Cabrillo Gets Wired
Cabrillo College, which graduated 1,168 students in its 56th commencement ceremony last Friday, ended the semester with some big news: the school got a nearly $1 million grant to build a regional Internet, Communications and Technology lab that will be used by 25 other community colleges.
The lab will give students a chance to work on the kinds of operating systems, networking equipment and applications they will use in the real world. It will allow 288 simultaneous connections, and 16,128 students can use it for three hours at a time each week.
The Bay Area Community College Consortium funded the project, which will also be a resource for computer study from introductory classes to more intensive ones on cyber security, virtualization, data storage, operating systems, systems administration and network configuration and design. It could have cost individual schools as much as $150,000 to set up their own versions of this group project. With this one, students can access the lab from an Internet connection.
“All of the 25 San Francisco Bay Area community colleges participating in this regional ICT lab facility have ICT-related programs of study, and all have previously struggled with funding, building and managing hands-on ICT lab facilities that develop the skills demanded by ICT employers,” says Rock Pfotenhauer, Cabrillo College Dean of Instruction, Career Education and Economic Development.
Adds Gerlinde Brady, Computer and Information Systems Program Chair and Instructor,
“One centralized lab with a systems administrator and shared remote access by all 25 community colleges is not only more cost efficient, it enables students and faculty to be more mobile.”
We Win
Good Times News Editor Jake Pierce took home the first-place award for coverage of local government from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for a story he wrote about how homeowners are struggling against the government to keep their Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs).
Pierce’s article focused on the case of a Santa Cruz woman, Paula Gregoire, who was trying to keep her affordable rental in a garage that had been converted into a cottage, as the city attempted to evict her. It brought attention to the plight of renters in Santa Cruz and the conflict between local officials trying to ensure safety and residents trying to live affordably.
Good Times was also a finalist for General Excellence for the overall newspaper.
