SUNDIAL Network Studio Tour

CLICK ON ANY COMPACTED IMAGE IN THE LEFTHAND COLUMN TO VIEW THE FULL-SIZE (384 x 256) VERSION OF THAT SLIDE.

For 14 years the SUNDIAL Network was an integral service and the technological pride of Rio Salado Community College in Phoenix, Arizona.  Rio Salado, the 6th of 10 community colleges in the Maricopa County Community College District, was originally conceived as a "college without walls," roughly based on the British Open University model and generally charged with the mission to use innovative methods, community education, distance learning, and developing technologies to deliver post secondary education to traditionally under-served communities, groups and individuals throughout the county.

The SUNDIAL Network, inspired by and modeled after the innovative and historically significant University of Wisconsin-Extension Teleconferencing Center in Madison, Wisconsin, faithfully served a central role in pursuit of this mission through a combination of traditional site-based audioconferencing, in-home conference call classes, audiographics and multimedia conferencing and as a participant site in the Maricopa District's digital microwave Video Conference Network (VCN).

This past July (1996), the college moved from its previous historical downtown site, depicted in these photos, to a more upscale six-story corporate tower in the shadow of Arizona State University in Tempe.

At about the same time the Rio Salado administration decided to drop the "Community" from the college's official name (It is now just "Rio Salado College"), it was also decided that the existing teleconferencing facilities were no longer necessary to the new goals of the organization and could be effectively reduced to the size of a small (though quite expensive), state-of-the-art digital "teleconference server" on the school's LAN. Maintained by computer support staff, this new "bridge" is now operated as a primarily automated, dial-up service in support of college administrative activities and a greatly reduced schedule of distance learning courses.

Most classes now use this new telephone conferencing system just for instructor-student group meetings in support of coursework primarily accessed via other media such as video telecourses and internet correspondance classes. Current administrative policy at Rio Salado no longer seems to support the use of audio and/or video teleconferencing as the central and primary medium for any distance based classes. The Distance Learning department no longer schedules or administrates the use of the SUNDIAL "Bridge," and, in fact, the SUNDIAL Network is no longer a part of (or directly operated by) the academic side of the college.

Rio Salado will probably continue to use the SUNDIAL Network name in reference to this new system, but to many it will somehow never mean or stand for quite the same again.

Much of the inspiration for this web site centers around my desire to preserve something of the history and tradition of service with "the human touch" that made the SUNDIAL Network experience very special to so many "clients, customers, faculty and students" for so many years.  That's why the "SUNDIAL" is included in the name of this web site.  And the "NovaTryst" is just plain old Latin/Greek for "New Meeting" or "New Compact" ...and that has a lot to do with my own personal goal to achieve some kind of Phoenix-like resurrection out of the ashes of the legendary SUNDIAL Network that once and never was...