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Sociology Computing Mission
Our mission is to provide technical support complementary to the pursuit of academic preeminence by The Ohio State University Sociology Department. We strive to provide to the department unsurpassed computing support, technical expertise and infrastructure maintenance, thereby enhancing the department's missions of research and instruction. We also support administrative activities of the department when consistent with our skills, services and availability. We believe that the excellence of our computing support enables and encourages our users to be responsible researchers, educators and citizens.
Overview of Strategy
The Sociology Research Laboratory provides three primary levels of support:
- Computing and communications infrastructure, characterized by the machine interface through which users access computing and network services;
- Consultation and troubleshooting, characterized by the human interface that supports users when the machine interface presents obstacles;
- An environment of common culture, characterized by machines tailored to users' needs and consultants who speak users' language and are familiar with the nature of sociological research.
The Sociology Research Laboratory supports the computing and communications infrastructure for all endeavors of the department equally, from day-to-day administrative activities to advanced research. We also provide consultation and troubleshooting for all departmental activities within our limits of expertise and knowledge which is extensive in the area of sociological research, moderate in classroom instruction, and limited in administrative activities.
The Sociology Research Laboratory pays particular attention to enriching the professional growth and development of graduate students. To this end, we welcome graduate student research and we embrace graduate students as professionals-in-training.
Goals
- To be attentive and accurate listeners to the needs of the department. We need to understand thoroughly the needs of the department in order to be responsive to them. This requires that we listen carefully so we are aware of the many needs in the department and that we listen wisely so we avoid being overly influenced by the needs of a few. The Department channels requests to the Lab through its Computing and The Lab Committee.
- To keep abreast of trends in academic computing. We need to know what options the computing industry offers, how other academic units do their computing, and what we can afford so that we can choose wisely and better steer the department toward computing environments consistent with where we want to go.
- To offer quality learning opportunities to our users and employees. We need to transfer computing knowledge to our users so they understand and use the capabilities they have and can apply these capabilities to their work. A strong, knowledgeable user community will be better equipped to identify gaps in services and to suggest future needs. We must be particularly aggressive in training Lab staff in order to nurture their professional growth and development.
- To organize Lab staff in a manner consistent with our mission, our resources and the needs of the department. We need to be dynamic in our organization in order to identify the proper match between our skills and capabilities and the needs of the department.
- To provide a comfortable working environment conducive to serious academic endeavors. We want the Lab to be used heavily, widely and wisely; achieving these goals requires 1) space that is suitable for researchers and their research support devices (books, articles, references, etc.), and 2) an environment that stimulates academic pursuits. In general, we welcome activities that enrich the academic environment and we discourage those that disrupt or impede them.
