Friday, April 10. 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 7
One center moves on; other center moves in
By Gerry Doyle
By Gerry Doyle
gdoyle@kansan.com
Kansas state university
Kansan staff writer
The University of Kansas Endowment Association will be making a short- but pricey -move.
The Endowment Association has grown from 30 employees to more than 100 employees in the past 20 years, necessitating more space, said John Scarffe, director of communications for the Endowment Association.
The Endowment Association will remain on West Campus but move from Youngberg Hall, up the road toward the Lied Center, to a new building just south of Nichols Hall. The new building, which still is under construction, costs $5 million.
; The move will take place during a weekend later this month.
The new location's 52,000-squarefoot interior will afford more space than Youngberg Hall's 24,400 square feet, Scarfe said. The move simply had to occur, he said.
"The current building is no longer adequate," he said. "We're totally out of space in this building. We've
gone from managing $7.5 million in 1974 to $36 million today."
Additionally, Scarffe said, the move would allow the Endowment Association to consolidate all its operations.
"We're starting the process now," he said. "People are starting to pack their stuff up. Most importantly, this will allow us to centralize our operation again. Because space has been limited, it's caused extra stress, extra work — this will allow us to work more efficiently.
The project was conceived in 1955, and construction began in February 1996. Because the Endowment Association is a private entity, the University's architect was not utilized. Nearing, Staats, Prelonger and Jones, a Shawnee architecture firm, was hired for the design. Topea's Winner Construction is building the new structure.
After the Endowment Association moves out of Youngberg Hall, the University's Center for Research, Inc., will move in.
Like the Endowment Association, the center was getting too big to remain where it was, said Bob Bannhill, the center's president.
Andrew Rohrback / KANSAN
The number of employees forced the center to spread out into offices all across campus, Barnhill said. The center's ability to help faculty its purpose was great, he
The center's ability to help faculty—its purpose—was hindered, he said. They plan to move in in mid-June.
"There are no coincidences," Barnhill said. "We have folks in Strong Hall, Nichols Hall, and Carruth-O'Leary. The University foresaw correctly that we needed to have all these groups together. We'll have better cohesion internally and externally. At the least, parking will be easier there than at Strong Hall."
The new Kansas University Endowment Association building is under construction next to Nichols Hall on West Campus.
Endowment Association employees plan to move into the building later this month. Photo by Roger Nomer / KANSAN
Plains states to hook up to larger, faster network
By Aaron Knopf
By Aaron Knopf
aknopf@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
When people think of the Great Plains, the images that come to mind are vast expanses of land, tornadoes and tumbleweeds. Data networking may soon become part of that picture.
By August 1998, the University of Kansas will be connected to a new high-speed network linking Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
The Great Plains network will provide research institutions in these states with fast connectivity to each other and the Internet.
The speed of the Great Plains network will provide research institutions in these states with
fast connectivity to each other and the Internet.
Researchers at the University will have efficient access to resources not available now.
"The EROS Data Center (a division of the U.S. Geological Survey) is one of the premier data centers in the country, and it will be on the Great Plains network," said Jerry Niebaum, director of Academic Computing Services.
The use of satellite imagery data from the center requires significant bandwidth because of its size and complexity, Niebaum said.
The Great Plains network also positions University researchers to be online information suppliers, Niebaum said.
Leonard Kristhalka, director of the Museum of Natural History, is working on a project that will
take advantage of the new network.
"For the Great Plains states, we are planning a project to have online all the plants and animals of the Great Plains as documented by museums in the United States," Kristalka said.
Without the speed and bandwidth of the new network, the University could not consider putting such a large database online, he said.
In addition to linking the states, the network also should connect 11 institutions, including the University of Kansas, to the network run by the National Science Foundation for the Internet2 project. This network is known as the vBNS, or very high-speed backbone network service.
"The existing Internet is what's known as a best-effort network."
said Rick Summerhill, executive director of the Great Plains network. "We want to go beyond that to build a network that has quality of service guaranteed."
That is the goal of the Internet2 project, he said.
If a professor needs to participate in an online lecture, Niebaum said, that professor needs to know the necessary bandwidth will be available continuously. he said.
Only those institutions that have received grants from the National Science Foundation to use the vBNS will have Internet2 connectivity, Niebaum said. He said the University was likely to receive the vBNS grant.
But the new network also will provide faster connectivity to today's Internet. Niebaum said.
"For the Great Plains states, we are planning a project to have online all the plants and animals of the Great Plains as documented by museums in the United States."
Qwest Communications Inter-
director of the museum of natural history
national, Inc., a Denver company,
will provide the circuits between
the networks of the six participating
states, Niebaum said. He said
the cost of the payments to Qwest
for these circuits would be about
$90,000 per month.
Leonard Kristalka
No vendor has been chosen to connect the network to the Internet at this time. he said.
Niebaum also has served as principal investigator for the Great Plains network grant. The grant, which comes from the
National Science Foundation's Experimental Program to Stimulate Cooperative Research, is about $1.48 million, he said.
Niebaum said in addition to the National Science Foundation grant, organizations in the six participating states had contributed money to the project.
The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation gave $200,000 and the Kansas Research and Education Network added $20,000, he said.
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