17 A+ University Tech Projects from 2014

Boston College installed two giant video boards at Alumni Stadium in August of this year. The boards are 19 feet tall by 54 feet wide, and were installed at each end zone by Daktronics. The video boards are part of the college’s mission to pull fans out of their living rooms, fill up the stands, and amp up the stadium experience.

Whitter College constructed courtrooms, a jury room and judges quarters to give law students real-world experience. Each room features new technology, including spectator gallery seats, lecture system, pan-tilt-zoom cameras, Crestron control panels, and wired and wireless connectivity and conferencing solutions. The courtroom updates enable students to hold mock trials, and for the college to feature guest speakers.

Berklee College of Music completed its 160 Massachusetts Avenue project this past summer. The building features performing and recording studios, student dorms and cafeteria for collaboration and music-making. Some of the technologies that were integrated into the building include ProTools systems, Sharp displays, iHse Draco Tera KVM matrices, JBL Cinema Sound monitors.

The University of Oregon built the Hatfield-Dowlin Football Performance Center to recruit, educate and motivate its football players. The six-story center houses audio and visual systems by CompView Audio Visual, XOS Thunder software for editing and viewing sports videos, Christie projectors and iPads for strategizing plays. The university recently revamped its crowd noise feature to prepare players for game day.

Middlebury College installed a biomass boiler to power its campus by water vapor. The boiler burns off of wood chips, and provides 15 to 20 percent of the campus’s electricity, and its heat. Middlebury College built the boiler to reduce oil consumption, and to attain carbon neutrality.

University of Sydney built its “X-lab” to provide students a lab space for its science classes. The missions of the lab were to distribute lecture audio to students over a network infrastructure, and sound speech reproduction to overhead speakers without interrupting classes. The lab space features networking and processing technologies by CobraNet, Symetrix Radius AEC and Dante.

California Community College’s simulation center provides students ample space to practice medicine. It features pan-tilt-zoom cameras to record exercises, microphones to communicate with instructors, LED monitors that display vital signs and human patient simulators. The center’s technology gives students a realistic look and feel of an actual medical facility, and gives them close to real-world experience.

Texas Tech University installed video walls in its classrooms to give petroleum engineering students learning environments that imitate their future work settings. The video walls are 23 feet wide by five feet high, and enable professors to display various content simultaneously

Florida International University constructed a restaurant lab to give its hospitality students a taste of real-world restaurant work. The lab is loaded with Crestron touch panels, Panasonic point-tilt-zoom cameras, Sharp Electronics TV monitors, and wireless mics. The lab also features a touch screen lectern for watching and annotating lectures, and a Polycom videoconferencing system to hold distance learning culinary lessons with China and Ireland.

University of Toledo constructed its Interprofessional Immersive Simulation System to prepare its students for real-world medicine. The center is made of three floors to students to practice debriefing skills, surgeries and to work with live tissue. The significant technologies in the center include CAD walls, an iSpace, and human patient simulators.

Harvard University recycled an old, unused space to build a collaborative “Learnlab” for its students. The lab was designed and built by Red Thread, and features Steelcase mediascape units, ports for students to plug in their own devices, moveable Sony screens and Crestron control systems to display content. The learnlab also enables professors to have key access to manipulate the room’s setup, and control who will share content.

St. Louis University built a new law building to give students real-world law experience. The 12-story building teaches students law digitally via Crestron’s DigitalMedia control system touch panels, multimedia rooms and digital signage on every floor. The building even has a hearing impaired system embedded under the carpets to support the hearing impaired.

Kent State University revamped its visitor’s center, called the “May 4 Visitor’s Center,” to commemorate the Kent State shootings from 1970. The May 4 Visitor’s Center features three galleries of historical memorabilia, state of the art audio and video, Panasonic video projectors, Watchout Software to project images, and an AMX control automation system. This visitor’s center will be an integral part of freshmen orientation and a field trip destination for high schools.

St. Cloud State University revamped it broadcast studio to give students real-world broadcasting experience. The studio is home the university’s TV station, where students are able to work cameras and edit film. It also features Edit Share’s XStream, Flow Browse and Ark Tape, which help students store and edit material before it airs.

Michigan State University added a 30-foot long visual display to brighten the corridor of the Berkowitz Athletic Complex. The display, which is comprised of Chritie Microtiles and Spyder X2O technologies, highlights game footage to win over prospective students. It also lights the way to the complex’s championship trophy display.

This past year, Stonehill College installed a 15 acre solar farm to partly power its campus. The solar farm will save the college $185,000 dollars a year in energy consumption bills, and is a significant part of the campus’s “going green” initiative. Stonhill College’s solar field is the largest field in New England.

NSLIJ installed a Primeview plasma video wall in its Rust Auditorium to create a more engaging learning experience for its medical students. The video wall is part of the immersive teaching and learning atmosphere at the hospital, and makes a lesson’s virtual resolution, audio and visuals more vivid.