled, and big data systems as well as data assets in supporting enterprise data management strategies and enterprise data analytics in either the bricks and motar and/or online university by applying Enterprise Architecture together with social systems engineering in order to understand:
How to design relational databases that are used to manage operational systems
How to query relational databases using Structured Query Language (SQL) and ask “What if?” scenarios
How to design data warehouses and university intelligence systems that take into account the values and beliefs of its populace
Understand the principles of data profiling, data integration, and master data management.
Original language | American English |
---|---|
Media of output | Online |
State | Published - 2025 |
Disciplines
- Architecture
- Arts and Humanities
- Business
- Education
- Higher Education
- Engineering
- Law
- Life Sciences
- Medicine and Health Sciences
- Physical Sciences and Mathematics
- Social and Behavioral Sciences