Lauren Grover/Collegian
Patrick Chartrand in the server room.
A little over five years ago the Hillsdale College campus was disconnected. Technologically that is.
In 2000 the administration allocated over $1 million for Information Technology Services technicians to replace the network and provide Internet connection to all houses and dorms on campus. Since then, ITS has continued to build on the upgrade, improving connection speeds and solving connectivity problems, said Network/Systems Manager Patrick Chartrand.
Virus issues have been a key concern in the last year, prompting ITS to require anti-virus and anti-spyware software for students at the beginning of the fall 2005 semester, Chartrand said. The result confirmed their suspicion that students weren’t using enough protective software.
“Comparing this year and last year—having the requirement has dramatically lowered the number of machines coming into ITS,” Chartrand said. “Either A, it’s working, or B, people aren’t bringing them in.”
Despite the flourish of healthier computers campus-wide, ITS continues to see too many cases of infected computers, many that could be prevented by regular updates of anti-virus and anti-spyware software.
Jeff Yost, ITS training and student services specialist, said that the biggest issue is peer-to-peer file sharing.
“We usually see peer-to-peer problems,” Yost said. “And with the Internet, nothing’s for free. If it’s off the Internet, usually some malicious package comes with it—there are a lot of malicious sites out there.”
Although commonly misconstrued, ITS is not required to service students’ or faculties’ personal computers, but instead is responsible for the network, campus computers and all Ethernet port connections, according to Chartrand.
But ITS continues to allow students to bring their computers in for repair, working on them as time permits—many times with the aid of student techs. Chartrand said he’d like to see the student services-side enhanced.
“We’d like to have a more student-oriented help desk, some extended hours,” he said. “For emergencies: when it’s 5 p.m. and you’ve got a paper due the next day, we’d like to have something available to you—hopefully will be ready in the next year or so.”
Disrupted Internet connection has been another issue Chartrand has worked on, and one which is bothersome to students. Chartrand said that dirupted Internet connection, especially late at night, is due to the network firewall cancelling the connection due to “denial of service” attacks administered by viruses from students’ computers on campus.
After disconnecting, the firewall must reboot, causing the 2-3 minute long Internet disconnection, said Chartrand.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “Students complain about it, but it’s caused by virus attacks on our own campus from student’s computers—it’s students who don’t keep their services updated.”
Chartrand has recently worked with the firewall vendor to address these specific problems, and has seen a great improvement in the number of disconnections in the last week.
For ITS, 2006 brought about the instillation of all new computers in Lane and Kendall Halls with new flat-screen monitors and more energy efficient systems.
“Where it used to take minutes to load settings, it takes a matter of seconds,” Chartrand said. “And it’s just a much cleaner and nicer lab to be in.”
The old computers are generally re-deployed elsewhere on campus and if not are donated to worthy charities, said Chartrand.
One of ITS’ short term projects is the redesign of the college Web site, something that hasn’t been done in a few years.
“We’re looking at revamping for easier navigation, more pertinent navigation and information,” Chartrand said. “We want to improve the overall usability and make it a much better resource.”
As for online registration, testing will begin as early as fall 2006, with the earliest date for campus-wide availability projected for spring 2007, Chartrand said. Online registration is only one small part of the campus-wide conversion of all departments to the Datatel system, a “new umbrella” under which everything will run, and much smoother.
Now one-fourth of the way through the conversion, which involves training rooms and customizing specific needs one department at a time, Chartrand said he predicts the conversion will be complete in about three years.
“It’s difficult to address a time frame, because there’s still work to be done, we have to get feedback, there’s a lot to it,” Chartrand said. “But yes, it could greatly cut down on the paper shuffling. With the new system in place we will be able to manipulate services much better than now—it will be at our fingertips.”