Loyola College in Maryland Connects Students to Classroom of Future With Citrix Loyola College in Maryland, founded in 1852 by Jesuit priests, is the oldest chartered college in the City of Baltimore and is the ninth oldest among Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. The mission of Loyola College is to combine the highest intellectual standards with care of the entire person. For today's students, this translates into a broad, liberal arts education within a Classroom of the Future setting, carefully crafted to broaden their minds and help them meet the challenges of modern life. Recognized as a leading educator, Loyola College earned a $3.5 million grant from the federal government to create a "Classroom of the Future" that would help train current and future federal workers and information systems management and help students become more computer literate. The college broke new ground during the 1992-1993 academic year when it revealed its extensive campus wiring program, providing voice, data and video connections to all dorm rooms, faculty offices, classrooms and computer labs. "The ultimate goal is for faculty, administrators, staff, and students to be computer literate and so comfortable with technology that computers on campus will be as ubiquitous as books," says John McFadden, Director of Information Services for Loyola. While the wiring program proved beneficial in enhancing communications and information availability for most undergraduate students, faculty and administration, it created a void for the 3,000 graduate students and 800 commuting undergraduate students. "We did not want to neglect the off-campus commuting students or graduate students, so we sought dial-in facilitates to our Novell NetWare network," McFadden explains. "We had to ensure that everyone had the same access capabilities to the same information, regardless of their location. The ultimate goal for our Classroom of the Future is to transcend the physical boundaries of the traditional classroom, while preserving the interpersonal relationship between student and faculty." Ensuring equal access to information, regardless of student location, is the CitrixTM Systems, Inc. WinViewTM for Networks Application Server Software. "We went with WinView because we needed a high-speed, cost-effective remote access solution that could easily adapt to our changing environment," McFadden said. "The issue of the 90s is not computing. Everybody can compute. The issue of the 90s is connectivity and access to information. WinView for Networks is the best product available today to address the connectivity issue from a remote location." An alternative remote access method evaluated by Loyola College was traditional remote control software. Remote control software allows a remote PC or terminal to capture a networked PC and remotely control it. This type of solution requires one dedicated PC for every dial-in line supported. McFadden quickly realized that this method of remote access into their NetWare network would be cost-prohibitive. "Remote control software carried an outrageous price tag for the thousands of remote students that need access to our NetWare network," states McFadden. "It would have required one dedicated PC for every user dialing into the network. Being that we have to accommodate several thousand students, remote control software just wasn't a viable solution." Unlike traditional network applications, which reside and execute on local workstations, WinView for Networks application server software provides centralized, high-performance Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS application execution services for local and remote users across standard telephone lines, local and wide-area networks. Based on a form of client/server computing, called Distributed Presentation Management, the entire application program is loaded and executed on the WinView application server, while only compressed screen images are transmitted between the client workstation and application server. High-speed is achieved over low bandwidth connections through the WinView exclusive Intelligent Console Architecture (ICA), which minimizes data traffic by sending only keystrokes, mouse and Windows graphics commands between the client and server. Based on a 32-bit preemptive, multitasking operating system, WinView allows up to 20 concurrent users to run multiple Windows and MS-DOS applications and switch between them using a simple hot-key. In its simplest form, WinView for Networks addresses both the communication and application needs of remote/mobile LAN users. In its more advanced configurations, however, WinView facilitates the development, deployment and management of Windows applications, and provides the flexibility and functionality to meet a whole host of other PC-LAN problems. Although WinView's primary use at Loyola College in Maryland is to give remote students equal access to information resources, it is also giving new life to low-powered PCs. Many faculty and staff members have 286 systems with 4 MB or less of RAM. According to McFadden, there is increasing demand to run Windows applications. "Citrix is the solution that can provide these capabilities without the need to upgrade and replace all those older PCs," says McFadden. WinView's unique distributed Windows architecture (including Windows 3.1 under license from Microsoft) allows any PC, even 286 machines not capable of running Windows, to access today's sophisticated Windows applications. The processing power required to run WinView's small client program (640KB RAM on a 286 system) is actually much less than that needed to run Windows 3.1 natively. As McFadden says, "At Loyola College in Maryland, our fundamental objective is to connect islands of information for seamless connectivity, no matter where students are -- in a residence hall, faculty office, classroom, or at home by the fireplace." The Citrix Systems WinView for Networks is helping them to do just that -- and more. Along with great technical support from Citrix, Loyola is maximizing its use of WinView and is furthering its goal of providing better access to information.