Quarterdeck 3.3

Part 1
The Room 1102 Story


By D. Craig Cooper

Have you been in room 1102 of the Eller Oceanography & Meteorology Building lately? If not, then you may want to go by to take a look. Odds are, the last time you were there it was full of broken down computers and Jurassic-age terminals; an unforgiving electronic relic from earlier days of TAMU Oceanography. Those old fossils have been cleared out and room 1102 has a new look and a new name. The new Oceanography Microcomputer Laboratory has arrived, and here is its story.

Don't spend it all in one place

[127K] [196K] Graduate students Michael Baca and Beom Seog (Vincent) Han unpack new equipment for the micrcomputer lab. (Photos by Rahilla C.A. Shatto)

The story begins with the money, approximately $40,000 with an expected continual income of approximately $10,000 per year. This pool of money is known as the Graduate Enhancement Fund and is distributed by the university to the colleges on a percentage-paid basis. The individual colleges allocate this money as they choose for the purpose of enhancing graduate education. About two years ago, the College of Geosciences and Maritime Studies informed its graduate students that they had received primary control of this money. The college and its component departments maintain oversight by requiring that the associate dean and appropriate department head approve all expenditures.

Upon learning of this opportunity, the Oceanography Graduate Council (OGC) took about six months to learn what could and could not be done with this money and establish the best way to allocate the funds. After several meetings and discussions with the graduate students who took an interest, we decided that the most beneficial applications of the fund should include support for graduate research, establishment of a Macintosh-based microcomputer lab for general use by oceano-graphy graduate students, and maintenance of our capacity to take advantage of unique opportunities for oceanography graduate students. Due to university regulations which govern research funding, it is problematic to fund graduate research directly. The funds have been used to maintain essential journals for the Working Collection, however, as well as provide money for the Galveston Beach Cleanup. The major thrust of the past 18 months of work, however, has been to use these funds to establish a microcomputer lab for free use by graduate students.

Continued. . .



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Oceanography, Texas A&M University

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Updated January 8, 1996