Agency: Utah Education Network

Function

The Utah Education Network (UEN), a partnership of Utah's public and higher education institutions, delivers education statewide through state-of-the-art technology. It operates a public television station, KUEN-9, which includes UEN-TV, MHz Worldview, and UEN-TV News. It works closely with partner station KUED-7. It provides educational interactions through Interactive Video-Conferencing (IVC), and connects state institutions to each other and the Internet. UEN's mission is to "provide the citizens of Utah access to the highest quality, most effective instructional experiences, administrative support services, library services, student services, and teacher resources regardless of location or time."

Statutory Authority

Utah Code Annotated 53B-17 establishes UEN and assigns its responsibilities.

• UCA 53B-17-102 establishes UEN as a consortium and partnership between public and higher education to support the telecommunications technology, internet access, and programs/services for the delivery of distance education for educational institutions throughout the state.
• UCA 53B-17-103 requires the Legislature to provide an appropriation, subject to budget constraints, for the operation of KUED-TV for the services listed above.
• UCA 53B-17-104 directs UEN to coordinate the statewide development and implementation of the data network for education.

Performance

UEN networks for education, meaning they connect Utah Higher Education institutions, K-12 traditional and charter schools, and public libraries to the Internet. This measure shows the number of broadband connectivity through UEN. UEN matches the state investment in connecting Utah schools with E-Rate funding. From FY 2008 to FY 2012, UEN has secured over $52,366,347 in E-Rate reimbursements for school connectivity.

UEN delivers fully interactive classroom instruction to college and public school students at over 800 classroom locations throughout the state. UEN's interactive video conferencing (IVC) supports thousands of classes, full degree programs, concurrent enrollment, administrative events, and other IVC activities each year. This measure shows the number of institutions/agencies participating in UEN's IVC. This measure does not have specific targets each fiscal year. All IVC requests that UEN receives are delivered. Since FY 2009 demand for IVC has continued to increase.

UEN licenses and supports an Enterprise Learning Management System (Canvas) for all higher education colleges and universities for on-line and in-person classes. This measure shows the average total number of concurrent users by academic semester using the Vista Blackboard and Canvas Learning Management Systems against total faculty/instructor and student headcount for the fall semester of the academic year.

*Weber State University and Southern Utah University are not included in 2009-2011 as these institutions transitioned to the UEN consortium license and hosting in the fall semester of 2011.

In addition to the key performance measures listed above, UEN also measures its performance in usage of the Pioneer Library and sessions of interactive video conferencing. It also closely monitors network utilization and reliability, among other things, and reports those results monthly to its Board.

Funding Detail

UEN's financial resources come from General and Education Fund appropriations, federal grants, federal e-rate discounts, and reimbursement by education entities. As UEN's state appropriation has decreased, it has aggressively pursued federal grants.

In past years, UEN's budget has been appropriated in numerous line items. Since FY 2008, it has all been appropriated to one line item, allowing UEN maximum flexibility in managing resources.

Table 1: Operating and Capital Budget Including Expendable Funds and Accounts