I'm delighted that Professor James Duderstadt will be delivering the closing plenary at our Fall member meeting, December 12-13, in Arlington, Virginia. Jim is President Emeritus of the University of Michigan, and in recent years has been intensively involved in issues about the future of higher education and the research university in the United States and globally, and has thought deeply about ways in which technology may help to shape this future.

He chaired the US National Academies committee that authored the report "Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University" (see http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10545 )and has recently been serviing on the Academies Committee on Research Universities (see http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/CommitteeView.aspx?key=49219 ) which is completing its work this year.  His talk will include a discussion of some of this work. We'll have more details on this plenary, as well as other aspects of the fall meeting, on our website at www.cni.org in the coming weeks.

This should be a plenary address that is both timely and of lasting importance, and I'm very pleased that  we will be able to host it at our meeting.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI