MIT ON MOST WIRED UNIVERSITIES
Enterprise Magazine
June 2003, p.37

Are students provided with Web or network file space? How much per student?
- Yes, 10MB per course.

Are students provided with their own e-mail account? How much space?
- Yes, in Makati. 5MB per mailbox.

Do you disseminate student information via cell phone?
- Yes, through MapúaTxt feature.

What wireless services do you offer?
- Schedule of NCAA games, schedule of exams, grade reports, account balance check, course schedule.

Can students access library resources online?
- Yes, both via intranet and Internet card but serves as ID, library card, and health card of the students. At least 1KB of information can be stored in the card, allowing student records to e accessed from a single database.

Do you offer online or distance education courses?
- Yes, Partnerships with several vendors, the course is a combination of instructor-lead and online learning program. Last year, we subscribed to HP educational courses, pilot testing English course.

Do you have a facility for student collaboration and student-faculty interaction?
- Through e-mail.

Christopher dela Rosa is a busy man. He is a full-time faculty member at Mapúa Institute of Technology and happens to be the director of the institute’s Development Office for Information Technology (DO-IT).

“The greatest challenge is working up on a tight schedule and yet we must not stop delivering IT services to both students and faculty members,” dela Rosa says.

His first demanding task came in 2000 when the Yuchengco Group of Companies (YGC) bought the school from its previous owners. When DO-IT was established in the same year, his office started from scratch. “We started from nothing. The building is not even fiber-optic ready for data cabling. We had to start from scratch,” he recalls, emphasizing that the office prefers not to tap outsourcing services but to develop applications in-house. “We ourselves have to design the network infrastructure, configuration of the servers, installation of the different equipment, security protocol, development of the administrative application, basically, everything.”

With roughly P10 million in hand to establish the network infrastructure of Mapúa, including the servers, firewalls, desktop computers, among others, dela Rosa’s team was able to establish the office in June 2000. Since then, every year, the budget allocation for the office is estimated to be around P6.5 million, which goes to network upgrade, licensing software and Internet connection.

Although DO-IT is still in its infancy compared to other IT departments of different universities, dela Rosa only has to look around to see how faculty and students benefit form it in such a short period. Being a faculty member himself, for one, the grades verification of students takes only 30 minutes now compared to several days before when an electronic system was not yet implemented. For students, they can instantly view their grades online and through SMS among other wireless and administrative services. “Before, computers are rare here. But when the YGC took over, from three computers in the Engineering lab, it went to 62 and so on,” he says.

Dela Rosa only has brood over these to stay vigorous no matter how busy he is as the CIO who has to do for DO-IT.