Dell today announced that colleges and universities are partnering with Dell to create a digital-learning environment to support their students and faculty with the tools and access they need to prepare for the challenges of the 21st-century workforce. From the data center to the device, Dell works with schools to provide simple, affordable and manageable solutions to address their IT needs and personalize learning for students. The company will showcase its comprehensive set of higher-education solutions at Educause 2013 in booth 1301, including the recently unveiled family of Dell Venue tablets.

Developing entrepreneurial skills and providing tools and resources also happens through the Dell Education Challenge, a program in its second year and part of the Dell Social Innovation Challenge to inspire college and university students across the globe to develop projects to innovate primary education worldwide. This year's semi-finalists will compete for $30,000 in seed funding from Dell and gain mentorship to put their ideas into action. Through the Dell Education Challenge and personalized learning solutions, Dell helps prepare students for their future careers.

"At Dell, we know that the IT needs of a college or university are incredibly diverse depending on their academic goals, student body and campus infrastructure," said Jon Phillips, director of worldwide Education at Dell. "But what is consistent across all of higher education is the imperative to graduate students ready for the workforce. Dell is committed to delivering schools the solutions they need to personalize learning and prepare students for successful careers."

The demands on IT are growing more complex as colleges and universities provide students with access to learning anytime, anywhere and on any device. A partner to a growing number of higher education institutions across the country, Dell designs solutions to address specific challenges for higher education based on its years of expertise. Bringing innovation to the classroom, Dell offers instructional technology to deliver online content and engage students in learning and high performance computing (HPC) solutions to accelerate research initiatives. Dell also empowers colleges and universities with its education data management solution that applies data-driven analytics to track student progress and improve student retention and help turn data in powerful insights.

To support these latest innovations in higher education, Dell's provides schools with end-to-end capabilities to build a reliable, secure and affordable IT infrastructure from the data center to the device. Dell's virtual lab solution gives students access to campus lab resources and applications from anywhere through desktop virtualization technology and Dell Wyse thin and zero clients. In addition, Dell's software solutions address key areas of campus IT: data center and cloud management, information management, mobile workspace management, security and data protection. To deploy and maintain campus IT infrastructure, Dell Services helps colleges and universities address common pain points such as the migration of Windows XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8 with its Windows Migration Services.

Dell is working with the following higher education institutions to support their learning goals and educate their students for the future:

Academy of Art University chose Dell Precision workstations to give their students a professional working environment.

"Academy of Art University teaches aspiring students the skills they need to become professional artists and designers, across many disciplines including Architecture, Animation, Industrial Design and Fashion," said Dr. Elisa Stephens, president of the Academy of Art University. "These fields require students to work in demanding, performance-critical applications and we rely on Dell Precision to meet their high-performance computing needs. Dell Precision workstations are packed with the power and graphics capabilities necessary for our students to produce their best work. We find that the most dynamic learning environment is one where the classroom matches the caliber of the professional marketplace."

George Washington University partnered with Dell to design and deploy a centralized high-performance computing cluster.

"The Colonial One cluster, based on Dell HPC technology, will tremendously boost the amount of computational power we can dedicate to our projects," says Andrei Alexandru, assistant professor, Physics, The George Washington University. "We can now carry out simulations that are more realistic and closer to physics, which is something we couldn't do before because we didn't have the computational power to do it."

Kennesaw University transforms HR processes with Dell Software's Toad Business Intelligence Suite to deliver fast and accurate HRMS, employment, benefits, and payroll services.

"We have multiple data sources, and we're finally able to tie all of them together with this solution," said Brad Smith, director of Payroll Services and Human Resource Information Systems. "We wanted something easy to administer to deliver data and data analysis tools to users' desktops. That is what we got with the Toad Business Intelligence Suite."

Pepperdine University relied on Dell Software and its Dell KACE family of systems management appliances to deploy an enterprise client computing management system to automate and consolidate the management of university-owned Windows and Macintosh devices, faculty and staff computers, along with public use workstations.

"The automation Pepperdine has achieved with our Dell KACE device management solution has helped us close a critical gap in information security as well as well as enhance the quality and responsiveness of technical support for our colleagues at the University," said Kim Cary, chief information security officer for Pepperdine University. "As a result, we have been able to shift time and resources away from technical operations to focus more on teaching and learning support."

Southern Illinois University selected the Dell Latitude 10 for its one-to-one tablet program, the Mobile Dawg Initiative.

"The Dell Latitude tablet enables students to go way beyond reading course material," said David Crain, assistant provost and chief information officer, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. "With Windows 8, students are able to easily conduct online research and connect to our campus apps, as well as write reports and use the same software that they do in our computer labs."

University of Massachusetts Lowell deployed Dell Cloud Client Computing solutions for learning anytime, anywhere.

"Our goal is to enhance the learning experience and give 24/7 access to the digital resources students need to excel," said Steve Athanas, Director of Systems Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell. "By partnering with Dell to deploy virtual labs, we not only give our students a flexible and state-of-the-art learning and testing environment, we also save power and IT resources to improve overall service delivery on campus."

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Colleges and Universities personalize learning and innovate research with @DellEdu higher-ed solutions #EDU13 #DoMoreEdu

Additional Resources:

More information, including images, infographics, full research reports and blogs that further explore the research findings and Latitude 10 for Education found here.

About Dell

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is committed to helping students develop the knowledge and skills they need to learn and succeed in an increasingly digital world and a globally competitive workforce. As a top provider of technology and services to schools, Dell listens to and works with students, educators, administrators, parents and community members around the world to deliver innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more in and out of the classroom. Learn more about Dell in Education at www.dell.com. Follow us on Twitter @DellEDU.

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Join us at Dell World 2013, Dell's premier customer event exploring how technology solutions and services are driving business innovation. Learn more at www.dellworld.com and follow #DellWorld on Twitter.

Dell, KACE, Latitude, Precision, Toad and Wyse are trademarks of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

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