Facilities at the College

First floor:

• Dean¹s Suite with a 12-seat conference room overlooking the atrium, all offices except one have floor to ceiling windows on one wall
• A 3-story atrium, housing the Harry Bertoia cube sculptures, has a curved stairway finished in Brazilian slate
• 151-seat auditorium
• A 52-seat student area on the east side and a 12-seat area on the southwest corner. This space will become a natural gathering place for students -- in summer, the east corridor will incorporate a patio as well.
• NTID Support Team with 5 faculty offices and one lab
• 5 classrooms: one with 60 seats, two with 55 seats, and two with 48 seats
• Software Engineering Department with:
  • 16 faculty offices
  • a 12-seat conference room

Features of the department¹s facilities:

• Student team rooms. To the best of our understanding, this is the only department of its kind in the US that features student meeting rooms like the ones we have. Equipped with generous white board space, seven Ethernet connections, a round table and seating for 6 individuals, the meeting rooms are an integral component of our department¹s commitment to teaching software engineering. All our technical courses have as a component at least one team project. The team rooms will allow our students to conduct technical meetings, prepare presentations, and participate in lively discussions triggered the many activities of the software development process.
  
  Six of the eleven team rooms are equipped with ultra sharp projection equipment to allow the students to prepare, and rehearse technical presentations. Two of the rooms also feature coded telephone lines so that students can participate in technical meetings through teleconferences.


• Senior projects lab. Senior projects are a common feature of all engineering programs at RIT. Our Senior Projects lab is unique in RIT¹s computing landscape. It provides a place for our seniors to setup their working area for the duration of their senior projects. The lab will be accessible to seniors each year 24/7 thus providing our senior projects teams with unlimited access to an area they can call their own while their project is in progress. From the outset, it was our decision not organize or even furnish this lab in a traditional way because of the very nature of the senior projects. Indeed, these projects can require the use of specialized computing equipment which might require to move the furniture around. We provide the students with furniture of various shapes and sizes so they decide how to organize the lab on their own.


• Embedded systems lab. Jointly owned by computer engineering and ourselves, the embedded systems lab will allow us to explore the increasingly complex and important field of real-time and embedded computing. The lab is the backbone of our commitment to develop an application domain in embedded computing which will translate into a sequence of three to four courses on the subject.


• Studio labs. Over the last few years we have been migrating our design courses from the traditional lecture-lab format to the interactive team-based studio format. In this format, theory and practice are interleaved in two two-hour weekly blocks of instruction during which the instructor explains theoretical concepts and then allows the students to capitalize on the explanation through hands-on exercises. The department has two 40-seat studio labs equipped with high-resolution video equipment and 40 workstations. By unfolding a soundproof wall, one of the studio labs can be split into two 20-seat rooms to accommodate smaller class sections.


• Freshman lab. Although furnished like a traditional lab, the freshman lab is unlike many others. The difference is in the way it is operated. This is truly a lab managed by students for the benefit of our students. Indeed, the software engineering student society will take charge of the operation of this lab. The students will schedule workshops and staff the lab¹s operating hours while helping their less advanced peers with questions on computing courses, programming languages, and software tools.

Second floor:

• 3 classrooms: one with 48 seats and two with 44 seats
• Connects to the CAST building which houses the administrative area, student advisors, some labs, and some faculty offices for the Information Technology department.
• The second floor of the new building also houses the Information Technology Department and the Networking, Security, and System Administration Department and includes:
  • 50 faculty offices
  • a 75-seat conference room

Features of the department¹s facilities:

The computing facilities of the Department of Information Technology and the Department of Networking, Security, and System Administration are driven solely by curricular needs. Many of the courses are laboratory-based. In these courses, students have scheduled laboratory time each week with an instructor who provides a structured laboratory experience that reinforces concepts covered in lecture. Some courses are taught in studio format, in which the course meets in a specially designed classroom that supports integrated lectures and hands-on learning.

In support of our cross-platform commitment, the labs may contain Windows and Macintosh platforms. In addition, Linux is used in several specialized labs. Students use these labs to design and develop cross-platform applications. From the capture of media (sound, video, and print materials) to production of websites and computer-based training, IT has ample resources on both platforms for editing and creating content and authoring multimedia for stand-alone computers and delivery via the Internet.

• OPEN Labs. The open labs provide students with access to computing resources outside of scheduled lab time and provide students with technology similar to what they will use after graduation. Many of our students not only use the labs, but also work as lab assistants, adding a practical application dimension to their experiences.
  
  In addition to general laboratory facilities for student support, the IT department has developed specialized laboratories for its concentrations in the areas of networking, system administration and security, multimedia, human-computer interaction, programming and database implementation and administration.


