Information Technology offers a wide array of services to the ETSU community to help students, faculty and staff obtain the best possible educational experience. Our staff is here to make sure your use of technology is a positive experience.
Technology without assistance can be frustrating. When questions or problems arise, Information Technology has services to assist you.
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Student Help Desk:
Student Help Desk Homepage
Information Technology recognizes the need for specialized help with technology for students. A separate help desk was constructed to assist with those needs. Students can email the help desk at shdesk@goldmail.etsu.edu or call the help desk at 423-439-5648 or, if they are having problems with a laptop, they can visit the help desk. It is located on the bottom floor of the D. P. Culp Student Center adjacent to the computer lab. The staff can assist with password issues, wireless networking issues, D2L issues and many other issues.
The hours of operation are as follows:Monday - Thursday 8:00am - 2:00am Friday 8:00am - midnight Saturday noon - midnight Sunday noon - 2:00am -
Faculty and Staff Help Desk:
Information Technology operates a separate help desk for the issues confronted by faculty and staff. The staff are professionally trained and equipped to assist with all areas of Information Technology. Many issues are handled while on the phone. The Faculty and Staff Help Desk can be reached by email at oithelp@etsu.edu or by phone at 423-439-4648. -
Frequently Asked Questions:
Many common questions and their solutions have been documented for the university community. These are located at: http://www.etsu.edu/oit/helpdesk/. -
Specialists:
Information Technology employs 6 positions dedicated to bringing assistance to technology issues to the campus community. These Specialist positions are assigned -zones- or buildings where they are responsible for assisting faculty and staff. Your Specialist will make regular visits to your department. Any issues that come up can be communicated to them. If they cannot resolve the issue, they will bring it to the attention of the person who can.
Information Technology, in conjunction with the Technology Access Fee Committee plans, constructs and maintains the multimedia classrooms at the main campus and also at the remote campuses. Currently, there are160 of these classrooms. Much care is put into the ease of use of these rooms. Each room is configured with zoned lighting, a projector, Smart Sympodium for annotation on the projected image, network connectivity for a presenter's laptop, dedicated networked computer, document camera, DVD playback, VCR playback, cable TV connection, amplification and speakers. These are all controlled by a Crestron touch screen control panel that allows the presenter to easily control all classroom equipment with a customized menu. A listing of all the classrooms with more detailed information can be found at the link below: Multimedia Classrooms.
Information Technology, in conjunction with the Technology Access Fee Committee, plans, constructs and maintains open and departmental computer labs at the main campus and also at the remote campuses. Currently, there are 53 computer labs with approximately 1,200 computers for student use. Both Windows and Macintosh platforms are supported on campus. Information Technology operates the 3 open computer labs on campus. These are located in the D. P. Culp Center, Sherrod Library and Lucille Clement Hall. The Lucille Clement Hall lab is unique in that is a wireless environment that allows students to check out a laptop and work in groups. There is also a multimedia classroom in this facility that allows students to become familiar with the technology and to practice presentations using the actual equipment found in the classrooms. Each of these computers contains a wide variety of software used at ETSU including:
- Microsoft Office Professional
- Adobe Acrobat
- Adobe Bridge
- Adobe Contribute
- Adobe Dreamweaver
- Adobe Fireworks
- Adobe Flash
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Photoshop
- Apple iTunes
- Microsoft Expression
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Minitab
- SAS
- SPSS
- Symantec Antivirus
- WS FTP
A listing of the open labs with detailed lab hours and hardware can be found at: http://www.etsu.edu/oit/facultystaffinfo/complabinfo.aspx
A list of all departmental labs can be found at:
Campus Lab Inventory
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Networking:
Networking Group Homepage
Information Technology provides the networking access to all students, faculty and staff. Every building is connected to the campus backbone and every classroom and every office has network availability. The student residence halls are also on the campus network and each room has network connectivity. There is also wireless networking available in many classroom buildings and a large wireless mesh network has been constructed to give outdoor wireless coverage on the main campus and on the College of Medicine campus. Information Technology maintains 2 Internet Service Provider (ISP) connections to bring fault-tolerant, redundant connectivity to campus. This is to ensure the ETSU campus resources are always available via the network. The main campus map found at http://www.etsu.edu/maps/ has overlays which show where wireless connectivity is available in buildings.
The networking infrastructure is centrally secured and protected by numerous security devices to protect the university resources.
Information Technology provides telephone access to the campus. Each office has telephone service available as well as courtesy phones in hallways. Residence halls also have telephone service provided for student use. Information Technology also maintains the emergency phone network located in parking lots and other campus locations outside. Long distance service is available for business use to all departments. Billing for business long distance is managed by Information Technology and is automatically deducted from the departmental account. For personal long distance, Information Technology can provide a Personal Identification Number (PIN) that results in a personal bill sent to the individual for payment. More information on this and the appropriate paperwork can be found at: Long Distance PIN.
Information Technology maintains approximately 140 servers for use by the university. These are centrally administered, secured and regularly backed up for the protection of university resources. All servers are housed in special facilities with a raised floor environment, HVAC and power protection. Some of the server support provided includes:
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Web Support:
Information Technology provides server support for the web server processing that goes on at ETSU. The university's web page http://www.etsu.edu is hosted by Information Technology. This allows departments and offices around campus to have a secure, freely available web presence to the world.
