The grant includes a $300,000 commitment to establish the Cisco/UNCF University Scholars Program. The program provides two-year scholarships ($4000 per year) to students entering their junior year, who have a minimum 3.2 GPA and are pursuing a degree in electrical engineering or computer science. Students from 29 UNCF and non-UNCF colleges and universities across the country are eligible to apply. The first group of Cisco/UNCF scholars includes students from public HBCUs, such as North Carolina A&T State University and Morgan State University.

The grant is part of UNCF’s Technology Enhancement Capital Campaign that was launched in March 2000 to strengthen the technology capacities of UNCF’s member institutions by bolstering software, hardware, training and faculty development, and technical support.

“This exciting partnership with Cisco will help bolster the capability and performance of our schools’ networks and will elevate their systems to levels that are required for research institutions,” says William H. Gray III, president and CEO of UNCF.

As part of Cisco’s grant to UNCF, 50 Cisco Catalyst 4840 switches were donated and installed at all 39 UNCF member schools, which are valued at $1.5 million. These 4840 catalyst switches provide substantial upgrades in capability and performance to the member institutions’ computer network systems.

“We are pleased to be supporting the United Negro College Fund through the Cisco/UNCF Scholars Program. Through the Scholars Program, Cisco will provide UNCF the financial support and equipment necessary to assist in developing the next generation of Information Technology leaders,” says John Morgridge, Cisco Systems, Inc. board chairman.

The Cisco/UNCF Scholars Program is part of Cisco’s efforts to support information technology education worldwide. The centerpiece of Cisco’s support is the Cisco Networking Academy Program, which employs an e-learning model, using a combination of Web- and skills-based, instructor-led learning and hands-on exercises to teach students how to design, build and maintain computer networks. Currently, more than 265,000 students are enrolled in more than 9400 Networking Academies in 142 countries around the world. The curriculum is available in nine languages.

Cisco Networking Academies are established in high schools, higher education institutions, military bases, work-force retraining centers, juvenile detention centers and homeless shelters.

The gift, from John P. and Tashia F. Morgridge, will be matched dollar for dollar by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, an independent organization that raises money to support scientific research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a proposed project that would bring together scientists from various disciplines to conduct research on disease and medicine. The project developer is the Alumni Research Foundation, but officials said that after the institutes are built, ownership of one of them will be transferred to the university.

Another $50-million in public support for the institutes, proposed by Wisconsin’s governor, Jim Doyle, a Democrat, is subject to approval by the State Building Commission.

One of the institutes, to be used primarily by the university, will be public and will use government grants. The other, to be named the Morgridge Institute for Research, will be private. It will be designed to let scientists make faster breakthroughs because they will not have to comply with restrictions on the use of government funds for human-embryonic-stem-cell research, for example.

John D. Wiley, the university’s chancellor, said in a written statement that “the Morgridges’ generosity has triggered a public-private partnership that will enable us to probe the convergence of various sciences and make the kinds of discoveries needed to protect human health and expand scientific knowledge.”

The Morgridges also gave the university $31-million in 2004 to renovate the education building. Ms. Morgridge is a retired special-education teacher.

E-learning is not just e-training. “Most people still try to solve training problems with e-learning. They focus too strongly on training metrics. Between 50 and 70 percent of what is learned on the job is unstructured, through informal contact and content–at Cisco, less than 20 percent of e-learning strategy is about training. It is information, communication, collaboration and then training. Today’s workers constantly need new information. Online systems should allow them to jump straight to the source and, technically speaking, that’s not training. People should be able to access information when they need it and learn what they require in 20 minutes or less.”

Centralized deployment; decentralized development. “If e-learning efforts center too closely on IT, students will wander off and the department will lose the ability to leverage contact with everyone. At Cisco, the Learning Systems Group’s goal is not to create content for every department, but to keep 35,000 employees guided toward convergence. We don’t want to rule the world from a content perspective. We don’t know it all, and we don’t pretend that we do. We just leverage it.”

It’s not just about cutting fixed expenses. “It’s about measuring positive business impact which can be difficult when all of the required corporate data to do so is unavailable. Five years ago, Cisco operated six LMS systems, none of which were hooked up to HR. There is a huge increase in the companies building tools to help deploy these systems to measure ROI.”

If you build it … who cares? “IT is your best friend, but don’t ignore marketing. People must know about what you are doing in your training departments and how it will benefit them. Get marketing involved–both externally and internally. At Cisco, between one-third and half of all marketing efforts focus on internal marketing.”

E-reading is basically sleeping. “To be effective, e-learning programs must fully use the technology. It is a bit of a myth that video programs can overwhelm a company’s internal bandwidth; video itself actually requires a small pipeline. What absorbs much of a company’s system is video-on-demand, which is much different than live streaming video sessions that reach everyone at the same time. At Cisco, 185 separate content servers, which are ‘LAN-locked’ house much of the video-on-demand programs. So the video-on-demand never hits the live network. But of course, if you don’t have the bandwidth, we are willing to sell you some.”