TECH Center

TECH Center, 12th & Montgomery

The TECH Center is a computer lab and technology center, located at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the largest facility of its kind in the United States^{[citation needed]}, featuring a large-scale 24-hour lab, Help Desk, and resources for teaching and learning. The facility opened in January 2006, in the university's Bell Building, located at 12th Street and Montgomery Avenue. The word "TECH" in the facility's title is an acronym for TEACHING, EDUCATION, COLLABORATION, HELP.

In recent years, the TECH Center has been gaining a reputation as an instrument of torture for students of all majors. Comparisons have been made to Azkaban, in which one can feel their soul being sucked out as they spend endless sleepless nights pouring over the computers and books^{[citation needed]}. There have even been instances when certain students have spent more than 24 straight hours in this place, eventually losing any sensation of internal Circadian rhythms due to the lack of windows and the presence of a Starbucks on the first floor. Consequently, being in the TECH Center has become a morbid experience for students who are forced to, in which they have to be continuously subjugated to listen to the ominous voice coming from above reminding them that "the TECH Center is a study facility."

As of the end of the 2011 Spring semester, the TECH Center has morphed into a social and cultural phenomenon on Temple's campus. As a result, it became affectionately known as Club TECH because "there ain't no party like a CLub TECH party because a CLub TECH party don't stop." A second unofficial name for the TECH Center is "The DiscoTech". People also call it The TECH for short.

Development

The goal of the TECH Center is to provide the Temple University students with the technical tools they need for their studies, and to provide a collaborative, social environment where they can work on group projects together and socialize. It has become a social hub and a major landmark on Temple University's main campus. The TECH Center was initially conceived as a facility for consolidating many of the software packages used throughout the university into a single, 24-hour lab.

Since opening in January 2006, the TECH Center has received over 2.6 million student visits. During the month of April 2007 alone, there were over 150,000 visits. It exceeded one million total visits between 10am and 11am on January 21, 2007.^{[citation needed]}

Facility

The TECH Center is a 75,000 sq ft (7,000 m²). facility. Designed with a variety of workspaces to enable students to work collaboratively or individually, the Center is the largest of its kind in the nation.

• 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m²) academic center open 24 hours a day
• Wi-Fi available anywhere on site
• 750 Windows-based workstations
• 200 Macintosh workstations.
• 80 loaner laptops (70 PC, 10 Macintosh)
• 150 software packages pre-installed on the workstations
• 13 breakout rooms (five which contain specialized hardware and software)
• Three Whisper Room recording booths, designed for vocal and instrument recording.
• 24-hour Help Desk for students, faculty, and staff.
• Vending machine selling computer and school supplies.
• "Temple's Welcome Center", a 4,260 ft (1,300 m) facility to host University visits by prospective students
• Specialized labs including video editing, graphic design, music composition, software development, and “quiet” labs.
• Custom-build workstation furniture that allow for both individual and group use of computers
• A faculty wing which includes resources such as the Teaching and Learning Center, the Instructional Support Center, a faculty lounge, and faculty breakout room with videoconferencing capability
• A 40-seat presentation room with Internet2 videoconferencing.
• Social space for students with lounge areas and plasma displays
• Lounge furniture that is especially adapted for laptop use.
• 24-hour Starbucks serving coffee and light refreshments
• 12 preselected cable channels are available for viewing on each workstation.
• Students also have a quota of 600 pages from the printers per year (two six-month periods).

External links

• TECH Center Web Site
• TECH Center article, Chronicle of Higher Education
• [1], A fan site