Cindy Martinez brings blankets and quilts with her to the Kimmel Hall computer lab. She sometimes spends the entire night. And she doesn’t want to have to run back to her to room in DellPlain Hall to get anything.

‘Nobody bothers you. I can get all my work done here,’ said Martinez, a senior women and gender studies and psychology major.

Martinez doesn’t own a computer. She relies on the lab to complete her work and print any papers she needs for class. The computers in the lab work fine for her purposes, she said.

‘I don’t have one. So compared to what I have, they’re good,’ she said, her nails clicking on the computer screen as she ticked off what exactly the Dell desktop can do.

Information Technology and Services launched a campus-wide survey Monday to better understand why kids like Martinez use the computer labs at Syracuse University.

‘Nobody seems to be able to recall a student survey of this magnitude,’ said Chris Finkle, ITS communications manager. ‘Nobody seems to know. I haven’t been here long enough to have any real memory of any surveys like this.’

ITS designed the survey to learn what students find most beneficial about the computer labs and to determine the future of the labs, Finkle said.

The biggest question facing ITS: why students still use the labs even though a large percentage own computers already. The survey will provide ITS with answers, he said.

‘Our planning assumption had been we’d be able to scale back the computer labs because nobody used it,’ Finkle said. ‘We kind of made the assumption as more students acquired technology that the usage of the computer labs would decline.’

ITS toyed with a few ideas in the past, he said. Maybe kids drop in between class because they don’t carry their computers. Perhaps students find it easier to work in groups at the labs. Or they come to use just the specialized software – like the Adobe Creative Suite – loaded on the computers.

Ethan Siedel, a senior art history major, said he goes to the lab about one to two times a week. He needs the peace and quiet at the lab.

‘I get too easily distracted at my apartment,’ Seidel said. ‘It’s not so much because of the access to the computer.’

Siedel didn’t own a printer in the past. So he would come to the labs to print papers and articles he needed for class.

‘The only thing I used it most for was the printing, and I’d have to go out of my way no matter where I was going,’ he said.

He said the biggest thing ITS could do to improve is add more computer labs throughout campus.

ITS has no immediate plants to build any more public labs, Finkle said. The department will wait for the university to approve its budget before making any plans, he said.

A lab is already planned for the Center for Science and Technology inside the new Life Sciences Complex.

Public labs exist in nine different buildings on campus, including Kimmel, Lawrinson Hall, Brockway Hall, Schine Student Center and Goldstein Student Center on South Campus, according to the ITS Web site.

Martinez, the SU senior, admits not every student uses the labs as much as she does.

‘It’s probably a difference in location and course load,’ she said. ‘A lot of people don’t like to come because they like to stay home.’

Martinez said ITS should enlarge the lab on South Campus. When she lived on South, she found the lab overcrowded.

The labs are Martinez’ home away from home. In fact, she said the thing labs need the most is a better atmosphere.

‘Maybe like a little sofa where you could relax,’ she said. ‘It would make it more comfortable and homey.’

adbrow03@syr.edu

Published on March 25, 2009 at 12:00 pm