Last updated: 11 May 2021

Overview

The Program-Specific Labs — CP 206D, CP 206H, CP 206I, SCI 113, TPS 202, TPS 302 — address the needs of:

• students to investigate, analyze, experiment with, and broaden and deepen their knowledge of a topic
• instructors to instruct advanced topics and perform research with the help of students
• development staff to encourage and promote potential students to pursue studies in SET programs or related areas

Most of these labs are focused on specific areas of engineering, such as "Embedded Computing Systems", "Information Assurance and Networking", or "Power". These labs are meant for instruction (within the limits of the lab), demonstrations, capstone projects and other specialized faculty research and teaching needs.

Each program-specific lab has a staff "manager" who functions as the contact person and primary manager of that lab. These managers are usually associated with a program, such as Computer Engineering and Systems-Electrical Engineering (CES-EE), or a research lab associated with a program. Program faculty generally drive the direction of the lab, with the staff managing the daily operations and activities of the lab throughout the entire calendar year, to support curricular and research needs.

Lab Administration

SET Lab staff, under faculty advisement concerning academic needs, are responsible for equipping, securing, configuring and maintaining the program-specific labs.

While each program can choose how much involvement is desired from SET Lab staff, most programs delegate partial responsibility to SET Lab staff in order to offload the administration and upkeep of their systems.

Barring any other agreement, all labs belong to SET, and are considered accessible by all SET faculty and staff. Coordination of the use of a lab's facilities is through the lab manager, and any unresolvable issues with its use among faculty or staff are to be brought to the program chair for resolution.

• Rooms

  Room reservations are made via SET Lab staff.

• Program-specific equipment

  Some programs require specialized equipment. SET Lab staff who are familiar with that equipment are responsible for some or all of the following: specifying, ordering, receiving, inventorying, configuring, maintaining, controlling access to, educating others on the safe and effective use of, and surplusing such equipment.

• Computing-related equipment

  Nearly all labs contain computing-related equipment that are maintained by SET Labs computing, as opposed to program-specific, staff:

  • Workstation computers

    Each program has its own goals. When SET Lab computing staff are responsible for maintaining the lab computers, they look for uniformity and ease of maintenance, in order to control labor costs.

    Some programs may want their students to utilize virtual machines (VMs), install operating systems and/or applications, configure servers, or configure the network.

    Removable media are supported for purposes of backups and presentations. Each lab also has its own printer.

  • Servers

    Some labs need servers. They can be within the lab or in a protected area. They can be administered by SET Lab staff or trusted students, who are granted physical access to the servers.

  • Network

    Most of the labs' network connection to the world outside of the lab can be controlled through student and SET Lab staff networking equipment. Some programs will prefer to network entirely within their labs, some will want to connect lab rooms together, while others always want a normal outside connection for some or all computers.

    Wireless networks allow one to break out of room boundaries, and make network security much more important to understand and practice. At least initially, the wireless network will be controlled by SET Lab computing staff.

  • Software

    The workstations typically support research and advanced instructional interests. Consequently, some software is very specialized to the program, and may be unique to the lab. In addition, some data that the software deals with may be sensitive or subject to special rules of handling.

    In order to avoid time-consuming travel to computers that have office-type software on them, these computers will have that software installed. In addition, remote access and file transfer software, a general integrated development environment and compiler, and some other useful software constitute the base image for the computer. Layered on top of this is any program-specific software.

    Faculty and students are encouraged to backup any workstation computer software, configuration or data that are needed.

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