Support Policies for Academic Departments

Computing Services' Consulting Services group provides computer support to all faculty and staff within Dartmouth’s Arts & Sciences Division. This includes:

• Tenured and tenure-track faculty.
• Assistant professors.
• Research fellows.
• Visiting lecturers and scholars.
• Staff paid by the College who work in the Arts & Science departments.
• Emeritus faculty.
• Faculty and staff in an Arts & Sciences department that have a sponsored DND account.

Faculty and staff in the Arts & Science divisions can obtain help with any computing-related question via e-mail, over the phone, in their on-campus office, or by stopping by their department’s computing support office. More information is available on the Arts & Sciences computing support Web page. Appointments are strongly encouraged, since we are often out doing on-site visits in other offices. Your department’s computing support office is the place to start when you have technology-related questions. If we cannot help you find the answer, we will refer you to someone who can.

Services for faculty and staff within the Arts & Science Division departments include:

• Help with selecting new computer equipment or software.
• Setup of new computers, including transfer of data, installation of applications, and configuring network or dial-up connections.
• Setup of some peripherals, including printers, modems, monitors, and scanners.
• Troubleshooting of desktop applications.
• Training on standard applications in either group sessions or one-on-one. (Examples of courses we have done in the past include Migrating to Mac OS X and Oracle Calendar.)
• Installation and troubleshooting of division-specific applications, such as Stata, SPSS, and Adobe Acrobat.
• Support of Macintosh operating system software from 10.3.x to the newest release; support of Windows XP Professional, Vista Enterprise, and Vista Ultimate.
• Troubleshooting and evaluation of computer hardware and software.
• DND (a.k.a., BlitzMail) and other central systems account creation, and password resets.
• Assistance with setting up and maintaining computer labs, which is done via an imaging process.
• Assistance with downloading data and obtaining codebooks from ICPSR. 

Additionally, we will try to help with any computer-related problem not specifically mentioned above. If it is something beyond what we can help you with, we will refer you to another Computing Services staff person or an outside vendor. Examples of this type of referral may include help with the UNIX operating system, help with specialized equipment, or hardware upgrades or repairs. We do not do anything that requires us to open the computer because we are not insured for that type of service. If you need additional memory, a new hard drive, or something replaced within your computer, we will refer you to Computer Sales and Service or to an outside vendor.

Each department within the Arts & Sciences division is assigned one full-time Academic Consulting Services staff person to provide support for all faculty and staff in that department. The benefit of this situation is that the staff person assigned to a department becomes very familiar with the faculty and staff they support. They know the computers and the academic needs of their constituents.

Situations can arise under which the person assigned to a department is out for a day, or if too many requests for help come in around the same time. If a departmental consultant is out for a day, other departments' consultants will handle emergency situations that arise. In situations where too many requests for help come from faculty and staff in a division at the same time, the other consultants will set up a triage system so that the most important problems are given priority. In addition, we have created a list of hardware and software with which we are familiar; see the Supported Hardware and Software Web page. Faculty and staff who purchase items found on this list make it easier for their consultant to help them. Items that are on the Supported Hardware and Software list are given a higher priority than items that are not on the list.

Requests for help that we receive are prioritized in the following manner:

1. Requests for help concerning a computer that will not run when this is the only computer to which the user has access will be responded to as soon as we receive the message, or as soon as we finish helping someone else whose computer also falls into this category. If your computer falls into this category and is not one of the computers we support, you may be referred to an off-campus vendor for assistance.
2. After computers that meet the criteria outlined in #1 are those computers that will not run not, where the user has access to another computer but who needs immediate access to the data that is on the computer that will not run. These types of requests for help will be responded to as soon as we finish helping someone whose only computer falls into category 1. Again, if your computer falls into this category and is not one of the computers we support, you may be referred to an off-campus vendor for assistance.
3. If you have a problem with an application or other hardware device that is on the supported hardware and software list noted above, we will respond to your request for help in the order in which these requests were received, assuming that no one contacts us with computers that meet criteria 1 or 2.
4. If you have a problem with an application or other hardware device that is not on the list, we will respond to your request in the order in which it was received, assuming that no one contacts us with computers that meet criteria 1, 2 or 3. In these instances we may refer you to an off campus vendor for support of these products.

If you have questions, please contact your department’s IT support office or call Jeff Hawkins at 646-0254 or Ellen Young at 646-0367.