• Networking Lab. The Networking, Security, and System Administration department's networking lab is designed to facilitate network exploration. The lab consists of stations where each one has three PCs, a layer-3 switch, a router and a hub. Each of the PCs runs sniffer software, making each a network analyzer. Additional equipment can be brought to the station from the equipment cage as needed for labs, including cable testers, breakout boxes, additional hubs, crimping tools, V.35 cables for serial routing, etc. In addition, each station is cabled to the lab infrastructure to allow each station to be its own sub-network in the lab network, or to be directly connected to the lab network, which provides many possible topologies.


• Systems Administration Lab. The Networking, Security, and System Administration department's systems administration lab is designed to facilitate experimentation in network management and system administration. Each station contains four PC compatible computers. Normally, these are configured as a Windows Server, a Windows workstation, and two Linux platforms. However, students can reconfigure these machines as required and save their configurations using disk-imaging software on the lab image server. Images of the machines can be quickly saved and restored to make this an extremely flexible lab. There are lab-wide servers and a networking infrastructure to enrich the computing environment. The main switch/router in this lab affords six sub-networks per student station. Additional hardware and software is available from the equipment cage to allow students to configure more complex topologies.


• Security Lab. The Networking, Security, and System Administration department's security lab is designed to facilitate student learning and experimentation in the upcoming field of information security. Each student station consists of four PCs capable of running any number of operating systems. This lab is totally isolated from the rest of the campus to allow for in-depth exploration of viruses, firewalls, and other security topics. Additional computer equipment such as routers, switches, hubs, testers, etc. may be checked out from the networking equipment cage.


• Database Labs. The IT database labs are designed to facilitate experimentation with database concepts. The labs consists of stations with a Unix-based Oracle server and Windows-based servers that can be configured to support a Web server or one of several database packages, and a client machine. Students begin by configuring single-user, 1-tier environments and progress to multi-tier networked configurations, where multiple clients interact with a backend database through a Web server.


• Studio Labs. Many IT programming and multimedia courses are taught in specially designed ³studio labs² in which each student has a computer station. Lecture material and examples can be displayed on one or more large screens at the front of the room. Courses are structured in alternating lecture and hands-on exercise sessions. In addition to the course instructor, a teaching assistant is available to answer questions and provide help during class time.


• Entertainment Technology Lab. The IT Entertainment Technology Lab boasts a complement of high performance PC and Macintosh computers with an exceptional suite of software for 3D modeling, computer game development and virtual world development, and other interactive media projects. Many workstations have dual monitors to provide developers with an unobstructed view of their content. Some computers are configured to facilitate group work and team projects. The lab also has equipment for the acquisition of broadband digital media in diverse formats.


• Streaming Media Lab. The IT Streaming Media Lab houses the department¹s video and audio studios. The digital video production studio has ³talk show-style set² for streaming video productions and a blue screen for QuickTime VR production. The lab¹s audio studio is designed for both voiceover/narration work for groups of three or four performers to record music or do dialog work. The two studios are linked by a digital control room, which also houses the lab¹s dedicated media servers and video routing equipment.


• Usability Labs. The IT Department also has two usability testing labs. Each lab consists of two parts separated by a one-way mirror: a testing room and an observation area. Each testing room has state-of-the-art networked PC and Macintosh computers with a selection of input devices such as touch screens, joysticks, optical mice, track balls, etc. The testing room also has two security-style video cameras that can send video to VCRs on the observer side, a high quality desk microphone to record the user¹s comments (and to act as an intercom), a microphone/headset for speech input, and one scan converter for feeding video from an active subject computer to a VCR. The observation side has a monitor for display of the user¹s screen, headsets for the observers, a PC for note-taking, a microphone to the testing room, and VHS and audio recorders.

These general and specialized laboratory facilities makes our environment one of the most up-to-date for undergraduate and graduate exploration of Web site design, networking and software development in any university in the United States.

Third Floor:

• 5 classrooms: one with 66 seats, one with 60 seats, two with 48 seats, and one with 42 seats
• The college Honors¹ Lab
• Computer Science Department including:
  • 38 faculty offices
  • a 34 seat conference room
  • 6 Instructional Computing Labs (ICLs)
  • 2 Distributed Systems Labs (DSLs)
  • 1 Operating Systems Lab (OSL)
  • Tutoring Center

Features of the department¹s facilities:

• Artificial Intelligence/Vision Lab. This laboratory will contain several digital cameras, high speed computers, scanners, high-speed networking and equipment specific to AI/Vision research. We will use the insight gained by understanding human reactions and processing capabilities to develop robust systems. For example, we may develop algorithms to recognize faces using models based on our understanding of cognitive processing, not by reviewing every possible face. Insight gained from the research being performed in this lab will help make real-time problem solving algorithms possible.


• Security Lab. This lab is isolated from the rest of our networks. Computers and other hardware (routers, hubs, etc.) are set up to allow students to understand the nature of secure and insecure machines and networks.


• Robotics Lab. The Robotics Lab will be equipped with small and medium sized robots and will support robotics courses and other courses and activities that involve robots. This lab forms a natural link with the AI lab next door.


• Student Team Rooms. The four student team rooms are equipped with a projector and are designed for team projects.