Department of Geography Faculty and Instructor Requests for New IT Resources
If you know exactly what you need, and just need assistance obtaining and/or setting up your resources, send this information to geoghelp@uw.edu. For research related requests, please specify the funding source for purchases. If you need a new resource for teaching, please schedule a meeting with IT staff for information gathering. All costs will need approval by the Geography Administrator and Chair.
If you are unsure about what you need, schedule a meeting with IT staff to help you explore options and decide.
If you would like to submit an STF proposal, contact geoghelp@uw.edu to begin discussion and review. STF now has quarterly proposal cycles.
Timelines for projects will vary based on complexity, staff workloads, and other factors. General guidelines include:
Additions to new lab PC software for the academic year are made in the preceding summer months and prepared no later than 2 weeks before classes start. For summer classes, please make your requests early in the spring quarter. Additional software can also be added to PCs during the academic year if the request is received by the end of week five of the preceding quarter when it is needed. Every effort will be made to accommodate requests by instructors who may not be able to meet this deadline due to hiring timelines.
New ‘Software as a Service’ requests are often subscription-based and require only configuration of a web-based environment (example: ArcGIS Online is such a system) and no new in-house server-based resources. Depending on complexity, these requests could be fulfilled in 1-3 weeks. For instructors who want to set up AWS EC2 computing environments for all students in a class, AWS Educate provides free credits for instructors to implement this. More information can be found at https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/.
Requests for new web-based apps running on servers maintained by the Department (examples include Wordpress or Omeka) may take 1-4 weeks to fulfill, depending on the complexity and the level of support required. The creation of a shared NetID associated with the UW web space, time to set up and configure the base application and database, and any assistance required with configuring the front end will take extra time.
Requests for new server-based resources will have varied timelines to completion, depending upon the details of each request. For example, new hardware orders are dependent on availability and delivery time from the vendor. New hardware must go into UW collocation spaces thereby adding additional time for installation and configuration scheduling. Requests for UW Standard Hosted Servers are dependent on request fulfillment times, which can take 1-2 weeks. At the very least, requests for a meeting regarding something of this type should begin no less than 3 months before such a system is needed.