KeyFacts
The University of
Alabama is ranked among the nation's top 50 public universities in U.S.
News & World Report's 2002 edition.
The University of Alabama's graduates include 15 Rhodes Scholars, 15 Goldwater
Scholars, and nine Truman Scholars. Our most recent Rhodes Scholar is
Bradley Tuggle, an English major who received the award in 2001.
The University of Alabama's chapter of the prestigious liberal arts honor
society Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest of the three chapters in the state.
Approximately 66 percent of UA's undergraduates receive some type of financial
aid.
UA ranks as one of the top public universities in enrollment of National
Merit, National Achievement, and National Hispanic Scholars. Our fall
2000 freshman class accounts for 94 of these 300 outstanding undergraduate
students.
For over a decade, The University of Alabama has been one of the top public
flagship universities in the Southeast in enrollment of African-American
students. In fall 2000, African-Americans comprised 14.9 percent of freshmen
and 14.5 percent of total undergraduate enrollment, and 13.6 percent of
the student body overall. Enrollment of African-American students in UA's
Graduate School has increased by 44 percent since 1996.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked the University of Alabama School
of Law among the top 50 in the nation for three consecutive years while
our undergraduate business program has made the top 50 nationally for
two years.
Across our beautiful 1,000-acre campus, several buildings dating back
to the founding of the university are still in use today—alongside other
historic structures and recent construction housing state-of-the-art technology.
We offer excellent facilities for study and research, including campus-wide
computer labs, multimedia classrooms, and online libraries.
More than 20 percent of the university's entering freshmen and 22 percent
of all undergraduates received merit scholarships for the academic year
2000-01.
The University of Alabama debate team holds 14 national championships—two
more than our football team!
UA offers 215 degree programs.
Founded in 1831, The University of Alabama was the state's first university.
Among Jones' treasures is a 1960 IBM 85 Card Collator, from the days of punch cards and "mass storage systems"
Back to the Future-Professor Uses Computers from the Past to Teach about Technology to Come
by Neika D. Nix
Incorporating the history of computer technology into the classroom is an important way of learning from the past, according to Joel Jones, an
assistant professor in computer science
in UA's College of Engineering.
And Jones accomplishes this in a unique way-he uses his personal collection of computer equipment as teaching tools.
Understanding past developments in computers helps to give students the knowledge to build a better future in the world of computer technology,
Jones says. He brings his "antique" computer equipment into the classroom so that his students can understand the evolution of the technology
for business and personal use, and learn about ideas that have worked, and others that have not.
Jones has been an avid collector of old computer hardware for many years, and among his treasures is a 1960 IBM 85 Card Collator, from the
days of punch cards and "mass storage systems." It is a precursor to the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC), the first commercial computer.
Jones rescued the collator in 1983 from a hallway at Hewlett- Packard while he was working there in a co-op program. "They were throwing it
away, and I picked it up because it was an oddity," he said.
The 900-pound card collator is the size of a freezer, and has a motor the size of a washing machine. It used punch cards to store data and
had the capability to hold only the amount of information that can be stored on half of a modern-day floppy disk. "A regular wristwatch has
more computing power than it did," Jones laughs. "But compared to the $1 million price tag of a UNIVAC, it was a cheap, non-electric way to
store data."
He explains that in the 1960s an office system with half a megabyte of RAM and a 100-megabyte hard drive would weigh in at more than two tons,
and could cost a whopping $1.6 million. Comparing that to technology today, at a price of less than $400, you can tuck an IBM microdrive with
1,000 megabytes, weighing half an ounce, into your pocket.
Also in his collection are punch cards that were used in the collator. "I have a collection of cards from all types of organizations," Jones
points out. "Although the punch cards began disappearing from use in the early 1980s, they are still found in some businesses. Airlines, for
instance, still use these cards for tickets, because they started out with this type of equipment and have been slow to change," he said.
Even though the collator and its cards could do nothing more than sort data, it was the first step in automated record keeping and a real
innovation in the way businesses processed information, Jones explained. "It was part of the chain of development that led up to computers,"
he said.
It is this chain of development that Jones hopes to integrate into his teaching. He wants his students to understand the cycles in technology,
and that design constraints of the past are also the design constraints of the future. "In computer science we revisit issues, as today's
machines become tomorrow's," he said. "By integrating a historical perspective in my teaching, it frees the students to repeat the successes
of the past and avoid its failures."
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