Western Washington University Student Technology Center Review

Located in the depths of Haggard Hall at Western Washington University, the Student Technology Center is an open environment for anyone to take advantage of their resources. The first thing you see walking in is the help desk, where there will be at least two or more workers waiting to hand out laptops, answer questions, or help students. Walking in further, you will find their computer lab, stocked with 8 macs, a lot of pcs, and posters showcasing all the services they provide. From checking out equipment, printing, scanners, workshops, and tutoring, the Student Technology Center provides a wide variety of technology.

The Student Technology Center provides workshops for students who want to learn about Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, and variety of other programs, including the upcoming 3D Printer. However, with the current upcoming workshops, 3D printing has taken over, where there are only nine out of the twenty-four of the scheduled upcoming workshops is not 3D printing. Nevertheless, do not worry, they provide online tutorials that can be accessed by anyone, for those who cannot participate in a workshop. However, none of them at this time teaches 3D printing.

At the help-desk, you can check out laptops, chargers, and other devices that people can rent for a period of 2–4 hours. The laptops rented are clean, fully charged, and ready to go. It is just a little clunky, but functions great and gets the tasks done. At the desk, you can also find printed versions of the online tutorials, and workers ready to help people when necessary. Usually they would go to the person’s work-space were to see issues themselves and work through it with them, or have them refer to the documents at the front desk if none of the workers at the time are familiar with the program.

In the computer labs, you can find seven scanners in total, six of which are set up right next to computers all around the lab. Since there are so many computers available, there would usually be an open spot. These computers are probably one of the fastest at Western Washington University, taking only seconds log in. The only real complaint is how it is treated. The tables and machines are cleaned and dusted off, but the keyboards, mouse, and wires are not. You can find the surface of the mouse and keyboards are clean, however, looking more closely, you can find mold and dust inside the keyboards and at the bottom of mouse. It has almost as if have not been cleaned for months.

The Student Technology Center is still a great resource for students to take full advantage of, housing the fastest and most up to date devices on campus. I cannot wait to see what it has in store for Western Washington University in the future.