UNIVERSITY GAZETTE | August 27, 2008 | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Carolina Computing Initiative celebrates 10th anniversary

Linwood Futrelle, left, and Kevin Lawrence work on a computer at the CCI Computer Repair Center.

The Carolina Computing Initiative, or CCI, has been around for a decade, long enough for University newcomers to be unaware of its pioneering impact on teaching and learning at Carolina.

Former Chancellor Michael Hooker announced the advent of CCI in summer 1997 when Marion Moore, the information technology chief Hooker hired to launch the grand initiative, arrived here.

CCI: The significance of financial aid

One of the cornerstones of CCI had nothing to do with computer hardware or software.

It was the bedrock conviction that this requirement for new students would not impose a financial hardship on any student. From the beginning, students have received computer grants from the University to make sure that never happened. These grants can only be used at Student Stores.

“The first thing Chancellor Michael Hooker did was to commit permanent funds to the initiative to make sure that incoming students would get a computer regardless of their financial situations,” said Linwood Futrelle, director of the Computer Repair Center. “It became an instant priority.”

Over the years, the person who has stewarded and championed this aspect of the program is Shirley Ort, associate provost and director of financial aid who has chaired the University’s CCI Financing Committee for the last decade.

The formula has been simple: If you qualified for financial aid as an incoming student, you automatically qualified for aid to buy your computer. The program was phased in starting in 2000 by awarding grants to first-year students. Thereafter, all entering first-year and transfer students received the need-based computer grant, as appropriate.

Ort credits Hooker for making the grant funding possible and Chancellor Emeritus James Moeser for sustaining that commitment.

But the University also put in place a special financing plan for students who did not qualify for need-based aid. Credit here belongs to the College Foundation of North Carolina and the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA), Ort said.

Both organizations have made low-interest computer loans available to Carolina’s many students who do not qualify for need-based computer grants or loans to needy students who want to buy a printer or other peripherals. This “risk sharing” program between the University and these two organizations continues to work effectively today, she said.

“These commitments have been huge for they have allowed us to develop and sustain a comprehensive financing plan for purchase of laptop computers and to expand the number of students who receive CCI grants,” Ort said.

Since fall 2000, more than 10,500 students have received a full grant for a new laptop, and another 1,000 students received a partial scholarship, Ort said. The combined amount of grant money awarded to students for laptops now exceeds $22.6 million, she said.

Steven Brooks, executive director of NCSEAA, said his organization was pleased to be asked to create a program that would help Carolina students pursue the then-new laptop initiative.

“For a variety of reasons, including the timing to coincide with summer orientation, federal loans were unsatisfactory,” Brooks said. “We used the opportunity, just 10 years ago, to test the waters of electronic delivery. The program has been a great success.”

Another feature that Ort cites is the discreet manner in which Student Stores delivers them. The grants are disbursed as electronic transfers of funds to the students’ accounts at the bookstore.

“When a first-year student qualifying for need-based aid arrives at Student Stores – with orientation buddies in tow – no one knows whether the laptop has been paid for by the University, the student or a parent,” Ort said.

“I really like this feature and commend John Jones and John Gorsuch for their consideration of students’ privacy and feelings.” (Jones is director of Student Stores; Gorsuch is the RAM shop manager.)

The first phase of CCI – to establish a cost-efficient purchasing plan to systematically upgrade the computers used by faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences – was an enormous task in itself. But the second phase – to require all entering students in fall 2000 to own laptop computers – ratcheted up the expectations even further.

As co-chair of the CCI Logistics Team responsible for delivering new computers to faculty and staff, Linwood Futrelle, now director of the Computer Repair Center, found himself in the thick of things.

Futrelle remembers the energy and commitment Hooker poured into the project, and the atmosphere it produced.

“He was the driving force, and he put the money down to make it work,” Futrelle said. “Everybody understood that they either had to get on board with CCI or get out of the way because it was coming through, and part of our job was to make sure it arrived on schedule.”

Taking inventory
At the beginning of CCI, David Eckert was hired to implement it and for the past three years has been the program manager.

An early task was to conduct a survey within the College of Arts and Sciences to determine what kind of computers professors in the various departments were using as a way to find out how many could be connected to the Internet. What they found was even worse than they had imagined, Eckert said.

“The first time we went through the College we were activating ports in rooms that had never had a computer in them,” he said. “I removed a typewriter from one desk and we found computers that were still running on DOS and Wordstar, a word processor application dating back to the early 1980s.”

