Westmont Magazine A Better Backbone

During December, Westmont upgraded the “backbone” of its computer network to increase speed and efficiency tenfold. Most of the work occurred during the Christmas break, after finals and before the beginning of the spring semester.

A $422,020 grant from the Fletcher Jones Foundation, awarded in May 1998, funded the work.

With new servers, dial-in modems, and other equipment, the computer bandwidth, or capacity, has increased. As a result, faculty, staff, and students can access information much faster.

Now that this initial work is done, the College hopes to secure funding to continue with the second and third phases of a complete network upgrade. The second phase will include adding multimedia capability to classrooms, providing tools for faculty to develop multimedia curriculum, and renovating Westmont’s World Wide Web site. The third phase will replace individual computers in laboratories and those used by faculty and administrators.