News Update July 12, 2005
CT News Update:
An Online Newsletter from Campus Technology
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News for Tuesday, July 12, 2005
* Four Ohio Universities to Boost Computer Science Capacity
* Washington Schools Not Meeting Demand for Tech Workers
* Study: Software D'es Not Meet Petascale Computing Needs
* Defense Department Renews Carnegie Mellon Software Deal
* Meredith College Equips Incoming Freshmen with Notebooks
* Dell, Napster, Collaborate on Peer-to-Peer Campus Service
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Four Ohio Universities to Boost Computer Science Capacity
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University,
the University of Akron, and Kent State University have
agreed to expand their electrical engineering and computer
science (EECS) capacity. The four schools agreed to a
memorandum of understanding that carries aggressive
five-year goals to increase faculty staffing levels by
80 percent and a quadrupling of funding for EE and CS
research.
The MOU highlights the importance of research funding,
faculty staffing levels and educational excellence to
the economic growth of northeast Ohio. Despite degrees
of success by northeast Ohio universities in EECS related
areas, the region falls short in terms of research funding
and faculty levels compared to other regions with large
research universities, the MOU states.
"Case believes a strong investment in EECS is critical to
the advancement of technology and to the local and national
economy," said Robert Savinell, dean of the Case School of
Engineering at Case, which has increased EECS faculty by
over 25 percent in the past year. Alex De Abreu-Garcia,
chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering at Akron, said, "State and private universities
are working together, which is good for each university,
and for the region."
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Collaboration technologies can extend the classroom and
change the ways students and faculty work together.
Collaboration technologies can extend the classroom and change
the ways students and faculty work together. How can they help
you meet the challenges of a growing and diverse campus community?
What are the best collaboration tools for your campus? A special
Campus Technology micro site sponsored by Dell provides a resource
to make sense of it all. Read about innovative programs, research
new products, review case studies, and participate in discussion
forums with your peers.
Bookmark this special section at
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Washington Schools Not Meeting Demand for Tech Workers
Washington State’s education system is not generating
the type of work force needed to keep up with the
high-tech economy fostered by Microsoft's presence in
the state. That was one of the findings presented to
state business, policy and legislative leaders, including
Gov. Christine Gregoire, during a University of Washington
conference on education and productivity last week. "The
economy has shifted," said conference organizer Theo Eicher,
economics professor and founding director of the UW's Economic
Policy Research Center. "We're moving over to an
information-technology economy, to a new economy, and if we
want to be competitive in about five, 10 years, we've got to
shift the education system."
University of California’s Giovanni Peri documented the
geographic clustering that often occurs around industry
leaders, such as Microsoft, that spend large sums on research
and development. Other companies involved in similar pursuits
often emerge in the same region, increasing the demand for
skilled workers. Thomas Bailey of Columbia University cited
statistics showing that the state ranks relatively high in
the number of doctorates per capita but d'esn't fare as well
in national rankings of doctorates awarded each year. That
shows that the state's high-tech businesses are essentially
required to "import" those highly skilled employees from
other parts of the country to fill the gap, said the UW's Eicher.
Study: Software D'es Not Meet Petascale Computing Needs
A study on software for high performance computers found
that independent software vendors (ISV) are not supplying
software that is sufficiently scalable for today’s largest
computer systems. The study, by research firm IDC for the
Council on Competitiveness, looked at 54 ISV organizations
and 110 applications software packages used across a variety
of industries.
Suzy Tichenor, vice president of the Council, a national
organization of academic, business, and labor executives,
said, “the current study revealed what many of us suspected,
that while (high performance computing) systems are available
with hundreds, thousands, or (soon) tens of thousands of
processors, few ISV applications today “scale” beyond 100
processors and many of the most used codes scale to only a
few processors in practice. This is a serious impediment to
business competitiveness."
The survey found that without external funding and expertise,
it is doubtful that ISVs will have application software that
can take advantage of petascale systems when they are available
in the market.
Defense Department Renews Carnegie Mellon Software Deal
The U.S. Department of Defense renewed a $411 million contract
with Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute
(SEI) for research and development work in the areas of software
engineering support and technology development. It is the fourth
time that the government has renewed the SEI contract; previous
contract renewals were in 1990, 1995 and 2000.
Meredith College Equips Incoming Freshmen with Notebooks
North Carolina’s Meredith College launched a program to equip
all incoming freshmen with ThinkPad notebooks pre-loaded with
educational and professional software. The notebooks are
programmed with several utility features designed to optimize
them for the wear and tear of campus life, including a feature
that finds wireless networks, and a one-button one-button recovery
solution that helps students diagnose, get help and recover from
a software crash.
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Learn From Leading Thinkers and Technology
Implementers at Syllabus2005
There are less than two weeks before Syllabus2005 kicks off in
Los Angeles, July 24-28. Don’t miss this opportunity to rub elbows
with some of the best and brightest in higher education technology.
You’ll enjoy five days of cutting-edge keynotes, breakout sessions,
networking, and a day-long visit to UCLA to explore some of their
innovative technology applications on campus. For complete conference
details and to register, go to
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=16543.
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Dell, Napster, Collaborate on Peer-to-Peer Campus Service
Dell Computer will install 10 Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade servers
on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus that will
feature Napster's SuperPeer cache application, designed to
deliver music and other Napster content that is stored on a
caching server located within the campus network. Dell will
provide tools to help schools market the Napster service to
students and will offer special prices on bundles that include
one of Dell's three digital music players, the Dell Pocket DJ,
Dell Digital Jukebox (DJ) 20 and the Dell DJ 30. The devices
are compatible with Napster’s To Go portable subscription
service go.
For more details on the University of Washington’s implementation
of the Dell, Napster system, see
“Dell and Napster Partner to
Provide Legal Music Downloading Services to Campuses” on the
Campus Technology website
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