OUs recent appearance on PC Magazines list of the Top 20 wired colleges sheds light on some of the technological advancements in place around campus. Co-authored by The Princeton Review, the list is derived from criteria such as student access to technical resources (from computers to digital cameras) and an online survey administered to students.

The stiff competition makes our place on the list more meaningful. OU placed higher than the United States Military Academy at West Point and Stanford, among others.

Theres no doubt a great deal of advancement has occurred over the past few years to make students access to technology easier and more enjoyable.

Several buildings across campus are now fitted with state-of-the-art computer labs, many of which are accessible to students 24/7.

Additionally, many labs at OU offer highly specific technical software for science and engineering students, including STSS and Matlab.

Too busy to make it to a computer lab? Students in calculus courses will be happy to know a free version of Mathmatica, normally available for $139, is available for download at the OU IT store.

Though advanced computing was not considered in compiling the list, OUs super computing facility is the first of its kind at a public university. Enclosed in an enormous glass-walled room in Stevenson Research and Technology Center, it is a sight to see, for the geeks among us and otherwise.

There is still, however, room for improvement for OU information technology.

Basic e-mail storage issues last semester resulted in messages often arriving days late, if ever.

A few vital buildings on campus, such as Dale Hall, still lack wi-fi coverage.

As projections of complete wireless coverage are set at 2008, this may soon be a thing of the past.

Despite some minor hiccups in OU information technology, we expect efficiency and access to resources to increase in the future.



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