By Laura Seeger The new 180-seat distance education facility located in 145 Mount Hall features dual independent video projection capable of displaying identical or different materials.

University reaches out with new distance education facility

By RANDY GAMMAGE, onCAMPUS staff

A new distance education facility, packed with the latest technology, will serve as a major outreach vehicle for the Office of Continuing Education and the university.

"We have some of the most outstanding faculty members in the world here at Ohio State," said Tony Basil, director of continuing education. "If you want to provide them with the opportunity to showcase their expertise, this would be the place to do it."

The facility is available to anyone at the university. Located in 145 Mount Hall, the 180-seat auditorium can be used as a presentation room, a computer training room or a video conferencing facility. Basil said it gives Continuing Education the capability to send and receive national conferences; deliver classes to the regional campuses and to other schools across the country that wish to enroll; and host local and national presentations.

Its video conferencing capabilities were showcased recently when, through an available cable TV channel, a continuing education conference at Washington State University was viewed live in the new facility. After a panel discussion concluded, Basil said an enthusiastic Ohio State audience -- along with others at colleges across the country -- fielded questions to their colleagues in Washington. In the future, he envisions hosting similar conferences in Mount Hall that would be telecast to the regional campuses.

Mount 145 is a tiered lecture hall with an enclosed projection booth accessible from the second floor hallway. It has theater style seating on both wings with tables and rolling chairs in the center section, which has electric and Internet connectivity available at each seat. The total seating capacity of the room is 172 with an additional eight designated Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) seating areas available at both the front and rear levels of the auditorium.

Technology components include dual independent video projection that can display identical or different materials; a house audio reinforcement system; wireless microphones for group or audience participations; a DVD, VCR, digital document camera and a networked podium computer as local sources; external inputs for other presenter-supplied devices; and a Crestron Control system for ease of use, said Tom Bell, design engineer with the Office of Information Technology.

Instructors can demonstrate computing techniques that may then be immediately explored by participants with laptop computers. Other features include:

• A Polycom VS4000 IP codec with the capability of four simultaneous connections. Multi-format conferencing can be achieved with the help of UNITS, Bell said;

• Satellite downlinks can be received via UNITS cable or the IP codec; and

• Audio conferencing or audio participation in a videoconference can be achieved through the room's phone bridge.

The room was a run-of-the-mill lecture hall before undergoing extensive renovation. While the Office of Facilities Planning and Development oversaw the renovations, Bell was in charge of installing the latest technology into the room.

The $600,000 renovation project was funded primarily through two Ohio Board of Regents grants awarded to the university to support distance education programs, with Continuing Education supplementing that money, Basil said.

The facility is available on a half-day or full-day basis and rates will vary depending on the needs of individual programs. For details or to reserve the room, contact Tony DeCamella, coordinator of administrative and support services, at 688-4904 or decamella.1@osu.edu.

Ohio State internships give public school students experience

Program for Columbus students includes seminars, classes to make most of college careers

By SHANNON WINGARD, Media Relations

Giving Columbus Public School students a full-time summer job while preparing them for college is the goal of the Student Affairs Student Internship Program at Ohio State.

Currently in its third year, the internship gives 75 high school and former Columbus Public School students now in college the chance to earn at least $7.25 an hour for housekeeping, food-service or recreational sports duties. The university also provides the interns with free training, COTA bus passes, meals and uniforms. Although the students are paid for an entire 40-hour week, they spend five hours of it taking seminars and classes that prepare them for success in college.

"Our Student Internship Program gives students tools to be successful in college," said Bill Hall, vice president for student affairs. "We believe that students who excel in a collegiate environment have a better chance of pursuing and achieving their professional goals."

A new part of the program allows student interns to take either a full-credit, university-level African and African-American Studies history course or a preparatory course for either the Kaplan American College Test (ACT) or the ninth-grade proficiency test. Interns also attend weekly seminars that focus on all aspects of college life.

The 10-week program was created to help Columbus Public School students fulfill their school-system-mandated internship and to fill a summertime need in Student Affairs' conference housing department. On average, the interns earn about $3,000 during the summer. This year, between 200 and 300 students were either pre-screened or interviewed for the 75 available positions. Thirty-one former interns elected to return to the program.

David Rugless, director of the internship program and workforce development coordinator for student affairs, says the program helps students "believe in and achieve" a college education.

"Although college aspirations are not screening criteria for the program, we are here to help the students go anywhere they want to go," Rugless said. "The goal is to help them recognize the value of the college experience as it relates to working toward their careers."

