Grand opening of College of Computing & Technology's collaborative facility set for Tuesday
Janel Shoun-Smith |
2022 Update: The College of Computing and Technology is now the School of Computing and the School of Data Analytics and Technology.
Lipscomb University will celebrate on Tuesday, March 24 at 4:30 p.m. its collaboration with several leading Nashville businesses in developing a computing and technology educational facility that serves as home to the university's College of Computing & Technology. The facility has been developed to add depth to student knowledge as well as contribute to building the area’s IT talent pool in an skills area where Middle Tennessee employers are scrambling to find strong employees.
A 7,000-square-foot office, classroom and computing facility in the university’s Swang Business Center, the center has been constructed and outfitted with the latest technology thanks to donations from Jackson National Life, Cigna-HealthSpring and Peak 10.
Mike Wells, president and CEO of Jackson National Life; Barry Stowe, CEO of Prudential Corporation Asia; and Tidjane Thiam, outgoing president and CEO of Prudential Plc who will become CEO of Credit Suisse Group in June, will be present to celebrate the opening of the facility. It includes a media lounge sponsored by Jackson, a data center donated by Cigna-HealthSpring and production-level data storage facilities provided through a partnership with Peak 10, an IT infrastructure and cloud services provider.
“This space allows everyone in our college – students, faculty, guests and student workers – to be together in one space designed specifically for our needs,” said Fortune Mhlanga, dean of the College of Computing & Technology. “Certainly students can learn in a traditional classroom, but this space fits the kind of thinking and innovation that our students – and the workforce they will graduate into – need to be leaders in technology. It will also be a collaborative space in which we can discover new ways to serve our community with technology. Our motto is to serve, connect and innovate. We now have a space that will allow us to fulfill those aspirations.”
The college will also use that space in an innovative partnership with the university’s College of Business.
“Our intent is to prepare students not just with the technological skills they need, but the ability to apply those skills most effectively in the business environment,” Ray Eldridge, interim dean of Lipscomb’s College of Business, said. “The days when a ‘techie’ just walked into a job that required digital knowledge only are over. Today’s most successful graduates will also need to bring an understanding of business and management principles to the table to build their careers.”
The new facility allows Lipscomb students to collaborate with each other, expert faculty and industry advisors through a flexible furniture and open classroom design; clusters of seating and power outlets with plenty of technical connectivity for group work; glass walls intended to serve as writing surfaces; a media lounge and a conference room designed as a community meeting space.
More than $500,000 in construction work was done last year, refashioning two large traditional tiered classrooms into modern spaces with more than normal USB ports, a “bar” for up to 12 student workers and teaching assistants to work together simultaneously, and glass walls that not only can be used as whiteboards for instant brainstorming sessions but can also be reconfigured easily as the college grows.
The media lounge, sponsored by Jackson National, seats 18 around a U-shaped couch and features an 80-inch HDTV monitor for hands-on computing classes in such courses as game development. Equipment such as Xbox One technology is available for students to learn to program the latest generation in gaming devices. A conference room is available for industry and community use with digital displays outside each meeting space displaying its schedule.
The center also includes a data facility with more than 50 terabytes of storage, networking equipment, switches and other computer equipment, thanks to a donation by Cigna-HealthSpring. The data center also allows students and faculty to stage advanced projects for the community. An example is a current ongoing project that builds predictive models of the socio-economic interactions of autonomous population units pertaining to the spread of infectious diseases and strategies for combating interpersonal violence.
The new space also enhances students’ ability to compete throughout the year at city and state hackathons and programming competitions, to collaborate on projects for classwork and student organizations and to have access to the computing power needed to conduct community projects such as engagement events for groups of high school students including specialized labs and coding events.