NDSU faculty, staff and students will soon have immediate wireless Internet access when visiting other Tri-College University campuses. Concordia College and Minnesota State University Moorhead are joining NDSU in enabling Eduroam, a global wireless Internet access service developed for the research and education community.
NDSU was the first of the three Tri-College campuses to join the Eduroam network. Marc Wallman, NDSU interim vice president for information technology, initiated the project this spring after learning about the network through discussions with leaders from other regional research universities.
“This is one of many examples of the initiatives our IT Division is enacting to improve the experiences NDSU students, faculty and staff have with campus technologies,” Wallman said.
Tri-College University Provost Tim Flakoll played an instrumental role in moving the Eduroam project forward at the Tri-College level. After Wallman expressed initial interest in joining the Eduroam network, Flakoll facilitated collaboration among the provosts and chief information officers at all three campuses – including Bruce Vieweg, associate provost and chief information officer at Concordia, and Daniel Heckaman, chief information officer and director of information technology at MSUM.
“This project fits very well with the mission of Tri-College,” Flakoll said. “With Eduroam, we’re melting away barriers and making it as seamless as possible for students and faculty to move from one college to the next.”
Flakoll said that collaborative grant dollars were offered to the three colleges to defer costs associated with implementing the technology needed to join the Eduroam network. Outside of these costs, becoming a participating Eduroam member is free for any institution.
NDSU faculty, staff and students have been using Eduroam since April. Concordia joined the Eduroam network in June, and MSUM anticipates enabling Eduroam on its campus this fall.
After MSUM deploys Eduroam, members of each of the three institutions will be able to complete a one-time setup of their wireless devices to use secure wireless at any of the three campuses, in addition to many other participating institutions across the country and internationally.
“NDSU, Concordia and MSUM are among the first 100 educational institutions in the U.S. to activate Eduroam on their campuses,” NDSU Provost Bruce Rafert said. “This is a natural next step for giving Tri-College students the seamless ability to connect to the significant Internet resources that all three campuses possess.”
Eduroam setup instructions for NDSU faculty, staff and students are provided at www.ndsu.edu/wireless. More information about Eduroam and a map of participating locations are available at www.eduroamus.org.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.