“The Internet seems to be down more than it’s up,” said Professor Marie Metlay, the Biological Sciences Department chair.
“There is hardly any Wi-Fi all over the school and the connection is very low,” said Giran Kashman, a junior criminology student.
Marc Seybold, the chief information officer of Computing Services, asks that students bear in mind that while the Internet may be down in the area of campus that they are in, that it’s working fine throughout the rest of the campus. He said, “The glass if half full for everyone sitting in front of a working computer.”
Poor wireless Internet connections is one of the problems students and professors have with technical services on campus. Many are experiencing problems with old and slow computers and classrooms without working speakers and projectors. “I hear complaints from time to time from media faculty about technology, particularly in the ‘smart’ classrooms,” said Professor Amanda Frisken, chair of American Studies/Media and Communications. “The most common is that the speakers don’t work with the laptop computers.”
Director of distance learning and professor in the History and Philosophy Department Edward Bever said, “I have had trouble getting my computer to work with the projectors in certain rooms.”
Sociology student Lydia Dawson said, “The projector in one of my classrooms hasn’t been working for half the semester.” Only one of her classmates was able to give a presentation with the projector.
JJ Zaffuto, an audio visual technician who was hired earlier this year, said that the problem that students and professors are experiencing with the projectors could be their graphics card. He has installed boosters to get some laptops to work with the projectors. He and Marc Seybold suggested that when purchasing a laptop, one should choose a laptop that uses an Intel or AMD graphic chip. They explained that these graphic cards don’t wear out as quickly, so laptops with these chips are more likely to work with projectors.
A Childhood Education and Literacy Department professor who prefers to remain anonymous said, “Faculty members have not been assigned upgraded laptops or PCs and rely on some computers that are dated and limited.”
Sophomore psychology student Isaura Reyes said that the technology here is very old. She added, “When professors do advising, they are just going by pen and paper.” She previously attended CW Post, where she said it had all Mac computers and high quality technical services.
Seybold said that Computing Services replaces computers on a three year rotation. So, every year, a third of the computers are replaced and a third of the computers on campus are brand new.
“The college website hasn’t been updated for a while,” said Bever. “I think there’s general agreement it needs work, and it’s my understanding that the office that oversees it is in the process of upgrading it. I think it’s been a while getting to it because of the financial crisis.”
Library Director Stephen Kirkpatrick said that the library has been unable to have links integrated on to the college’s website. To improve this situation, Kirkpatrick suggested, “It will be important for the college to adopt proven web development tools, such as Drupal, and to hire a web master. That would be great for the library and also for everyone else who uses the college website.”
Bever suggested, “The single biggest thing to improve our technology situation, as far as I can tell, is for us to get more money so we can upgrade equipment and increase our support staff. The campus has suffered a series of cuts of support from Albany over the past few years, and while the administration has found ways to soften the impact of these by increasing our own revenue generation, we were in the process of upgrading the campus infrastructure from a very depressed state at the end of the 1990s, and the financial crisis interrupted that process before it was completed. It also makes it difficult to do the routine upgrades that are a necessity, given the continual development of technology.”
Thomas DelGuidice, a professor in the Politics, Economics and Law Department and the director of planning and systems for campus capital development, who also supervises the lab managers, said that Computing Services is under-staffed and in need of more resources. He explained that they are stretching people to get work done. He said, “We’re doing the best we can.”
Seybold said that there are about 4,500 people on campus and only about twenty people on staff in Computing Services. “People forget how little there was here [at SUNY Old Westbury] ten years ago,” said Seybold. “The complexity of the environment is much greater than it was then.”
He noted that there are currently several upgrades of various systems in progress that may resolve some of the problems. Computing Services plans to install 50 thin clients by the middle of the spring 2012 semester. (Thin clients replace a bulky computer and rely on one main computer back in Computing Services, which has all the software.) This will reduce program costs. A thin client won’t work without the main computer. It sits next to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, but takes up only about five square inches. Plans are to install thin clients in the library and the computer lab in the Student Union.
Computing Services will also provide password management from Fischer International. Sometimes a student may lock themselves out of the portal by trying to log in with the wrong password or with caps lock on. To retrieve their password, they would have had to contact someone at the school. With Fischer International’s password management, a student will get a text message with their password when they are having trouble logging on, as long as the student signed up for alerts with the SUNY Alert System.
Finally, DelGuidice said that all of the classrooms in the new building will be “smart” classrooms. “When we move into the new building, everything will be substantially different. The future looks better.”