Excel 2007 : Help with Excel 2007 Standard Template

I'm working to establish a standard template across my institution, and haven't had any problems getting the Book.xltm and Sheet.xltm set up in everyone's XLSTART folders.

However, I've run into all kinds of problems with people going to File>New>Blank Workbook and losing the template. Is there any way to replace the blank workbook in this area with my template? I know you get the template if you just use Ctrl+N, but this place is not terribly tech friendly, and I cannot convince people to convert to the hot key. (I also can't understand why the hot key gets different results than following the menu.)

Does anyone have an idea on how to get around this problem, or is our document standardization initiative dead before it really starts?

(I apologize if this has been answered before, a quick search didn't show any similar questions.)