Shaunessy McDonald, a senior at South High School, is one of nearly 20 students taking the ACT prep course. She said her score has improved by eight points from the first to the second practice test.

"The program showed me how to break down the problems in the ACT," she said. "I am still going to try to get my score up before the class is over."

According to Kelly Barcus, an internship coordinator for Columbus Public Schools who helps oversee the Kaplan ACT prep course, the class's average score improved from 15.2 to 20 in just three weeks. Columbus Public Schools pays for the Kaplan course.

"The course is giving our interns an advantage because the test is not easy; it is very challenging," Barcus said. "This is a very valuable course for them. Most of the students are averaging a 4.5-point improvement in their score."

The internship also offers an early college acceptance program, which gives students who maintain a 3.7 high school GPA a chance to be selected early to attend Ohio State.

James Lucas, manager of building services and program staff assistant, says the interns are not required to be college-bound students. However, if interns are interested in pursuing a higher education, university officials will help prepare them to attend any college or university.

"We are here to help them go wherever they want to go," Lucas said.

Nearly 30 students from the 2001 and 2002 programs were admitted to Ohio State. Other interns either plan to attend or are attending colleges or universities throughout the state.

The program also prepares students to get the most out of college by offering seminars on issues like getting involved in campus life, applying for scholarships and internships, and writing résumés and admissions applications.

Intern Heather Dilworth, a freshman last year at Ohio Dominican University who is transferring to Ohio State, said she is thinking about joining a sorority after attending the student-involvement seminar.

"Last year, I really didn't get involved and didn't know anybody in college," she said. "It's nice to learn about ways to get involved with college organizations at Ohio State."

Dilworth, who has worked in the internship program since its inception, says she was able to help pay for a school-sponsored, spring break trip to Italy with money she saved from working the previous summer. "The money here has been really helpful," she said.

And since the internship takes place on Ohio State's campus, Rugless said students get a taste of the college experience. "Our concern is not just with their work and their academics, but with their everyday lives," he said.

E-mail upgrades should eliminate system failure

By RANDY GAMMAGE, onCAMPUS staff

E-mail system upgrades completed by the Office of Information Technology this summer should eliminate system failure and increase the options for accessing messages.

A final round of upgrades began this spring with the addition of a newer version of software enabling a high availability system -- where two machines work in tandem, allowing one to pick up the slack if the other goes down, said Chuck Morrow-Jones, director of Enterprise Networking with OIT.

The target is to have everyone on the new system by the end of August. While the conversion should be fairly transparent to users, the improvements will be dramatic.

"We should not have any unscheduled e-mail outages after the conversion," Morrow-Jones said. "Also, based on tests, we think users will see an improvement in performance."

OIT has been examining more flexible ways of accessing e-mail messages, with two new approaches to be implemented in the very near future.

• By fall quarter, Morrow-Jones said a Web-based e-mail system would be available to university account holders, similar to Hotmail or Yahoo, which provides secure e-mail and instant access to messages from anywhere using a Web browser.

• Currently, messages are removed from the central mail system and transferred to your computer when you check e-mail, Morrow-Jones said. That poses a problem for someone out of town wishing to recall a previous message. During fall quarter, an Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) Service will be made available that allows users to leave messages on the central mail system yet still be able to access them with an e-mail client such as Eudora or Outlook.

Regardless of which method users choose to access e-mail that is stored on the central server, Morrow-Jones said there is one critical difference between the previous system and the new system that all users will need to be aware of. The new mail system places a limit on how much e-mail can be stored in any individual's mailbox. The limit is now 30 megabytes for faculty and staff and 15 megabytes for students. When the quota is exceeded, mail being sent will be returned to the sender. However, a warning e-mail will precede that stating that you are close to maximum capacity.

"Previously, users were encouraged to limit the number of stored messages in their mailbox, but no hard and fast limit existed," Morrow-Jones said. "A few users took advantage of these ‘soft' quotas to store excessive quantities of e-mail. The move to ‘hard' quotas makes e-mail storage space allocation fair to everyone."

The sheer volume of e-mail traffic destined for OSU users to the central mail server, department mail system or forwarded to an off-campus mail service is astounding.

"At this point, we're handling between one million and one-and-a-half million e-mail messages during a typical business day," Morrow-Jones said.

The system upgrades required the purchase of $600,000 in hardware over the past two years. Additionally, the per-user license charge paid for software use, including technical support and upgrades, is approximately $29,000 per year.

For details or inquiries regarding the system upgrades, contact Morrow-Jones at morrow-jones.2@osu.edu.

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