BCNET News
College of the Rockies Boasts New Capacity for Applied Research
Located in the spectacular Kootenay Rocky Mountains of southeastern B.C., College of the Rockies offers a unique and beautiful environment for learning. The College's vision is to create and deliver the most personal student experience in Canada. To support its vison, new networks were required, and so they began a project to boost connectivity for seven campus sites using the BCNET Advanced Network.
On September 15, 2017, Dianne Teslak, Vice President Finance and Corporate Services, opened a College of the Rockies celebration event. The event marked their success in building new high-speed network infrastructure and connecting all campus sites to the regional BCNET Advanced Network and the National Research and Education Network.
“A few years ago, College of the Rockies journeyed into a strategic planning process and determined that better digital infrastructure was the key to achieving our strategic objectives. After months of work, partnership and collaboration with the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training, BCNET and College of the Rockies, we connected seven campus sites at speeds of 10 times our prior capacity.”
One of the College’s key strategic objectives is to grow applied research. Gaby Zezulka, Chair of Academic Innovation and Applied Research spoke about the increased capacity for research.
“We continue to develop our research collaborations with industry and community and we are well positioned to reach out more broadly to potential partners knowing that bandwidth limitations will no longer be a barrier to our communication or our data sharing.”
Zezulka also spoke about the ways that new networks will boost the teaching and learning experience.
“With increased bandwidth, we are better able to support our faculty, our students and deliver a more personalized experience particularly for students in some of the more remote communities. Better connectivity will enhance our options for communications platforms and online learning offerings.”
The explosion of cloud and Internet-related services relies on high-quality networks. Jonathan Butt, Manager of IT Services spoke to the need for high-speed infrastructure.
“Better connectivity helps our nursing instructors easily collaborate with colleagues at other institutions through videoconferencing; it also supports the distribution of online simulations and sharing of large research datasets. All of these things require high-quality, high-speed connectivity to the Internet and the regional and National Research and Education Network.”