In one department, Futrelle recalled, CCI staff sat down with a professor who asked them, “Now show me this Internet thing,” having never logged on before.

The CCI launched in 1998 with an initial contract awarded to IBM. In November of that year, the first wave of new technology purchased under the CCI banner was unleashed when two-thirds of the computers used by professors and staff within the college were replaced.

In fall 1999, the pilot for the laptop computer program for first-year students began. The pilot was intended for 250 students, but more than 1,700 incoming students, or more than half the freshman class, ended up buying the laptops under the program.

The next fall, more than 90 percent of incoming students chose to buy a laptop through CCI. That percentage has remained constant until a recent slight dip, which CCI officials attribute to the rising number of students who get laptops in high school.

Even so, CCI expects to distribute an estimated 3,800 computers by the end of the summer.

From the outset, CCI has required all first-year students to own a laptop that meets or exceeds the minimum specifications for their classes.

All incoming undergraduate and graduate students can purchase an authorized computer model through the CCI program. CCI distributes computers and offers training during summer CTOPS, the Carolina Testing and Orientation Program Sessions.

The gold standard for service
Like Futrelle and Eckert, CCI Project Manager Tim CoyneSmith has been an integral part of CCI from its inception, but CoyneSmith views its success through the wider lens of a Lenevo (and formerly an IBM) employee.

Although Carolina was the first Research 1- level public university to establish a laptop requirement, smaller private schools, including Wake Forest University, established the requirement earlier, CoyneSmith said.

What distinguishes CCI from other programs is not that it was the first, but that it was the best of its kind – and that it keeps getting better, he said.In CCI’s first year, for example, wireless Internet access was provided at a handful of locations. Today, wireless connectivity has expanded significantly.

In May 2005, following the Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the IBM Personal Computing Division, Lenovo began supplying computers under the initial 1998 agreement and is still the supplier under the new contract.

Beginning in 2006, students could print from their CCI laptops to any ITS computer lab on campus. The next year, a tablet PC, a laptop than could convert into a digital notebook, was made available to students for the first time.

“From a support perspective, UNC-Chapel Hill is the gold standard,” CoyneSmith said. University representatives from such countries as Russia, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and Qatar have visited the campus to see how the program works, from computer distribution to the operation of the ITS Help Desk and hardware repair shop.

Priscilla Alden, assistant vice chancellor for user support and engagement, points to the ITS Help Desk as visible evidence of the ripple effect of benefits that originated through the CCI initiative and spread throughout campus.

Recently, the Help Desk was highlighted in a case study published by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, which commended the University for its ability to provide a single point of contact for problem resolution and referral through the ITS Help Desk.

“When a student buys a computer at CTOPS through the Rams Shop, we support that computer from cradle to grave,” Alden said. “It is registered right then and there and put in a Remedy tracking system from the time it is taken out of the box.”

Each computer is expected to have a four-year life cycle. The specifications are equal to a corporate, heavy-duty model to make sure that the computer can withstand daily handling.

Although students can buy cheaper laptops elsewhere, they can only get the full-service backing and repair flexibility through the Lenovo models offered through CCI. Not only can they get their computers repaired inexpensively, students also get free loaners – which average only two years in age – until they get their own computers back, Alden said.

Taking time to appreciate
In 10 years, Eckert said, CCI has transformed the computing experience for faculty, staff and students alike, and the program continues to make regular updates to maintain its high standard. This approach differs markedly from that of technology programs at other universities, which have concentrated on students.

Through CCI, faculty and staff within the college continue to receive new computers every three years, Eckert said. The initial cost of the computer, he added, represents less that a third of its total cost when technical support and repairs over the computer’s life are factored into the equation.

After a decade, CCI has become the norm.

“This is the sort of program, in the first year or two after it began, that everybody could see the difference it was making on a day-to-day basis,” Eckert said. “After 10 years, we’ve come to take all its various service components and the easy access to high-quality resources for granted.

“CCI literally transformed the computing experience for faculty and staff and students on this campus, but there is nothing exciting and new about that experience anymore. It’s just a part of Carolina now.”

With or without outside notice, said Shirley Ort, associate provost and director of financial aid, the value of CCI continues to be powerfully felt by the many students who benefit from it each year, particularly low-income students (see related story, bottom of next page).

And from time to time, she added, it is worth paying attention to things that are working well to make sure they are never taken for granted and that the financial support necessary to sustain them remains strong.

For more information about CCI and this year’s recommended computers, see cci.unc.edu.