MSU-Northern Receives Microsoft Grant

The Montana State University-Northern Computer Information Systems program was recently awarded a two year Microsoft Instructional Lab Grant for 75 software licenses, worth $60,369 each year.

This licensing agreement enables the University to make greater use of the software programs they own by permitting them to make and use one copy of a given software for each license granted. The copies will then be installed on computers in classrooms and computer labs throughout campus. Associate Professor of Computer Science, Jay Howland, explains, "In order to use the latest software programs in our computer classes we need to have enough copies for students to work with. Unfortunately, computer software licenses are quite expensive." This grant is important because it allows the University to use the software programs covered by the grant in more of their courses, since they can be made available to more students and faculty. "We do our best to keep up with latest software programs, but the costs can be an inhibiting factor," says Howland. "This grant is especially significant since it insures that we will be able to train our students in the latest software technologies."

A unique feature of the grant was that it permitted the University to select from a list of Microsoft Visual Development Tools programs, the software licenses
that would be most useful to the institution. "This was great," comments Howland, "because it allowed us to create a license package that is truly beneficial to our program." Software selected by MSU-Northern includes Visual Basic Professional Edition, Visual C++ Professional, Visual FoxPro, Visual Source Safe, Visual J++ Professional Edition and Visual InterDev. These programs are currently being used in eight different computer programming, web presentation, systems engineering and analysis, software engineering and database courses at MSU-Northern..

The Microsoft Corporation awards its Instructional Lab Grants in order to "reward colleges and universities for innovative uses of technology in the computer science, engineering, and information systems curricula." To qualify for the grant program, MSU-Northern had to complete a rigorous application process and demonstrate that they have currently been keeping up with the latest computer technologies and using them in their courses. The grant also requires the University to maintain accurate course information for all courses using grant software on the Academic Coop website sponsored by Microsoft. This site features course descriptions, syllabi and web links for the 100 higher education institutions nationwide that are currently receiving Microsoft Instructional Lab Grants.

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