Technology reboot: Dell equipment donation boosts computer networking lab

23 Oct 2017


To the untrained eye, they may not look like much — rows upon rows of sleek-looking metal boxes stacked high inside another metal box in a small room.

To the students in the computer networking and information technology undergraduate program at University of Wisconsin-Stout, they represent the future of computer storage, networking and servers.

That future arrived in early September when two Dell EMC employees from Eden Prairie, Minn., installed about a dozen pieces of high-tech equipment — new computer storage units with about 65 terabytes of space, servers, fiber channel switches and ethernet switches in part of the CNIT lab in Fryklund Hall.

Seniors in the CNIT capstone class began using the cutting-edge equipment Friday, Sept. 8, the first day of class, just a week after it was installed. It will help prepare them to enter the workforce for high-demand jobs when they graduate in December and beyond.

“It’s such a great opportunity for students. We’re educating the future workforce,” said Michelle Dingwall, a senior development officer with Stout University Foundation, which helped coordinate the gift-in-kind from Dell to the university.

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