Located in Gainesville, Georgia, Gainesville State College (GSC) offers higher education to the population of Northeast Georgia. The college also values its role as a service organization that responds to the economic and educational needs of the community and reaches out to the citizens of its home region.
Since most of GSC’s students live off campus, GSC several years ago faced the question of how to best provide students with easy access to software for both campus based and online courses. Before desktop virtualization, this desktop environment was difficult to maintain and did not provide remote access or around-the-clock availability. Students installing software on home machines ran into compatibility problems. The answer was desktop virtualization with VMware View.
“Our basic need was to provide a 24×7 technical lab with campus and remote access for our students. But virtual desktops open a world of possibility. We use them to create GIS labs for middle-school students.” — Brandon Haag, Chief Information Officer, Gainesville State College
With desktop virtualization, GSC not only solved the problem of student access to information resources, it also opened doors to innovative community services. Easy scalability enabled GSC, through the National GeoTech Center collaborative funded by the National Science Foundation, to reach out to local middle schools with geospatial technology lab resources that even many colleges cannot afford. GSC installed the View client on existing PCs at three middle schools and one high school, delivering instant geospatial technology–ready labs. Students involved in GSC’s GeoTech outreach have won a statewide GIS competition that was previously open for adults.
“Our original driver for desktop virtualization was to provide 24×7 student access to technical labs from anywhere in the world,” Haag says. “Then we started finding ways to innovate new uses at no or minimal cost. It’s easy to set up and replicate a virtual lab. As a result, we can bring 21st-century technologies into middle schools and help children get a leg up on careers of the future.”
The college also uses VMware View desktops in creative ways, such as PCI security-compliant credit-card processing at its theater box office and Continuing Education department. In addition, GSC has set up kiosks in its advising center for students to check in or make appointments. These campus applications use Samsung PCoIP monitors, as does a 20-seat proof-of-concept lab in the library.
Read more about Gainesville State College and VMware View in this case study.
