financial support of faculty/staff mobile communication services in the next three years. Fewer than a third of respondents agree that handheld devices (BlackBerry, Treo, iPhone) are

u now an essential tool for the higher education professional, but nearly two-thirds agree they will be in three years. The estimated percentage of the institution's staff (only) who have handheld devices is signifi- u cantly greater where the institution subsidizes or pays outright for a larger percentage of staff mobile communication service. This suggests that institutional funding plays an empowering role in the adoption of handheld devices by staff. As of the date of our survey, responding institutions had been slow at adapting preexisting u web-based services for delivery to handheld devices and at developing new web-based services for those devices. Half of respondents had adapted no preexisting services. Of the institutions saying they had a strategic plan for IT, only 4 in 10 say their plan identifies u mobile communications as an area of importance. And only 1 in 10 of all respondents say their institution has a documented strategy of any sort for making key institutional web services avail- able via handheld devices. These findings suggest that the current priority assigned to mobile communications at most institutions is moderate, at best. Identifying mobile communications as an important area in the institution's IT strategic plan u appears to boost the priority of the institution's projects to adapt preexisting web-based services and develop new ones for delivery to handheld devices.