Litzi Duran
Contributing Writer
A new $2.5 million grant will bring big changes to Dominican with upgraded classroom technology, faster internet speeds, and an internship opportunity in the information technology field for students to take advantage of.
“This was a huge win for us. I can’t underscore enough how big of a deal this is for the university, for IT, and for the Crown Library,” said Todd Kleine, chief of information officer.
The university has proposed to use the grant money to “replace network and server equipment, upgrade classroom technology, provide preparation for careers in IT, and distribute hot spots,” said Anne Deeter, executive director of planning and the special assistant of the university president in an interview with the Chicago SunTimes.
It took two years for the grant recipients to be announced after the application process closed in December of 2021 according to Kleine.
“We applied and submitted the application in November of 2021. So, from November of 2021 to January 2023, we didn’t know if we were going to get it or not,” Kleine said.
Now the university administration is in the works of developing a timeline for rolling out the technological advances on campus for the next two years of federal funding.
Currently, IT has hired four more workers and two more Rebecca Crown Library workers. An IT fellowship is in the works and is planned to be launched by August 2023. Upgrades to the university network will be a work in progress through the next year. The goal is to upgrade up to 15 classroom technologies, where Kleine hopes five to seven could be upgraded this upcoming year if supplies permit.
“Technology is the cost of doing business,” Kleine said. “We have to have that for students to get the education they need.”
The grant Dominican received is through the Connecting Minority Community Pilot Program. It is part of the Internet for All initiative by the Biden-Harris administration. This initiative is to give the internet to families across America who don’t have access. According to Kleine, the grant works as a two-year funding program.
This $268 million grant program distributes awards to universities of the following criteria: “Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Minority Serving Institutions.” With Dominican being a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), it fell under the umbrella of minority-serving institutions to qualify for the grant.
Don Hamerly, the director of the School of Information Studies, is excited to see all the great things this grant will do for the university.
“[This grant will give] students a better experience on campus, but also a better connection off campus,” he said. “It’s a connecting minority community grant [designed] to help students from underserved areas where there is a lack of access to [internet] to get access.”
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