Wi-fi access spreads to new campus sites
The University will spend $580,000 this year to expand wireless Internet access to all classrooms on campus.
The University’s Enterprise Information Technology Services will complete the expansion project over several years, targeting heavily used classrooms first.
The Student Technology Fee, which increased from $75 to $100 this semester, will fund the expansion.
The project will allow access to the campus network and the Internet in 264 classrooms that don’t have wireless access now, said David Matthews-Morgan, associate director of network operations and infrastructure for EITS.
This year’s technology fee allocation will put wireless access in roughly two-thirds of those classrooms by June 2007, Matthews-Morgan said.
Next year’s money will cover the rest of the classrooms, he said.
Most of the money will be spent on wireless access points, which broadcast the network signals, and controllers for those devices.
EITS is circulating a bid for a contractor to place the access points after conducting a site survey and looking for a vendor for the equipment.
The affected classrooms are located in 48 buildings, and the project will first cover buildings in which the most credit hours are awarded – such as Park Hall and the Journalism building.
The wireless network – called the Personal Access Wireless/Walkup System, or PAWS – already covers dozens of buildings.
Matthews-Morgan said the network now covers most of the outdoor areas where students congregate, such as the North Quad and the space between the Student Learning Center and the Reed Quad.
After covering classrooms, the expansion project also include other areas where students gather, such as student lounges.
The Committee for Applied Instructional Technologies – which develops the plan on how to spend technology fees – collected more than $5 million a year from 2002 to 2005. That amount should surpass $6.5 million a year with the recent technology fee increase.
A CAIT subcommittee consisting of six students from different student groups and six faculty members makes recommendations about using the money.
In November 2005, the subcommittee recommended increasing the technology fee by $25. The change was approved by the Board of Regents in April.
“Students have a say-so in how Student Technology Fee money is distributed,” said Bert DeSimone, communications officer for EITS.
The subcommittee members carried out a “snowball survey” in which they e-mailed an informal survey to as many people as possible and asked those recipients to forward it to others, said Sherry Clouser, a liaison for CAIT.
Most of the respondents said they would like to see increased classroom wireless access, she said.
Jason Milton, a third-year pharmacy student from Clarkesville, has served on the subcommittee for two years as a representative for professional and graduate students.
Milton wrote in an e-mail to The Red & Black that an online questionnaire was overloaded by responses on its first day of operation. He said he also received 150 responses from other pharmacy students.
The opponents of the project were worried wireless access in the classroom would distract students from class, Milton wrote.
Milton wrote that he supported the wireless expansion project “because it’s important for UGA to provide up-to-date and convenient access to available technologies.”
