Portability, accessibility and integration of technology are the key.

Two colleges at Iowa State have seen these components as essential toward enhancing the educational experience and outreach for students on campus.

The College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Design house programs leasing or renting laptop computers to students, leading some to suggest these programs be used to spawn similar programs around Iowa State.

James Davis, ISU chief information officer, said decisions to implement laptop programs in other colleges would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

“It needs to be tailored for specific academic programs,” Davis said.

New laptop computer programs periodically develop every few years. He said the wireless networks on campus, which helps laptops connect to the Internet more readily, are used to complement the infrastructure already contained within many of the campus buildings.

“The goal was to put wireless networks in gathering places,” Davis said.

He said one good example of a gathering place is the Parks Library, which is heavily used as a wireless access point.

Jared Danielson, lecturer of veterinary pathology, was heavily involved in starting the program to lend or lease laptops to students. He said the program is called the Mobile Computing Initiative and was created on strong recommendations made by John Thomson, dean for the College of Veterinary Medicine. Thomson said he worked under similar requirements as the dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University to expose students to new technologies.

Danielson said the program is meant to introduce incoming students to software that is specific to the program.

“I think that this is the direction that things are going to move,” Danielson said.

This is the first year the program is being used in the College of Veterinary Medicine, which plans to accept 120 new students overall to the program this fall, he said. Danielson said approximately 60 students participated in a mass purchase through the college and most of the other students provided their own computer.

“All but a handful of students don’t have a laptop computer,” he said.

Matthew Kutzli, laptop lease coordinator for the College of Design, said the number of students utilizing the service has increased every semester since its inception five years ago.

Approximately 150 students began to use the service this semester.

Kutzli said students lease the computer for three years, and after that time, the computer becomes property of the student.

Currently the program leases approximately 500 laptop computers and most of the new work being created involves maintenance, Kutzli said.

Kutzli said if other colleges undertook programs similar to the one he conducts, issues such as staffing and finding money in the budget could become obstacles.

Student laptop computer costs

College of Veterinary Medicine

Gateway M275 with 512 MB of RAM = $1699.00

Gateway M275 with 1 GB of RAM = $1899.00

College of Design

A notebook computer with customary software tailored to students’ classes costs $650 per semester for six semesters.

The costs of leasing the laptop computers through the departments for students in the College of Veterinary Medicine and College of Design are charged directly to students’ university bills.

– Compiled from the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Design Web sites