Information Technology The school’s information technology team reorganized during the past year to focus on a simple, unified technical infrastructure for the school. David Alexander assumed the role of IT director in January 2010; David Whitehead became a systems specialist; and Donald Sizemore rejoined the school to perform desktop and general support. The IT team completed a migration of the school’s faculty and staff to UNC’s Microsoft Exchange e-mail and calendaring environment, and is reconfiguring internal services to use centralized campus logins for desktop access, network file storage and specialized software. Further, the team is cutting expensive licensing costs by making use of the nascent campus Virtual Computer Lab project, which makes specialized software available to school students on any networked computer — not merely in the school’s computer labs. The school’s Reese Felts Digital Newsroom features state-of-the-art Apple Macintosh student desktops, digital video editing workstations and high-speed fiber-optic data connections. The newly renovated Halls of Fame room boasts a new projection system and two touch-driven Macintosh presentation displays. The school’s Macintosh users received operating system upgrades to the latest version of OS X Snow Leopard, and four graphics labs received hardware updates during the past year. The school’s server room’s improved air conditioning allows increased server capacity, and the school purchased an additional storage array for better data backups. The University’s Information Technology Services office recently upgraded its network hardware to gigabit capacity throughout Carroll Hall, and core router upgrades on campus have limited network errors by better compartmentalizing the campus network.
Interdisciplinary Health Communication The Interdisciplinary Health Communication (IHC) program reached new levels of prominence in digital media this year. IHC certificate students took their class discussions online with a new student-run blog called “Upstream.” They envisioned the blog as a vehicle to start conversations about how to get to the source of health problems “upstream” rather than continuing to fight unsuccessfully against the current. Students are responsible for selecting topics and posting comments five days a week. Check it out at upstreamdownstream.org. Other IHC highlights for the year: • Two graduate students earned the graduate certificate in Interdisciplinary Health Communication. Emily Brostek and Mohamed Jalloh were the first students to earn a master’s degree in public health from the Department of Health Education and Health Behavior and also the IHC certificate. • Five additional doctoral and master’s students enrolled in the IHC certificate program for a total of 15 students from four different academic units. • IHC certificate students and affiliated faculty presented research on message design and communication campaigns related to HPV vaccine, eating disorders, adolescent sexual health and health communication education at three national conferences, including the Kentucky University Conference on Health Communication, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the Centers for Disease Control’s National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media. • The school announced the launch of a new master’s in mass communication track in interdisciplinary health communication.
Paul Jones co-chaired the WWW2010 conference in Raleigh. Photos by: Maria Bielikova
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