College gets new technology

By Carrie Porsche Jones, On-Line Forty-Niner

Wednesday, November 25, 1998

Faculty, staff and students in the College of Liberal Arts are more prepared for the millennium with the addition of new computers, computer workstations and technological improvements.

Richard Outwater, director of facilities and technology planning, said his committee worked with Facilities Planning, Budget and Ad Hoc Language/English Lab Renovation and individual faculty on the technological planning and budgeting.

He said the college computer labs have been the first priority. Renovation and upgrading physical size and hardware capability of the instructional labs will make them more productive resources for faculty and staff.

The third floor of the language and English labs has already undergone renovation. The new space created two new labs for the use of Asian and Asian-American studies, the romance, German and Russian languages, literature and English departments.

The new space will house 68 new Pentium II workstations and will be available for classroom and self-instructional activities. The facility will be further expanded when the renovation of an adjacent lab is completed at the end of 1998.

The journalism instructional lab will be brought into the millennium with the addition of 23 badly needed Pentium II workstations with full campus and Internet connection. The computers will replace the old Macintosh II computers now in use.

Ivan Goldman, lecturer in the journalism department, said the new computers will be installed in January.

"I think it's terrific that the university is recognizing that we have special needs, Goldman said. "The main thing is that we will be on the Net. We need to do a lot of research in this department and we have to be on the Internet."

The Geography GIS Lab will be expanded with minor construction and the addition of 20 new Pentium II workstations.

The addition of 16 new Pentium II workstations will increase the capacity of workspace in the two social science labs to 44 workstations.

The Psychology Lab will undergo major renovation that will significantly improve existing computer lab facilities.

All the instructional labs - journalism, psychology, geography, language, English and one in the Social Science Public Affairs Building - will receive projection equipment that will give the instructors the capability to project computer images from the instructor's workstation and the Internet.

Full-time faculty members who were not upgraded last year will be reviewed for new computer purchases of the new Power MAC or the Pentium PC. The new budget will also include funds for other equipment that is justified for instructional use.

The outdated projectors in Lecture Halls 150 and 151 will be replaced with new computer projections systems after installation in the College of Business Administration, Rooms 117 and 139 are completed, Outwater said.

The expectation is that most of the other lecture facilities can be equipped during the 1988-99 academic year, he said.