By May 1, students may enjoy not only sun and warmer weather but also temporary outdoor wireless internet on the Academic and Residential Quads.
"We can turn on and announce outdoor wireless before the semester ends, with the caveat that this is still [a] work-in-progress," said Amelia Tynan, Tufts Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Tufts Computing and Communications Services (TCCS).
"There will be hotspots on the Residential Quad," she said. The area receiving wireless will be bordered by the F.W. Olin Center, Miller, Carmichael and Houston Halls.
Wireless will also be extended to the roof of the Tisch Library and the hillside gathering area below Goddard Chapel.
"Some access points are temporary and will have to be re-installed this fall to fully calibrate and test the coverage," Tynan said. "With foliage growing back and potential wall penetration issues, there may be interferences causing dead spots."
This movement to install and test outdoor wireless comes as a part of the "Back-to-School" project, which Tynan initiated with TCCS as a result of a TCU Senate resolution calling for outdoor wireless coverage on the Quads.
Sophomore senators Alex Pryor and Evan Dreifuss authored the resolution and helped facilitate the process.
"I've had the pleasure of meeting with students who have well-informed ideas about technology benefits they think should be part of their Tufts life," Tynan said of Pryor, Dreifuss and other senators.
"Nothing could be done without Mely Tynan's approval," Pryor said. Tynan took on the brunt of the effort, including the handling of all technical elements of the expansion.
The TCU Senate worked on encouraging the administration to take up this project.
Pryor and Dreifuss co-chaired the TCU Senate Services Committee and decided early in the year to work toward the expansion of wireless on campus.
"While of course the goal is for the whole campus to be wireless, we figured we'd start smaller," Pryor said.
Pryor thought that at the beginning of the year, wireless Internet was not high on the administration's priority list.
"Our committee researched various schools comparable to Tufts and their wireless situations," Pryor said. Of the schools looked at, Bowdoin, Cornell, Dartmouth, Emory, Harvard, MIT and Northeastern had wireless Internet available all across their campuses according to Pryor.
Other schools, including Amherst, Duke, Hamilton, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago and Washington University in Saint Louis provide students with wireless access in dining halls, dorm rooms and on their outdoor quads, Pryor said.
"We presented this information to the Alumni Association," Pryor said. "[They] took a particular interest in this project."
She said that Director of Alumni Relations Tim Brooks and Associate Director of Alumni Relations Jonathan Burton put her committee in contact with Tynan.
Pryor and Dreifuss then submitted a resolution to the TCU Senate in November, which read, in part, "The Tufts Community Union Senate strongly encourages the administration to allocate the necessary funding for the timely implementation of an extended wireless network to the President's Lawn, the Academic Quad, and the Residential Quad, functional for Spring 2006."
The resolution passed unanimously, giving full student support to a potential wireless expansion.
"It showed the administration that it's not just me and Evan; it's the student government that's representing the student body," Pryor said.
The resolution also cited an Information and Technology Services site survey conducted on Apr. 24, 2005 that "assessed the feasibility and cost of extending wireless Internet services to exterior areas such as the President's Lawn, the Academic Quad and the Residential Quad."
The Daily reported on Oct.19 of last year that, according to the survey, it would cost $12,000 to add wireless access to the President's Lawn and the Academic and Residential Quads, which covers the construction of six signal access points at a cost of $2,000 each.
Dreifuss said that Tynan had since informed him that these figures were inaccurate.
Wireless planning for the rest of the Tufts campus continues. "We have an engineering study underway for the Medford campus to help with the planning, and I have appointed a wireless project leader in TCCS to oversee the process," Tynan said.
Tynan's office is in the process careful planning and reviewing many lessons learned from other wireless campuses such as: bandwidth problems, security issues, and building analyses.
These functions are primarily concerned with making sure that the wireless system is secure, reliable, and fast.
"As wireless technologies continue to change, we also have to 'future-proof' our architecture and investment in anticipation of new standards and services," she said.
"Evan and I are so thrilled that this project actually materialized," Pryor said. "It involves a serious allocation of money and a lot of people's approval."
That said, "there is still a lot of work to be done," she added. "Ultimately, we want a fully wireless campus."
Wireless Internet is currently available in the University's libraries, the campus center, Dowling Hall, the F.W. Olin Center, the ASEAN Auditorium and most other rooms at the Fletcher School, and the lounges of Tilton, South, Houston and Carmichael Halls.
- Laura Herman contributed reporting to this article.