Students, faculty and staff all have accounts and access to GoldLink, ETSU-s secure self service web application. This allows everyone to conduct much of the business of the university online. Access is available at http://www.etsu.edu/goldlink.
Students and faculty members can develop personal web pages and store those on web servers that are provided. More information on these can be found at http://students.etsu.edu and http://faculty.etsu.edu. -
ERP Server Support:
Several servers are dedicated to the Sungard Banner Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system standardized across the Tennessee Board of Regents for administrative functions. These servers are utilized to conduct university business with the university community. -
File and Application Servers:
Servers are also hosted by Information Technology for students, faculty and staff to store documents from their ETSU computers. These documents are secured and are backed up daily. -
Departmental Servers:
Many departments at ETSU have special needs requiring the use of servers. Information Technology hosts these servers in the server rooms. This allows departments to have their servers without having to have specialized staff and accommodations required by hosting a server environment. -
Email Servers:
Information Technology owns and supports servers for email for faculty and staff using the Microsoft Exchange email system. Outlook for Windows and Entourage for Macintosh are used as the standard email client. Every faculty and staff member is given an email account automatically upon activation in the Human Resources database. For off-campus use, Outlook for Web Access (OWA) is provided. This is accessible at: http://mail.etsu.edu/
For students, Information Technology has partnered with Google to provide the GoldMail email service. Students automatically receive their account upon their initial registration with ETSU. GoldMail provides students with a powerful, easy to use and transportable email system. More information on GoldMail can be found at: http://www.etsu.edu/oit/students/goldmail/. -
Research Computing:
Information Technology hosts and supports the research computing cluster for the researchers on campus. The cluster consists of 128 processors on 64 blade servers running Red Hat Linux and has a 4 terabyte SAN for storage. A second, more powerful HPC is being acquired to further university research. This cluster will have increased I/O bandwidth using InfiniBand technology connected to a new storage array of 3TB to address the needs of the research community at ETSU. It will also include 32 6-core processors giving significantly added computational power.
Administrative System Support:
As a member of the Tennessee Board of Regents, ETSU utilizes the Sungard Banner Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for administrative functions. This includes software for student services, financial aid, human resources, financial accounting and alumni services. Information Technology works with the data custodians of these applications to set up user accounts; schedule and apply upgrades; conduct user training; implement new functionality and assist in the creation of reporting needs. More information on ETSU's Banner implementation can be found at: http://www.etsu.edu/banner.
Information Technology recognizes the need for adequate desktop computing as essential in a university. To that end, Information Technology instituted the Computer Replacement Initiative (CRI) to free departments from the burden of purchasing new computer equipment from departmental funds. President Stanton has supported this initiative by continuing to fund it annually. All permanent faculty and staff positions are allocated an OIT sponsored computer every 4 years. The computer is installed with the latest versions of software as is supported in the computer labs. The replacement project is conducted in January/February of each year with a project of approximately 500 computers. In August of each year, a smaller project furnishes newly created positions with a new computer. More information on the CRI can be found at links on the User Services homepage.
The computers that are uninstalled are donated to ETSU's PASTA program. PASTA refurbishes these computers, cleans the hard drive of any data and software, loads a basic software package on them and donates them to area public K-12 school systems. More information on the PASTA program can be found at: http://www.cs.etsu.edu/pasta/index.php.
Every ETSU-owned computer is furnished with antivirus software and all Windows based computers have patches centrally applied to them to assure the security of the university's resources.
Departments that have additional computing requirements work with Information Technology to determine the appropriate hardware/software to meet their needs. The university has standards that must be met to provide better and more efficient support for the university, efficient acquisition and the most cost-effective pricing available. More information on these standards can be found at: Computing Standards
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Information Technology acknowledges the need for the use of personal technology by our students, faculty and staff and work to assist with those needs. There are several offerings that are available including:
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Antivirus:
Information Technology has leveraged our agreement with Symantec to provide personal access to antivirus protection on personally owned computers. Each student, faculty and staff member can obtain a copy of this antivirus product at: http://antivirus.etsu.edu. -
Microsoft Software:
Information Technology maintains an agreement with Microsoft for their software on all university owned computers. A part of this agreement allows students, faculty and staff to purchase Microsoft software for personal use at a discount. You can find the software and purchase it at: http://etsu.onthehub.com. -
Personal Computer Purchases:
Students, faculty and staff can benefit from the relationships Information Technology has built and get access to special promotions from these vendors.
Those interested in a Windows-based computer can see these promotions at: http://www.dell.com/etsu.
Those interested in a Macintosh computer can visit http://www.apple.com. Once there, click on -Store-, then -Education Store- and -Select your college- to find East Tennessee State University.
Hewlett-Packard Personal PurchasesIn June 2011, ETSU partnered with HP to provide discounts on personal purchases. ETSU students, staff and faculty are now eligible for education discounts and exclusive deals on award-winning Hewlett-Packard products. The PIN code to access the site is AP8406. For more information or additional ways to order, please see this document: HP Program .
