by Roy Rodenstein
Staff
As a member of the student computer ownership (SCO) committee, Associate Dean Richard Leblanc has some ideas about how the College of Computing may be affected. The commitee includes faculty members from all colleges, Vice Provost and Associate Vice President for Information Technology Gordon Wishon, as well as two students (one of them is the CoC's Alex Snoeren).
Leblanc said that the committee is not dealing with finer issues in the policy at this point because the Regents have not yet approved the policy of student computer ownership. The Regents are expected to make a decision on the issue this spring, at which time work on the nitty-gritty would begin. Thus, SCO would likely not go into effect until 1997, and would not be retroactive.
One of the main issues concerning the SCO is that of students who are not easily able to pay for Tech's current costs and would not be able to afford a computer upon entrance--Leblanc emphasized that the committee would not want the policy to prevent anyone from coming to Tech. At the same time, Leblanc discussed how he saw this as a benefit, as well--if financial aid is found for students in this position, SCO would be an egalitarian measure, allowing access to a personal machine to students who could not afford one. Other issues that will need to be finalized include whether computers may be leased or bought outright, how upgradable the machines will be, and whether Tech would mass-purchase computers and pass them onto the students or whether the process would be on more of a machine-by-machine basis.
There were several other issues raised by Assistant Dean Kurt Eiselt. Regarding the possibility that machine recommendations would be made according to a student's major, Kurt humorously posted a tough question; to paraphrase: would a student who changes majors find someone changing majors in the opposite direction and trade computers midway? Leblanc, however, said that it seems unlikely at this point that colleges will have differring standards on the suggested platforms for their students. Otherwise, it would be harder to conceive SCO as a standard, field-leveling policy.
Kurt and Leblanc agreed that, for CS students, the suggested machine would likely only be sufficient for freshman and sophomore work, since the later undergrad courses require greater and different computing power than might be in the standard platform. Thus, Director of Administrative Computing David Leonard thinks it is unlikely that clusters will be removed--while low-end-computing demand will decrease, high-end demand will increase.
SCO might allow, nevertheless, for the possibility that CS1501/1502 classes reduce their use of the DOS clusters on campus, as students would be able to use their own machines at their own pace to learn lab material. Leonard is also concerned about the tech-support issues that will need to be handled--will there be a specialized department to deal with students' tech-support needs, will OIT's budget be increased for this purpose, or will a lot of support responsibility fall on the shoulders of colleges themselves?
He also mentioned that in other universities where SCO has been implemented, faculty have been given the same platform as students have to work with, which would simplify tech-support but would have great cost. At such colleges, centralized tech-support and printing were also provided.
In sum, SCO is still on the drawing board. The Regents will make their decision- then the real work of implementation will begin.