Lab interns: A new level of service

ABSTRACT

Faced with ever increasing financial constraints imposed on universities and increasing demands for service from academic and administrative areas, university computing facilities are being forced to either increase computing charges or limit services. Northern has developed a program designed to increase service while providing better trained personnel at a relatively modest cost to the Academic Computing Center.

Before establishing an Internship program, Northern provided two levels of service at two different labs, using undergraduate students, who were paid minimum wage on an hourly basis, graduate students on contract, and full-time consultants. The problem users faced lay in the fact that the consultants were on duty only during the day, the graduate students worked a staggered schedule, some days, some weekends, and the Center could not afford to give undergraduates, who made up the bulk of the work force, the extended training on the different packages and systems that would enable them to help with consulting. The primary responsibilities of the undergrads were maintaining the equipment, filling out reports, and keeping the labs running as smoothly as possible. Consulting provided by undergraduate employees consisted of only helping with syntax errors in Job Control Language and programming languages they were already familiar with, such as COBOL, Assembler, and PL/1.

The establishment of an Internship Program provided the Center with an opportunity to provide undergraduate students with training that goes beyond maintaining equipment.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing education

      • Computing education programs

        • Computer science education

        • Information science education

    • Management of computing and information systems