News     About CS     Offices     Help Desk      Policies      System Status      CS Home

About CS

Welcome: A Message from Timothy O'Rourke, Vice President of Computer and Information Services

April 20, 2005

As the semester winds down, I’d like to bring you up to date on several large scale Computer Services initiatives.

Social Security Number Elimination
In an effort to secure personal information, we are quickly moving forward in our Social Security number conversion project. This project entails generally eliminating the use of Social Security numbers as the primary identifier at Temple and replacing them with a new nine-digit TUid. At the end of March, we assigned approximately 900,000 unique identification numbers to all student records dating back to 1963 and to all employee records dating back to 1984. Centrally maintained administrative systems were also modified to begin assigning the TUid to newly added records.

An additional component of this project is the distribution of new Temple ID cards. Students, faculty, and staff will receive a new OWLcard to replace the current cards. The TUid number will be printed on the OWLcards. Official use of the new card will begin early this summer. We will notify the Temple community by e-mail with the exact distribution and card activation dates, as well as other important details.

To keep the Temple community aware of this critical project, Barbara Dolhansky, Associate Vice President of Computer Services, sent an e-mail message at the end of last month introducing the new TUid and OWLcard. We will continue to keep you informed through our advertising campaign titled, There’s Safety in Numbers…Introducing the new TUid. For the latest information, go to www.temple.edu/cs/administrative/SSN and also feel free to send any questions to: ssn2tuid@temple.edu.

The TECH Center
The state-of-the-art TECH Center is yet another example of Temple University leading the way in educational technology. Over the next several months, I will share with you the components that will make up this facility. In this message, I will discuss the primary lab – the “heart” of the TECH Center.

The primary lab will be open 24 hours a day, Sunday through Friday, occupying the entire second floor of the facility and featuring over 600 general-use computers as well as 100 loaner laptops. Included will be a mix of Windows PC and Macintosh workstations. Some workstation areas will be clustered to allow group work, while others will set up for individual work.

With such a large area, the lab will be subdivided into “neighborhoods” so that students can easily locate each other. This also allows for some subdivided areas to be closed off, if needed, due to slow periods (late nights early in the semester).

Some of the other interesting facets of the primary lab include mini-lounges throughout the level featuring open tables and browsing stations, custom-made computer furniture to meet student’s needs, and also mounted television units wired with cable access.

For more information, you can visit the TECH Center Web site at www.temple.edu/cs/techcenter. This site has all the latest news and developments and also showcases a gallery of pictures and artist renditions of the building.

Extended Hours for Finals
With finals fast approaching, keep note of the extended hours for Temple computer labs. The Paley computer lab will open at 8:00 a.m., Thursday, April 28, and remain open until 9:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 11. The Tuttleman computer lab will open at noon on April 24 and also remain open until 9:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 11. We provide these extended hours so that students can complete end-of-the-semester academic projects.

In closing, I would like to wish you good luck for the remainder of the semester. As we break for the summer, remember to keep your virus software current, run Windows update, and refrain from illegally downloading files. For more tips on computer safety, read my March 25 memo, Computer Security is Everyone’s Responsibility.

If you have you any computer questions or issues, please feel free to contact the Help Desk at 215-204-8000.

Top