Academic Computing at Nicholls

Mission

• Academic Computing supports the mission of the University by providing student and faculty services that assist with all technological aspects of learning in a University environment. 

Functions

• Providing highly available computer labs for students, and assistance for faculty to integrate course materials into the curriculum.
•  Ongoing procedural and educational training of students and faculty.
• Administration of the Technology fee assessed to all students.
• Provide accountability to University and State Auditors, the SGA, and to the Louisiana University System board.
• Provide web hosting for all Internet based online courses, the University, and any non-profit institutions.
• Co-management of the University network, and technical support of the compressed video network.
• Provide computing resources to the faculty.
• Maintain the alumni database.

Implementation

• The managed labs provide a framework that allows students to complete reports and research necessary for course requirements.  Part of this framework is to train students and faculty as how to use University computing resources and multimedia classrooms.  This is accomplished by employing student workers to assist students in the computer labs, and to utilize students workers to setup and maintain the labs. 
• The administration of the Technology fee is overseen by the director, and is accomplished by soliciting proposals to the faculty, and to the students through the SGA.  The accountability is overseen by the director and is accomplished by maintaining records of purchasing from the Technology Fee account.
• The co-management of the network is accomplished by working closely with network manager located in University Computer Services.  Strategic and procedural policies are discussed and reviewed.  The technical support of the compressed video network is accomplished by working closely with office of Distance Education. Again, strategic and procedural policies are discussed and reviewed.  From these discussions policies are implemented and monitored.
• The director addresses computing resources for faculty by directly assessing faculty needs.  The director continuously reviews computing needs and requests monies for computing resources from the administration. 
• Academic Computing hosts university web services.  These services include web pages, the Blackboard learning environment, custom coded cgi, Isapi, asp server side and javascript client scripting.  The consumers of this service are all of the students, faculty, alumni, potential students, and any non-profit organizations that the University maintains.
• The Alumni database is maintained as an ongoing project for student workers.