As a current or incoming law student, you will undoubtedly come to rely on technology throughout your academic career at St. Mary’s University. Whether it be assistance with laptop configuration to access St. Mary’s network, installation of software, or simple technical questions, the computer administration department, located in Raba building room 101B, is here to support you.

Hours of operation:

During the academic year the computer administration office will be open from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday. Most assistance is usually provided to students on an ad hoc basis; however, students are free to set up an appointment or ask questions either via e-mail at lawtech@stmarytx.edu or by phone (210) 431-6721. We will attempt to respond to these inquiries as promptly as possible.

Minimum laptop requirements:

For PCs:
Running on either XP or Vista OS
CPU Pentium IV or equivalent
Hard drive has a minimum of 250 MB free space
Minimum 1GB of memory

For Macs:
Although systems running the Tiger OS (ver. 10.4.4), it is strongly recommended that students currently be running or upgrade their systems to the current Leopard OS (ver. 10.5).
CPU, hard drive, and memory requirements mirror those of PCs.

Services offered to students:

Laptop setup will vary depending on the operating system (i.e. XP, Vista, Leopard...etc) the student brings in. The typical configuration includes:

Wi-Fi & Lan connection: Allow students access to the Internet throughout campus

Pharos installation which permits students to print on campus at the printing terminals located throughout the law library. Please note that currently this program only works in Windows having 32bit OS.

Trend Micro antivirus software provided to the student. Functional on both 32bit and 64 bit operating systems. Please note that this software is only intended to run on Windows operating systems. In addition, this is only antivirus protection and does not protect your system from malware or spyware. Students may purchase such software at their discretion from a third party.

ExamSoft* depending on the instructor, students will have the option of either handwriting or taking a computerized version of their final exams. For those students who opt to take the exam using their laptops, an e-mail will be sent out via their St. Mary’s e-mail account (accessed via Gateway) a month prior to finals which lists directions on how to download and utilize the software. If the student still has difficulties, they are free to come to the office for help. Please note that this software must be running on a true Windows environment and will not function through emulators such as Parallels and VM Ware.

Students working at the Center for Legal and Social Justice (CLSJ) needing to access the Clinic network folders and applications will need to install Novell on their systems. This installation is done in the office and is only functional on Windows OS , unless the student has a Windows partition on their Mac.

For Macs with the Leopard OS:

Bootcamp a utility included in the Leopard OS can be used to partition the laptop into a Windows and Mac environment. Students will need the CDs that originally came with their Mac in addition to a Windows OS Cd. Either XP (minimum with service pack 2) or Vista will function properly.

Troubleshooting:

Students experiencing technical difficulties with their systems may bring their laptops in to be analyzed by the staff. If a student brings in a contaminated laptop, we do provide spyware and malware analysis and removal; however, we do not re-image computers unless students first backup their files and can provide the recovery disks that originally came with their systems or have a recovery partition already built into their OS. (The latter will typically be the case with systems running on Vista).

Laptop Rental:

Through the current Laptop rental program, students can check out a laptop from the office. Please note that the laptops are rented out on a first come first service basis and only done so after the student has read and signed a rental agreement consenting to the terms of use.

Software Purchases:

Current law students are allowed to purchase one copy of Office 2007 (for Windows)or Office 2008 (for Mac) and/or Vista OS at the bookstore, per academic year.

E-mail services:

• Students may access their St. Mary’s e-mail through the gateway portal.
• On campus students can enter gateway as the URL
• Off campus students can access it from the following URL: gateway.stmarytx.edu

As per the Executive Administrative Council of the university, the following e-mail policies apply:

• E-mail addresses will be assigned to students upon the completion of the university application process
• Students have a mailbox limit size of 50Mb. They will receive warning messages from the system administrator as their mailbox size reaches this threshold.
• Accounts will remain active as long as they are accessed on a frequent basis
• Full access and functionality of St. Mary’s e-mail accounts for graduates will continue assuming that the account is checked. If the account remains inactive (i.e. unchecked) for 6 months or longer, the account will be disabled.

Technology Services for Faculty

Services we provide:

Troubleshooting issues on university issued desktops and laptops.

• Assistance can be provided either: over the phone, remotely, or in person
• Installation and servicing of peripheral devices such as scanners and printers
• Installation and maintenance of application (i.e. Microsoft Office and WordPerfect) & security software

As of January 2009, all rooms in the Law Classroom Building have been equipped with brand new smart technology® podiums. As such, the touch screen interface and mode of operations have altered somewhat.

Any professors wanting training on this new system can feel free to contact the department either via e-mail at: lawtech@stmarytx.edu or call the help desk number (210) 431-6721 to schedule a training appointment.

Quick overview of technology provided in Law Classroom Building:

Smart board® functions as a tablet allowing users to: utilize the stylus to write on the screen to make notations, create diagrams, take snapshots of notations and save for future use, and highlight text among other functions.

The Turning Point Software Suite allows instructors the ability to poll their students on current class lectures and topics, then get real time responses. This software and polling software can be embedded in PowerPoint and Word presentations.

• Students can purchase the voting clickers at the bookstore or professors can request to borrow a batch from the Law IT department. Please note this occurs on a first come first serve basis.

For A/V needs: a combo VCR/DVD player is available to play either media format. In addition, an IPod auxiliary plug is available that permits users to play audio and/or video files from their player (i.e. generation 5 and up: IPod nano, IPod classic, IPod video, ITouch, and IPhone).

Anyone needing a video recording of a lecture or presentation can contact the Academic Media Center, located on the lower level of the Blume Academic Library. For a full list of services provided by this department refer to their website http://www.stmarytx.edu/amc/ for hours and contact information.

The university is now, through ITunes U, offering to host audio podcasts for professors who would like to have their lectures available for their students to download. Currently, at the computer administration office there are a limited amount of mp3 recorders and lapel mics available for check out on a first come first serve basis. This rental agreement is for professors only. A confirmation for rental request will have to be sent to our department via e-mail at lawtech@stmarytx.edu Instructions on how to use the device will be given upon checkout.