NEWS

Computer Science Program celebrates 25 Years
Carolyn Knothe | Staff Reporter

When the MSU Computer Science program opened its first classes in 1979, there were no such things as Macs, CD-ROMs or Google. Nobody owned a cell phone and a slide rule was still used instead of a calculator.
That was 25 years ago, and a lot has changed since then.
“One of the biggest changes is that most of the students have their own equipment now,” Ranette Halverson, chair of the department and a computer science professor, said. “They used to have to sign up for an hour at a time to use the school’s computer, and would get booted off when their time was up. Students now have no hesitation to do stuff. They all grow up with computers. I never touched a computer until college.”
Halverson, who has been with the program almost since its inception, said the first laboratory for the department had 12 computer terminals that were wired to a main frame computer in another building. This computer also contained some very valuable and personal information, information that nowadays would be easily accessible to hackers.
“It was an IBM 379, a huge mainframe computer that took up a room,” she said. “It was also used for university business, like payroll and registration.”
Of course, the university now has many separate servers they use for different applications like faculty and student emails. But in 1979, not many people knew enough about computers to hack into them, let alone get the information out of them.
You don’t have to be a computer science major to recognize the changes in the computing field. Just look at how computers themselves have changed from an all-green screen with boxy graphics to the sleek, tiny laptops that can play DVDs with startling clarity. And this is just the aesthetics. What’s going on in the intestines of the machines has changed even more.
At the department’s 25th anniversary display held in the Comanche Suites last Friday, tables lining one wall showed progression in technology, from an old Caliber computer displaying a green-and-grey Pacman game to a black Dell computer with a screen saver that takes more memory than the Caliber probably ever had.
These changes in the field must be reflected in the classes the department offers.
Professor Stewart Carpenter, one of the founders of the MSU computer science program, said the first goal of the program when it opened was to establish a curriculum and attract students to an ever-changing and brand-new field of technology.
“Over the years, the curriculum has changed because discoveries have changed it,” he said.
Classes taught in the spring semester of 1979 by the three faculty members in the department were FORTRAN, assembly language and intro to computing.
“FORTRAN was the first computer language developed in 1954,” said Halverson. “It looks like algebra and we taught it for a number of years.”
Computer science is probably the fastest-changing major in college. Languages and programs become obsolete; replaced by something newer, faster and better. FORTRAN, which is no longer taught at MSU, has been replaced with languages like Java, C++ and C.
The professors themselves are always learning sometimes just a few steps ahead of their students. Halverson said they go to conferences or seminars every year and stay on top of advancements in the field by researching. She herself had a mathematics degree from MSU when she started teaching and went back to school to get advanced degrees in computer science. But even the degrees themselves must be updated.
“We do a lot of reading on our own,” she said. “Even in courses we teach, the software has changed so much. Sometimes I wish I could teach a course the same way twice.”
The curriculum for computer science is always changing. Classes are deleted and added according to the needs of the industry.
“We routinely review our classes in-depth to replace topics not as valuable as something newer,” Carpenter said. “At one time, multimedia was so alien, but now it’s getting to be mainstream. Computer science looks at that as an application, but we pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us.”
With all the changes, the field now looks nothing like it did 25 years ago. The advent of the Internet and networks have brought some of the biggest changes, said Halverson.
“In one of the first PC labs, we had Commodore computers with printers between each two computers because there were no networks,” she said. “We never took pictures of that. I wish we had.”
 

MSU to Purchase new Buses, Boiler
Jennifer Tavlian | Sports Editor

The Board of Regents approved the purchase of new buses and a new boiler during their meeting the first week of November.
A 28-passenger and a 53-passenger bus will be purchased with a fund of about $439,680. The average annual payment is nearly $55,000.
The four buses that currently transport athletes, the band and student groups have more than five million miles each.
The earliest bus was bought in 1990 and the latest was purchased in the mid-1990s. Each of the buses were bought used.
Two of the vehicles have been taken off the road due to safety concerns and will be sold at an auction, including the bus parked by the Mercantile Building, which broke down and had to be towed back to where it rests today.
“They’re old, but they’ve held up for all these years,” Buck Shaw, director of the physical plant, said. “Every team uses them, as do a lot of clubs and international students. Every group on campus is allowed to use them for functions.”
Shaw estimates the buses are used on average between two and three times per week.
The board also allocated $520,000 for the purchase and installation of a new boiler that replaces the 1967 model currently in use.
The boiler, which supplies heat and hot water to the campus, has 25-35 percent of its tubes leaking, but this poses no threat to students.
“It just runs the efficiency down,” Shaw said. “It’s an old, inefficient boiler.”
The cost to repair the boiler exceeds 70 percent of the replacement cost of the equipment.
The funds come from the Renewal and Replacement Funds.

If you have a kid there is money out there for you.
MSU has money to give, thanks to a federal child-care grant. Former Vice-President of Academic Affairs Jane Leishner applied for a federal child-care grand, Child Care Access Means Parents in School, for MSU in 2002.
The grant program was intended for the fall of 2002, but Leishner fell ill and had to take a six-month leave, delaying the implementation of the program. In the fall of 2003 MSU received the $27,000 grant. The grant is funded for four years, this year being the second. Each year the United States Department of Education gives MSU the money and university President Jesse Rogers allocated an additional $5,000 to the fund.
About 20 students and their children currently benefit from the grant.
“In the future, the university would like to get more funds to help more parents,” said Treva Clifton, administrative assistant for the Office of the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs.
“This program sounds like a wonderful idea,” said education senior Joy Ashlock. “The lack of affordable child care probably keeps a lot of young parents from going college. Grants and scholarships may over or help with tuition and books, but there’s still that big expense of child care.”
To be eligible for the grant, students must first be awarded the Pell Grant, based on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). When applying for financial aid, students must check the “day care needs” box on the FAFSA form. If the box is not checked the Financial Aid Office will not know that the child-care money is needed. If a student did not check the box and now needs childcare, the form can be revised online or by checking with the Financial Aid Office, Clifton said.
“What a good idea that is. Finding and affording good childcare is a major headache for student-parents like me. Care for two children is really, really expensive,”  Melaina Gregory, senior math major, said.
Once a person qualifies for the grant, the university requires that he or she exhaust all other funds before receiving the grant money. For instance, if a person qualifies for food stamps they will usually qualify for childcare. Recipients must also first check with the YMCA and with Childcare Inc., agencies offering free or reduced cost child care. The university requires this so that the people who need the support the most and cannot get it from anywhere else are the ones who get the grant, Clifton said.
After student-parents are approved for this grant, financial aid office personnel decide how much money they will receive. Child-care aid is based on the number of hours the student is enrolled in, and the cost of the day care. The university has contracts with selected day care centers. These are the only ones the grant recipients can use.
Presently, the grant is only available for parents and children who live inside Wichita County, according to Clifton.
“I hope when we reapply, we can get the grant to cover all students no matter what county you live in,” she said.
The university will begin reapplying for this grant next year. In addition to asking for the grant to cover students from outside Wichita County, the Office of Student Affairs also plans to request more money.