Ryan Hulguin, a senior in physics at Austin Peay, is about to deliver an assignment to a professor. He's nowhere near the professor's office, but the document will be in the professor's hands in mere nanoseconds.
Hulguin is a registered user of Austin Peay's wireless network. Though he has a wireless-enabled laptop, today he's using one of the physics department's computers in Room 310. Within a quick click, he can turn in assignments, check his e-mail, link to library databases and surf the Net in search of solutions to problems in his major: computational methods.
The Sundquist Science Complex is just one campus building that's putting the joys of wirelessness—lightning-fast log-ons and a high level of mobility—at students' fingertips.
"The wireless project has gotten quite large," says Dr. Alex King, assistant professor of physics and chair of the University's Technology Committee. "It covers the atrium, as well as the 200-seat lecture hall and several first- and second-floor wings.
"Mathematics, in Claxton, and the library also are covered."
In conjunction with the wireless pilot project, the library has a laptop loan program, King says. "Anyone with an APSU ID can check out a laptop; you just turn over your ID, and you can use one in the library."
About 20 machines are available right now, though the library has requested more. —Debbie Denton
