Free Wi-Fi?

For the first time ever, students will be able to access wireless Internet in every residence hall.

The Information Technology department has been steadily working on plans to provide wireless access on each floor of every residence hall.

Currently, Infotech is installing wireless access points into all campus housing, and full functionality and accessibility are expected starting by the fall of 2008. A recent contract with Xirrus provides 100 percent coverage throughout the buildings, with no regard to how many access points it will take.

The decision to provide the service in the residence halls was the effect of a recent survey.

Students were asked in which three places did they want wireless access the most, and an overwhelming number chose campus housing as their number one answer.

Marshall Eidson, the associate vice president for technology said, “We want to listen to what students have to say, and we want to respond.”

 Eidson has also advocated the plans to make more of the campus wireless.

“As far as IT is concerned, we are happy to make every inch of this campus wireless. All it takes is time and money,” he said. “But we want to implement change appropriately with the buy-in and feedback from all stakeholders.”

He also believes that wireless Internet has become a necessity on the growing campus.

“Mobility is an expectation now,” he said. “There may have been a time when it was a luxury, but it really is an expectation.”

This year is not the first time that the campus has expected wireless Internet availability, but steps have been taken to ensure that plans will not fall through.

Eidson said about making this year’s deployment a success, “It is just getting a critical group of people together and saying ‘Hey, we want to make this thing happen.’”

The upgrade will not affect tuition. Infotech uses student technology fees to fund the project.

The project will influence students substantially. Wireless availability will encourage students  in dorm lobbies to gather around laptops and watch Youtube videos together, get on Facebook or even do online homework as a group, which they are currently only able to do in the SUB or library.

Melody Haynes, a sophomore education major said, “I think (wireless) will make it easier to access the Internet because we won’t be limited by cords. We will be able to go anywhere in the dorms and have Internet access.”

Students will be able to free themselves from their desks and use their laptops wherever they see fit.

Freshman business management major Michael Archa said, “You can sit down in the comfort of your recliner or couch, sit there and do your homework rather than sit in a desk just like you do in class.”

Most recently, InfoTech surveyed students on their UMHB provided e-mail accounts and their usage needs.

More than 200 students responded, and InfoTech is using that feedback to explore a partnership with Google to provide students with university-sponsored Gmail accounts.

This is one of several changes that Eidson said will affect students in a positive way in the near future.

“It is one of many things that we have planned to come that are getting student feedback and trying to directly address expressed technology needs.”