NCSU is still developing policies to govern computing allocations [5.4.1]. The University has two major sets of centralized computing facilities in the Computing Center, which are made available to all academic colleges and departments through an "allocation" process. The first kind of centralized computing facilities are "public." The Computing Center runs an extensive group of short courses, with entry into the public courses being on a first-come, first-served basis. Also provided for general use are computer documentation and a newsletter (Connect). The second kind of centralized computing facilities are set up to serve a specific college or department, and access is restricted to that group.
The University has two distinct computing branches: academic and administrative. Administrative computing is governed by the administrators within colleges, and resource allocation is determined on the basis of need [5.4.2]. Academic computing is more difficult to define, since it is determined by student needs [5.4.2].
In the past, the actual purchase of computers and support staff for educational activities has been delegated to the individual colleges and schools through deans' budgetary decisions. The only allocation policy handled centrally has been establishment of communications channels. Although wiring of all campus buildings has not been completed, plans and priorities have been established. The University Uniform Building Wiring Plan establishes the wiring for all new buildings, major renovations, and for retrofitting of existing buildings. A Wiring Committee reporting to the associate vice-chancellor for computing sets the priorities for new wiring projects. The Uniform Wiring Plan provides guidelines for priorities, costs, and specifications in wiring the entire campus.
Recommendation 9.25: NCSU should speed completion of the universal wiring plan to connect computers in faculty offices with those in laboratories and
classrooms.
The outcome of having no central policy on computer allocations can be seen in the wide differences in the distribution of computers across NCSU's various colleges and schools [5.4.1]. Table 9.5 shows the distribution of number of available undergraduate keyboards and undergraduate students per available keyboard per college. As the table shows, there is a great discrepancy among colleges and schools. It should be pointed out, however, that different colleges may feel that their students have a greater or lesser need for available computers than the average.
Students per
Location Keyboards keyboard
-------- -------- ------------
Agriculture and Life Sciences 150 20.2
Design 21 21.2
Education and Psychology 76 11.0
Engineering 600 9.6
Forest Resources 25 25.7
Humanities and Social Sciences 116 27.8
Management 50 38.2
Physical & Mathematical Sciences 122 8.2
Textiles 62 14.1
Veterinary Medicine 29 --
Library 28 --
Computer Center 30 --
Computer Graphics 20 --
Human Resources 16 --
Lifelong Education 20 --
Graduate Student Association 4 --
Athletics 8 --
Dormitories 102 --
Although there are no published guidelines for availability of computing access to students, discussions at conferences and seminars relating to the use of computers in education have informally agreed on a general rule of one available keyboard (representing a microcomputer, terminal to a central computer, or a workstation) for each ten undergraduate students. This refers to computers that are located in areas for student use, not including faculty offices or research labs. This "standard" is generally thought to be minimal, but is more than most schools and colleges at NCSU provide.
Recommendation 9.26: NCSU should establish and implement a universitywide policy that ensures student access to computing services at a level of at least one keyboard for each ten undergraduate
students.
To smooth out the differences between the colleges and schools, recently two committees have been established to address academic computing needs [5.4.1; 5.4.2]. The first committee is the University Academic Computer Planning Committee, which has been charged with "assisting in the short-term and long-range planning processes for research and instructional computing and computer communications." The second committee is the Campus Committee for Student Computing, which was just established in fall 1993. The provost has not yet finalized the charge to this committee, but the committee will be headed by the associate provost for academic computing. The principal purpose of this committee will be to characterize the student-computing environment, determine the needs required for excellence, create an implementation plan to ensure the realization of goals, and develop a uniform universitywide policy for allocation of computing resources for educational pursuits.
Recommendation 9.27: NCSU should correct existing problems of access to facilities, and ensure that new construction is accessible to all members of the University
community.
Policies regarding priorities, access, facility usage, etc. have been documented and are available through the set of User Memos, published by the NCSU Computing Center [5.4.1].
Outside of the Colleges of Textiles and Engineering, however, the quality of computing services available to students vary widely. Respondents to the subcommittee's survey on educational support facilities frequently complained about the obsolescence or lack of computing facilities.
In addition, respondents to the educational support committee's survey frequently decried the lack of funding to develop instructional environments and support services. Computerized classrooms are a proven way to expand the learning environment (for example, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences master classrooms). There is a need for more classrooms of this type. To meet this need, computerized classrooms for undergraduate teaching should be provided. The number, locations, and specifications of these should be determined by an assessment of instructional needs in particular areas.
Recommendation 9.28: NCSU should provide more undergraduate teaching computer laboratories throughout the
University.
NCSU still supports some mainframe systems, but the trend is toward heterogeneous-platform distributed computing. While the academic mainframes are being phased out, they will be available for continued use.
Supported research is supposed to pay the cost of providing mainframe computing, but nonbilled computing on the mainframes is allowed for instructional use, course accounts, graduate-student research, and faculty unsupported research. Such nonbilled computing is supported by NCSU funds from state appropriations. Allocation levels for such use is set according to usage history and requests from the deans [5.3.3]. Although course accounts are routinely made available, accounts for individual undergraduate students are not common.
Other central facilities made available to the entire NCSU community on a nonbilled basis are the Happenings! and Public Software Access Facility information services. Happenings! is a campuswide information system providing an extensive array of campus information, including campus directories, calendars, newsletters, and reports. Happenings! also provides access to the campuswide information systems of five other universities in the UNC system. The Public Software Access Facility provides an extensive array of computer programs. These services are made available over the campus network, as is the Library On-line Public Access Catalog, and so can be reached directly from the campus network or by telephone modem. A dial-in modem bank is provided by the Computing Center for general usage on a nonbilled basis, and a similar service with guaranteed levels of access on a billed basis is being tested.
The Computing Center also provides, coordinates, and supports a number of computer software licenses. Users often are required to pay a fee, but the total cost is usually greater than the fees charged, especially during the initial phases of use of the software on campus.
NCSU researchers often are provided time on the NSF-supported supercomputer centers as part of competitive grant proposals. In addition, NCSU is a participant in the North Carolina Supercomputer Center (NCSC) and makes extensive use of the computers there. The NCSC provides a Cray Y-MP supercomputer, a KSR scalable parallel computer and a Convex mini-super computer. A wide variety of research and instructional use, including graduate and undergraduate courses, make use of the NCSC facilities. NCSU's "smart node" relationship with the Cornell University CNSF supercomputer center provides additional supercomputer access.
