Mathematics Facilities and Computing

Offices and Classrooms

View of Root Quadrangle near Crapo Hall.

The mathematics department offices and classrooms occupy the top two floors of Crapo Hall, the first floor is occupied by the Technical Services Center, our computer center. Mathematics classes are taught in Crapo Hall and the nearby Olin Advanced Learning Center. These classrooms all have (Fast Ethernet) network and power connections for student laptop computer use, and have a spacious arrangement of tables with moveable chairs, encouraging student-student and faculty-student interaction. All laptop classrooms on campus have ceiling mounted projectors that allow faculty members and student presenters to project presentations and demos from their laptop computers.

Computing

Laptops and Workstations: All students have Pentium class laptop computers and a substantial software suite, including word processor, spreadsheet, browser, email and networking software; Maple, Matlab, Minitab, Magma, Java, if needed; and a number of other scientific and engineering software packages. The campus is extensively networked, most faculty offices have a minimum of 2-3 network connections. There are over 30 classrooms with an average of 35 connections each, and all residence halls are networked. There are high capacity laser printers distributed throughout the institute.

The mathematics faculty all have Pentium class laptop computers, similar to those of the students, which can be used in the office (with docking ports and monitors), classroom, or at home. In addition, the faculty who require them, have modest Linux on Intel workstations. Faculty have access to all the software mentioned previously as well as Scientific Workplace (TeX). In addition the department has two black and white laser printers, a high quality color laser printer, its own high capacity photocopier, a scanner, and two digital cameras.

LINUX Computing and Cluster Computing: "Beyond the Laptop" UNIX-based computing is supported in the Theorodrome by 10 Linux/XP HP workstations similar to faculty workstations. This is complemented by two Math Department Linux compute servers (clive, derek), three labs with various operating systems in our sister department, Computer Science and Software Engineering, located on the top floor of Moench Hall. The Linux platform allows for more intensive computation with the above software, and some additional packages such as SAS, Splus and Cplex. These facilities are available from anywhere on campus via SSH or X-windows sessions from a laptop or desktop. For more detailed information see the math computing page.

The computing facilities described are complemented by a Beowulf-style cluster with 29 nodes (2x1Ghz,1G RAM) and the Portland Group compilers running on top of Linux. In addition the Matlab Distributed Computing System is installed.The cluster is a shared facility of all academic departments, hosted by the computer center. The cluster became available in the Fall quarter of 2001. For more detailed information see the cluster home page.

Technical Services Center: The infrastructure described above is all supported the staff of the Technical Services Center and the Math/CS system administrator. A more complete description of the computing infrastructure, available software and services can be found on their web site: Technical Services Center.

Other Facilities

John T. Meyers Building

Since Rose is small we do collaborate and share facilities. For example the Imaging Systems Lab is a joint effort of the Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics and Applied Optics departments. The Logan Library provides good reference materials and excellent interlibrary loan services for faculty and students alike, as well as access to electronic journals. Our John T. Meyers Building houses the Center for Technological Research with Industry and provides an excellent place for students to collaborate on project work. e.g., the Aerial Robotics Club. The Meyers building has such specialized facilities (interesting to math folk) such as a 3D printer (rapid prototyping plastic modeler) and a 3 ft wide colour printer. Finally Rose-Hulman Ventures provides opportunities for students and faculty to work more directly with industry.