Technology Services offers perks to campus residents

By Yuta Mizusugi, The Mirror

Since the Help Desk moved back to Drury's campus just weeks ago, the university's Technology Services staff has been swamped.

Technology Services had outsourced the desk to a private firm for the last two and a half years.

The desk handles about 50 phone calls a day from both students and faculty afflicted by computer problems.

Sixteen students currently work the shifts to assist the desk; seven of them are newly hired.

"[The return of the desk] puts a lot more pressure on us, but it's an ultimate benefit," said Bob Zipf, assistant director of Technology Services and Mac support specialist.

All Drury students can receive wireless assistance and both computer virus and spyware cleaning software solutions.

The new service provides a limited amount of after-hours assistance. A student assistant of Technology Services can help if a night class faces a technology problem, for instance.

Albert Rauch, Technology Services' new help-desk coordinator, urges students to take steps to protect their computers. The student PC support staff cleans up students' computers infected by viruses, and students need to make certain that their anti-virus software on their computers is current. "In my past experience, I've seen that [computer viruses] cause a lot of problems," Rauch said.

"Students should run anti-virus and firewall. That's safe enough," Zipf said. Firewall is a program to protect a private network from other unauthorized networks.

Technology Services provide a McAfee virus scan version 8.5 to residential students free of charge.

Zipf also emphasizes virus protection by explaining the Drury Computer network's security. It consists of two parts, aimed at protecting both students' computers and the network. The first level of protection comes from anti-virus software. The second is the network itself, which does a centralized scanning on computers. Once viruses or worms are detected, the network can cut the Internet connection to the individual computer.

Although Technology Services usually does not provide support for repairing a student's computer such as a hard-drive crash, a service staff helps during outside hours for about $20 per hour.