Recent SFSU Access,
Training and Support Initiatives

San Francisco State University has undertaken many campus-wide technology infrastructure projects during the past several years. These include the ITE initiatives, described earlier in this document, which provide equipment, facilities and on-going support for recurring costs and maintenance, in addition to several one-time projects.

Of the latter, the most recent project was the construction of a 27-station, 24-Hour Student Computing Lab. This project was approved in late May, 1996, and opened at the beginning of September, 1996. The funding, construction and outfitting of the lab in such an extremely short time-frame was achieved through the collaboration of the vice presidents and their staffs in Physical Planning and Development, Academic Affairs, and Business and Finance. In his remarks at the opening of the lab, the President of the Associated Students remarked that he was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the university "Just went ahead and did it." Students were lined up at the door the day the lab opened, and it has rarely been empty since, even in the middle of the night.

President Corrigan initiated another important access and technology project in FY95/96 with a $2,500,000 program to provide every tenured and tenure-track faculty member with a workstation capable, at least, of running a fully functional Web browser. In addition, funds were allocated to the colleges for graduate assistants to provide local support for faculty workstations and software. The benefits of this program extended beyond the new hardware in several ways. First, a "trickle-down" effect allowed many colleges to upgrade workstations for lecturers. Second, many faculty who were not previously using workstation software and electronic communications began filling training classes offered by CET and Computing Services, resulting in a significant increase in faculty use of computers in communicating with students, in course preparation, and in course curricula.

The campus has also made a number of other investments in the technology infrastructure, including a new Integrated Library Information system, a project to install network connections for all classrooms, a project to install network connections for all faculty workstations, an upgrade of the existing campus fiber network, and an augmentation of the campus fiber network as part of a campus-wide utilities infrastructure upgrade project.