Students attending classes in the newly-renovated Regina and Madeleva classrooms walked into 21st-century education not by cracking the books, but by logging on.

Taking the next step in a continuing push to improve campus technology, summer renovations to 10 classrooms included new equipment to better facilitate education.

“This is a significant change in the computing environment,” Joel Cooper, director of information technology, said. “This demonstrates an increased commitment to technology at Saint Mary’s.”

New classrooms feature several technological improvements, including classrooms where a computer is available for every student. Wired classrooms are also available with amplification devices, video equipment and a computing podium.

“This is something the faculty is jumping on,” Cooper said. “Because they have been calling for this to happen, those classrooms are heavily booked [for the semester].”

Also new to several courses for the fall semester will be web-based course information, which allows students to access information about specific courses using the internet.

“Instead of receiving a syllabus on the first day of class, students may be referred to a web page,” Cooper said.

Technology resources are available in Cushwa-Leighton Library, where a 24-hour computer cluster has opened in the basement after three months of renovations.

The lab features new Macintosh and personal computers that are not used for class purposes.

Addressing the problem of class use in the Le Mans computer labs, the library computer cluster is assigned strictly for student use 24 hours a day.

“We ran into the problem that students would often be told to leave [the Le Mans lab] because of classes,” Cooper said. “We now have facilities for both instructional and student use.”

The improvements correlate with a college-wide commitment to integrate technology into the curriculum, Cooper said.

“[The cluster] accounts for both traditional and current methods of scholarship,” he said. “This is very exciting because it represents a commitment to technology at the turn of the millennium.”

Many have visited the library to see the new facility.

“We did notice that over the weekend there were numerous visitors to the facility,” said Sister Betty Hollenhorst, director of Cushwa-Leighton Library.