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Thursday, April 3.1980
University Daily Kansan
Increased use eats up KU computer memory space
By DAVID STIPP Staff Reporter
Like a student cramming all night before a final, the KU academic computer is becoming more and more sluggish and is running out of memory space.
Use of the computer has increased faster and easier access to the assistant director of the Academic Computer Center, and the computer's time-sharing system is now operating near
In time-sharing, many people use the computer at once. The more people who use the computer at the same time, the more taxed its processing capacity becomes. Therefore, Northland said, the computer would lower to power at the computer terminals.
HEAVY USE OF the computer, a keyboard and mouse, to memory to capacity, Nordland said. Disk memory stores information that is frequently requested, such as data used by the computer.
The rapid growth of computer use is nothing unusual, Nordlund said, and the KU computer reflects the increasing use of computers in society.
"The University has to respond to the use of computers in the real world," he said. "Every discipline is being forced to use computers for instruction and research."
Nordland said the acquisition of time-traveling terminals by the English and the health, physical education and recreation departments, as well as examples of computers expanding into
fields not usually associated with them.
He said many KU students, including journalism students, needed more practical experience with commuters.
"But we simply don't have the time-sharing capacity for it," he said.
ALTHOUGH NEARLY every department is increasing its computer use, Nordlund said, the biggest increase has been in the computer science department. He said many departments now required students to take introductory computer science course.
Introduction to Computing, or CS-200, has put the most burden on the computer, but it is also one of its greatest lessons this semester because of a new department policy that requires all CS-200 students to take a required course.
formerly used batch processing—keypunching cards to be read by the computer.
All of the approximately 900 students taking CS-200 now use time-sharing, Nordlund said, which makes the computer slower.
But timesharing makes more efficient processors than processing according to Richard Hetherington, associate professor of computer science, who is supervising the 33 students in his course.
"For a long time I've wanted to get students away from what I consider to be the archaeal process of punching holes in the wall," Hetherington said in months of meetings, "Hetherington said."
KU plans exchange with China
After two and a half years of planning and correspondence, a delegation of three vice chancellors and a professor from the University of Washington will travel to China April 10 to formalize agreements for an educational exchange program between KU and three leading universities.
If all goes according to plan, KU and Nankai University in Tianjin, Peking University and Nanking University could be developed as soon as next spring, and professors as early as next spring.
THE KU DELEGATION will be headed
by Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor. Also making the trip will be Ralph Christoferson, vice chancellor for academic affairs; Frances Horwitz, vice chancellor for research, graduate studies and education; Jae Lien Lee, professor of East Asia studies.
The delegation members will fly to Peking from Tokyo and then travel to Tianjin, where they will spend three or four days, then travel back to Peking for several days, spend a day at Zhengzhou University in Han Province, two days in Nanking and a
day at Fudan University in Shanghai before returning. Members of the delegation are scheduled to give lectures in their field at each university.
The delegation also has been invited to meet with officials of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences and other scientific research in-
research in China for our students and scholars.
"Exchange would promote collaborative research between U.S. and Chinese scholars, and hopefully, this will have a spill-over effect in Kansas," Lee said.
A survey is being made of departments and schools within the University to learn how many students or professors are involved in studying or teaching in China, Lee said.
"I THINK it will be a productive and valuable trip. Shankel said, "I will give the state of Kansas and the University some knowledge that will be valuable in the near future."
ALTHOUGH KU is the first midwestern university to open educational relations with China, China has also made exchange agreements with the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford. In addition, the University of Michigan universities, Lee said. All of these schools have established programs in the Chinese language, Lee said.
Lee said the objectives of the exchange program were mutually beneficial for China and KU, saying the program "would expand the opportunity for study, teaching and
Offer good 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mon.-Fri, till April 30th
Holy Week Worship at UNIVERSITY LUTHERAN CHURCH 15th and Iowa
EASTER SUNDAY
(April 6)
Sunrise Worship
6:30 a.m.
Festival Worship
9:45 & 11:00
MAUNDY THURSDAY
(April 3)
Euchrist and Foot Washing with Catholic and Episcopal communities. 7:30 p.m.
GOOD FRIDAY
Noon worship at Danforth
Cards aren't used much in the professional computing world anymore. Hetherington said, and students should have courses at school learning to be competitive in the job market.
"we're trying to get a couple dozen more terminals in Strong Hall, a project that was scheduled for completion six weeks ago," Hetherington said.
HETHERINGTON SAID that he received some complaints from CS20-200 students about slow response and difficulty in finding information online. More than a million more terminals soon would be available.
Communication difficulties between the computer and the new terminals delayed their availability. Heberington said.
Nordlund said the increased use of time-sharing reduced availability of disk memory on the computer.
"You can't teach all those CS-200 students on time-sharing without disk space," Nordlund said.
"We are trying to fund funds for more disk now," Nordland said. "但 even if we got the money, we have three months before the new disk would be available because of the bidding and induction."
NORDLUND SAID that if all of the computer's disk space were filled with users' data, the computer would not run.
"When it's all used up we quit," Nordland said, "because there won't be enough space for time-sharing."
The growth of disk-memory use has leveled off during the past few weeks, but is expected to start increasing again soon, Nordland said.
"We might make it through this summer," he said. "But we'll probably make it through the summer because the computer load is less. But we'll either need more disk soon or new people to work with."
The computer center might need to remove infrequently used data from the disk memory, Nordlund said.
Users would be warned that information stored on their computer could be erased automatically, he said. The policy would give people time to transfer data to other storage media, such as magnetic tape.
The content of the disk memory is maintained on magnetic tape, so even if data were lost during an automatic disk repair, the data can be retrieved from the back-up tape, Nordland said.
However, he said restoring data from the back-up tape to disk could be expensive and persons requesting such restoration would justify their use to the computer center.
Raise in aid standards proposed
The University Senate Financial Aid to Students Committee will present its new proposals for raising the academic standard of students and providing financial aid to the University Council today.
The proposals, if passed by the Council,
would require first semester freshmen to
achieve a 1.0 grade point average for 12
semester hours and remain eligible for
federal financial aid.
The proposals also would require students to achieve a cumulative 2.0 grade point average for 60 credit hours, or five semesters of work.
The proposed standards were created so the University would comply with federal regulations requiring "reasonable progress" for any student receiving aid.
THE CURRENT ELIGIBILITY standards were criticized by the committee and by the University Senate executive committee for being to low.
Under these standards, a first semester freshman must achieve a 1.2 GPA for 12 hours of work, but then would have until his ninth semester to achieve a 2.0 GPA.
The standards were criticized by SenEx because the grade requirement for junior high students is 120 points. Sciences, as of Aug. 20, will be a 2.0 GPA. This is four semesters ahead of the financial year.
Juniors receiving financial aid need only a 1.6 GPA to remain eligible.
A previous presentation presented to the Council at the March 6 meeting was rejected because it did not create problems for minority students and others who had trouble adjusting to the new curriculum.
EARLER PROPOSALS asked for a first semester 1.25 grade point average, and a 2.0 grade point average after four semesters.
The committee also will make recommendations that the financial aid appeals committee give special consideration to the office of financial aid and not shift to the academic sector and that the office of financial aid will be terminated if standards are not met.
The Faculty Council also will discuss a resolution from the KU chapter of the American Association of University Psychologists to support cobalt budget requests for fiscal 1982.
The resolution asks the Council to give highest priority to keeping unclassified information from users in inflation, to allocate additional funds for merit pay rewards, to fund faculty development and to give less priority to improvements than to personnel requests.
YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN! I MUP TO MY EARS IN ARIDITY!
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