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53a Church Street

State-of-the-Art Computing Facility

"This is incredible!" exclaims one Harvard Summer School student as she enters 53a Church Street for the first time. Escaping the heat and humidity of a summer afternoon in Cambridge, she settles in front of a new 17-inch color monitor, presses the power switch on her keyboard, and then adjusts the height of her armchair. To her left, a student debugs a C++ program, while on her right another student retouches a color image using Photoshop; in the next aisle a student connects headphones to his computer so that he can listen to the audio clips being sent his way from a distant Internet site. "My teaching assistant is going to hold his section meeting here in an hour, and I thought I'd get some homework done before it starts. This lab is so comfortable and the equipment works so well, it makes working long hours on the problem sets bearable and almost fun!"

State-of-the-art computers at 53a Church Street.

In early June, Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education (DCE) proudly opened the 53a Church Street computing facility. Formerly occupied by Harvard Student Agencies, this two-story brick building was transformed over a six-month period into a state-of-the-art computing center, providing the latest in desktop computer technology for students and faculty at the Harvard Extension and Summer Schools, as well as for various other educational programs sponsored by Harvard DCE.

The building houses three labs. The Macintosh multimedia area is on the lower level and features 30 Macintosh 9600's, each equipped with ample memory and hard disk space. This room contains a sophisticated audio/visual system so that teachers can lead students in hands-on computer-based activities. The instructor's lectern controls two high-quality ceiling-mounted data projectors that display what is on the teacher's computer monitor as well as projections from other video sources (such as a VCR or camera). When the room has not been reserved for a class or section meeting, it is available for open lab time.

The PC classroom/lab on the upper floor of 53a Church Street features 22 Hitachi MX-166 mhz laptops. This room also can be reserved for instructional purposes or serve as an open lab. "I'm particularly proud of the design of this space," comments James Peregrino, Manager of Computer Services for DCE. "A great deal of thought was put into making a computer-based classroom that could be used in a dynamic and flexible way. It's very important to have a room that supports a wide range of teaching styles using technology." The motivation for using laptop computers here is that there are times when an instructor wants to interact with students without having them hide behind a big computer monitor. These computers are easily folded and hidden away inside a custom-designed cavity within each desk. The horseshoe-shaped arrangement of the furniture gives this room a friendly, intimate feeling and allows greater interaction between students and faculty than a more traditional computer classroom. Lisa Klein, who teaches a Harvard Extension School course on how the Internet transforms business practices, recently taught a hands-on executive seminar in this lab. The participants had only words of praise for this facility.

The upper floor contains a third lab mostly for word processing and web-surfing available for walk-in use only. In addition, printers and a couple of very high-end Macintosh and PCs are connected to a variety of peripheral devices such as a flatbed scanner and a CD-ROM "burner" allowing students who need to work on multimedia applications to do so even when the downstairs classroom is reserved for a class.

"The 53a Church Street labs easily surpass the typical notion of a university computing facility," explains Tom Lane, Lab Manager for the 53a Church Street facility, who came to Harvard from MIT Information Systems, where he managed the MIT Residential Computing program for the past two years. "Each machine in the Mac lab is top of the line with the latest multimedia software and hardware and the innovative PC lab has already proven itself to be very popular with section meetings."

"Participating in the design of a flexible technology-equipped teaching facility was a gratifying experience," remarks Dr. Henry Leitner, Director of Academic Computing for DCE, and we have received rave reviews from students and faculty members on this dynamic new facility."

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