Facility

The Mathematics and Computer Science Department is housed in the Science Complex. An extensive renovation and construction project of this facility began in 2004 and was completed in 2006. This complex houses faculty offices and state-of-the-art spaces for mathematics and computer science education and research. Biology, Chemistry, Geology, and Physics, Geology are also housed in the Science Complex.

The classrooms in the Science Complex all contain electronic projection systems, allowing easy integration of multimedia into teaching.

The department is equipped with a variety of computational facilities available to students without charge. The E. R. Sleight Computing Laboratory contains a network of workstations running the Linux operating system. This lab was upgraded in 2005 and contains 16 student computers with a 2.4 GHz Intel processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 19" LCD monitors. These computers run individually or in parallel. This facility is used by upper-level computer science students. A variety of high-level programming languages is available, including Ada, Basic, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Perl, Prolog, Scheme, and Smalltalk.

Our department also makes entensive use of a instructional/research computer laboratory running Windows XP.  This lab was upgraded in 2006 and contains 24 student computers with a 3 GHz Intel DuoCore processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 17" LCD monitors. Statistics students routinely analyze data with the Minitab statistical analysis program; the use of graphing calculators and the computer algebra systems Mathematica and Maple are integrated into precalculus, calculus, and higher-level mathematics courses. A SGI Octane2 is available for use in a shared science laboratory. 

These laboratories are part of Albion Campus-wide computer network connecting faculty offices, dormitory rooms, classrooms, laboratories, public computer areas, printers, and the library automation system. From computers on the network, students can access their files, run software on the campus network, interact with other computers, send electronic mail, and browse the World Wide Web. Albion has extensive campus computing facilities including wireless networking and is a member of the Internet2 consortium. Albion was ranked 7th most wired small college in the previous two Yahoo Internet life surveys.  Information on campus technology can be found at http://www.albion.edu/itoncampus/.