Livingstone Enters The Wired Age
Fiber optic cable creates state-of-art system for college

BY SUSAN DICKERSON
SALISBURY POST

It used to be a training area.

Now, with ‘‘Sign up for your personal account now’’ posters taped on the door, the basement of the Price Administration building has become Livingstone College’s heart and brain.

Open that door, and it’s a gateway to some of the most cutting edge technology available. Fiber optic cables snake through a cabinet full of data networking hardware. Thousands of tiny white and red wires worm their way to phone connections. Cabinets of translation boxes sit with their channels posted on the fronts.

It’s all a part of WANLink Communications’ wiring of Livingstone’s entire campus. That understates what the fiber optic wiring has done for the campus.

WANLink installed a fiber optic backbone network, a new telephone system, complete with voice mail, and a high-speed data network-video distribution system.

‘‘This is a new state-of-the-art system that’s in place that will be able to build as technology changes,’’ said State Alexander, the college’s public relations official. ‘‘We’re one of the few black colleges that have this in place. Now, we’ll have the capacity to interface with any new system that may come out in the future.’’

Alexander didn’t have the cost of the wiring available as of the Post’s press time.

‘‘That’s the price of growth,’’ he said. ‘‘If we don’t do anything, Livingstone won’t be competitive. This is what kids are looking for in colleges when they make their college choices.’’

With the new telephone system has come an entirely new set of phone numbers for the college. Every administration, faculty, staff and student number has changed, Alexander said. The main number to the college now is 797-1000.

‘‘If people call, they’ll get an operator, but they will also get another number that will direct them to main places such as admissions.’’

Everyone has e-mail now, too, that is networked. Alexander didn’t know if e-mail addresses would be posted, but if they were, they would appear on Livingstone’s home page along with new phone numbers at www.livingstone.edu.

Along with the phone changes, students get their own e-mail accounts, cable in their dorm rooms and local phone service provided by the college, Alexander said. They get all that for their technology fees, $680 for on-campus students and $280 for off-campus.

Students also have networking ports they can connect to in their dorm rooms.

‘‘This has changed everything in terms of the way the college is communicating,’’ Alexander said. ‘‘It has put everybody on the same system.’’

College officials are exploring how far their new technology will take them. Along with the three computer labs located across campus, faculty will be able to conduct their classes in Power Point. Faculty will be able to write information on an erase board. Whatever they write on that board, they can download into a computer for mass broadcast on the Internet.

In the very near future, networking staff will transform at least one of those labs into a distance learning center – a classroom where a professor can conduct a class that can be broadcast on televisions.

‘‘Everything is connected with this one fiber optic system,’’ Alexander said. ‘‘And it has positioned us for any 21st century technology. We did not have that capability before.’’

As for making the transition to a new phone system, complete with new phones, Alexander said, ‘‘It’s been relatively smooth. There were a few little snags here and there, but overall, it’s gone very well.’’