by Ashley Escaravage
CULLOWHEE, NC-Many universities require students to purchase a personal computer upon their enrollment. At Western Carolina University, they have an established many licensing agreements with several software suppliers. The university passes along these privileges to their faculty, staff, and students free of charge.
Programs available for students are Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office Professional, and an anti-virus protection program called Symantec Endpoint Protection. Faculty can acquire these also.
Faculty is able to obtain SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, SAS (Statistical Analysis Systems), Red Hat Linux, and ESRI Software(Economic and Social Research Institute’s Mapping software and Data).
To acquire these software systems, the process has to be conducted through the campus’s Information Technology Services more well know as IT Services. IT Services is located in the bottom level of Hunter Library.
IT Services is not allowed to hold computers for the installation of these software systems. There is not a secured location for the consumer’s property to be stored until pick up; this creates a concern over theft for the university. The owner of the laptop must wait for the IT representative to complete the installation, which in most cases doesn’t take much time.
Western Carolina University’s IT Services offers many other services as well to the campus community such as computer repair. For more information contact the IT Help Desk at 227-7487, 866-928-7487 (toll free) or ithelp@wcu.edu.
