Mott Community College
Building a Secure, Fully Integrated Digital Learning Environment

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While based in Flint, Michigan, Mott Community College (MCC) has grown over the years to serve students all over the country as well as many foreign countries—thanks in large part to the school’s aggressive pursuit of technology and distance learning applications. Founded more than 80 years ago and now offering more than 100 academic programs, Mott Community College strives to provide learning opportunities for all who want to identify and develop their abilities and interests.

Key to fulfilling its mission, the college provides a sound general and liberal arts education and trains a well-prepared workforce that can successfully compete in the global community. The school’s continuing education programs are extremely popular with working professionals in the region. For example, General Motors enrolls many of its employees in MCC’s technical training courses to sharpen their expertise. Overall, in just the last year, the student population has reach more than 10,000 in traditional courses and another 4,000 in non-credit customized training.

Leveraging shared technologies and effectively using resources to build and sustain community alliances, the college’s faculty and staff are committed to equal access and opportunity for all students. MCC’s strength lies in promoting excellence in teaching and eliminating barriers to learning.

The Challenge:
Deploy a converged secure network to support new services yet still keep IT costs down
Since its early beginnings, Mott Community College has never been shy about pushing the envelope to improve operations for the betterment of students and faculty. Networking technology, in particular, has long been an important tool in enhancing the learning experience. In fact, MCC was one of the early adopters of Enterasys Networks’ LAN technology in the classroom to support collaborative applications such as CAD shareware for select trade schools.

According to Mark Hope, executive director of MIS for Mott Community College, the school has been able to build a reputation as one of the most progressive institutions in the state by embracing technology and working it into its curriculum. “We recognized early on that networking can be a great facilitator for learning and have worked hard to maximize its potential,” said Hope.

In recent years, MCC has extended its reach through a powerful wide area network, connecting more than 10 satellite locations in a four-county area via a T1 point-to-point network and long-haul Gigabit Ethernet. This has enabled the college to share critical programs and resources with partner schools and organizations in the greater Flint, Michigan region, including a career-building firm. “We’ve taken the ‘community’ aspect of our name to heart,” says Hope. “By branching out and reaching more people—whether through online courses or simply promoting participation in school events—we can make a real difference in the community.”

One of the most anticipated and ambitious projects at MCC was the addition of a new Regional Technology Center (RTC) on campus. This state-of-the-art facility features an all-digital communications system, offering converged voice, video and data services to students, faculty and staff—including a mobile production studio and digital whiteboarding.

According to Jason Moehlman, manager of network services for Mott Community College, the RTC represents a significant milestone for the school. “There’s been a lot of hype surrounding convergence in higher education, but few schools have been able to deliver it in a timely or cost-effective manner. We looked at the benefits of the solution and mapped out a strategy,” says Moehlman.

The Solution:
Secure, standards-based wireless LAN that's easy to set up, easier to maintain
Before anything was decided with the RTC, Hope and Moehlman conferred with their solutions provider Enterasys Networks. Over the years, Enterasys had laid a solid foundation for MCC through a scalable Gigabit Ethernet network, consisting of Enterasys’ X-Pedition ER16 core routers and Matrix multilayer switches in the data center and wiring closets. X-Pedition 2000s at the school’s remote sites helped ensure reliable, end-to-end connectivity to support many of the school’s day-to-day applications—from e-mail and web access to selected courseware.

The existing infrastructure was proof enough for MCC that Enterasys was the best choice to deploy the RTC network. “We’ve never had a problem with any of the Enterasys equipment,” explains Moehlman. “And since we had already scaled up to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone using basically the same switches and routers, we were confident that a similar configuration would handle the demands at the RTC—even with the new voice and video systems.”

Almost mirroring the setup at the MCC data center, the new RTC features two ER16s connected to Matrix N7s and Matrix E7s using Gigabit and multi-Gigabit links. Voice and video servers from Avaya and Polycom, respectively, deliver advanced voice and video based e-learning services. Moehlman and his team were able to integrate these critical IP applications onto the infrastructure easily, implementing a three-tiered Quality of Service policy where priority is given first to voice, then video and finally data.

“As you know, voice and video can be very sensitive to jitter or latency over an IP network,” comments Moehlmam. “But the Enterasys equipment’s built-in rate limiting, application prioritization and pinpoint bandwidth control help ensure that these applications are delivered as expected, end to end.”

One of the real assets of this new facility is the production studio that allows for the simultaneous recording and broadcast of video over IP. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm became one of the early beneficiaries of this service when almost two thousand people turned up at a special workshop on state resources at the RTC. There wasn’t enough space in the conference room to accommodate all the attendees, so MCC quickly set up a video camera and streamed the speeches in real time to other monitors throughout the center. The presentation was then stored on a server for use at other government-sponsored events.

Convergence and cost savings. The overwhelming success of the RTC has led Moehlman and his staff to explore the deployment of convergence applications in other campus facilities. Just recently, the Student Services building needed to add more phone lines, but there were severe limitations with the existing conduit. Rather than physically install new wire throughout the structure, Moelman opted for Avaya IP phones that could plug right into the standards-based Enterasys network infrastructure. MCC was also able to add video-over-IP capabilities quickly and easily. All in all, the school saved more than $60,000 through the converged solution.

“We’re just beginning to realize the full potential of IP communications in higher education. Because the Enterasys network is so scalable and standards-based—with full redundancy—we have the flexibility and freedom to add the services we need, when and where we need them,” explains Moehlman. “IP phones, videoconferencing, multimedia collaborative applications. If a school requires these services, we’re confident we can deliver them without spending a lot of time or money.”

The Future:
Further extending the secure network with enhanced mobility and control
While Mott Community College has already reaped significant benefits from its converged, multi-service network, it expects to take further advantage of some of Enterasys’ unique value-add features and functionality. For example, Moehlman is evaluating Enterasys’ PROF Classroom Control solution, enabled through User Personalized Networking (UPN), which gives instructors the easy-to-use tools to limit web access or e-mail during lectures as well as open up access during research or study periods.

“The Classroom Control solution is very attractive to us. Our positive experience with other control features within the Enterasys infrastructure makes this a natural progression for Mott,” says Moehlman. Indeed, the bandwidth control features on Enterays switching and routing have practically paid for themselves in T1 usage fees. “By limiting some of the applications available to students in the dorms—and better conserving our T1 service—we’ve saved more an $30,000 in bandwidth charges,” explains Moehlman. “Between the savings here and in the deployment of our convergence applications, the Enterays network is practically paying for itself.”

Both Mark Hope and Jason Moehlman foresee a time when MCC can extend the delivery of its next-generation convergence applications to wireless users on campus, its many satellite campuses and even those students enrolled online thousands of miles away. “We know we have the infrastructure in place to make MCC and all-digital college,” said Hope. “Really, it’s just a matter of the rest of the industry catching up with the standards and technologies to make it a viable reality.”