January/February 2001

UCIS Helps Local School Connect By Emily Yaghmour Everything was on track. The Fauquier County Public School System was opening a brand new school, James G. Brumfield Elementary, and with two weeks to spare before the start of classes, the building was complete. The only thing left to do was activate the data connection between the new school and the county school board’s central office in downtown Warrenton, where the student database is located. Then, as luck would have it, Verizon workers went on strike. “The thought of not having access to our student database for entering new students and withdrawing students who had moved over the summer was inconceivable,” says Brumfield principal D. Penelope Magyar. Deb Anderson, the Brumfield School secretary, discussed the problem with her husband, Randy Anderson, manager of emerging technologies in University Computing and Information Systems (UCIS). Randy knew that a device called a wireless bridge, which uses radio waves to connect networks, would do the trick, but he didn’t know where to get one. He discussed the problem with Dave Jensen, the UCIS director of network and emerging technologies, who told him that UCIS had recently purchased a wireless bridge to install on the roof of Tallwood House so that computers there would have access to the university’s centralized network. Knowing this presented a good opportunity to test the equipment before installing it at Tallwood House, Jensen agreed to lend the bridge to Brumfield Elementary for a short time. Anderson and UCIS colleague Steve Bernard took the bridge out to the school and, with the help of the Fauquier County data systems administrator, installed the bridge on the roof of the new building. The bridge allowed Brumfield computers to communicate with the network of a nearby junior high school. Using the junior high school’s cable connection to the main office downtown, Brumfield officials were able to access their database during the critical first days of the school year. About a week later, the Verizon strike ended, and the school was able to activate and use its cable connection, no longer requiring the wireless bridge.