Last updated: 29 Sep 2017

Overview

The Teaching and Research 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 Institute programs or related areas

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

Each specialized lab has a faculty lab "manager" who functions as the contact person and primary manager of that lab. There may be a committee of people who also contribute to providing direction to the lab.

Lab Administration

Institute lab staff, under faculty advisement concerning academic needs, are responsible for equipping, securing, configuring and maintaining the General Development Labs.

While each lab manager can choose how much involvement is desired from Institute lab staff, most managers delegate partial responsibility to Institute lab staff in order to offload the administration and upkeep of their systems. This could change over time, especially if an Institute program offers a doctoral degree.

Barring any other agreement, all labs belong to the Institute, and are considered accessible by all Institute 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 before the faculty body for resolution.

• Rooms

  Room reservations are made via lab staff.

• Workstation computers

  Each lab committee has its own goals. When Institute lab staff are responsible for maintaining the lab computers, we look for uniformity and ease of maintenance, in order to control labor costs.

  Some lab committees will want their students to utilize and configure removable hard disks, servers within the room, and 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 Institute lab staff or trusted students, who are granted physical access to the servers. Each lab has a lockable cabinet in a shared locked room. Since only two of the five specialized labs have requested this, there is only enough remote access equipment for those two labs. Remote access allows remote control of the servers in a cabinet, minimizing the need for 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 Institute lab staff networking equipment. Some lab committees will prefer to network entirely within their lab, some will want to connect labs 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 Institute lab staff.

• Software

  The workstations typically support research and advanced instructional interests. Consequently, some software is very specialized, 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 lab-specific software.

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

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