OXFORD, Miss. – When University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones encouraged the Ole Miss community to “explore and create new programs to address major challenges of our state,” students and faculty in the Department of Computer and Information Science jumped at the opportunity.
They have created a computer recycling program called Technology Recycling to Enhance Education, or TREE, which provides refurbished computers to support K-12 education in Mississippi.
“With TREE, we clean and refurbish surplus computing equipment across Ole Miss to provide much-needed computers to Mississippi public schools,” said Brett Ladner, senior computer and information science major and president of the UM chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery.
“ACM has a history of encouraging members to provide service for local communities,” said Ladner, a native of Pass Christian. “In fact, members of our chapter have participated in Relay for Life and worked as tutors across campus. TREE is just another opportunity for us to provide service, but this time we’re extending it to the entire state.”
TREE is a group effort between the Ole Miss ACM chapter, CIS faculty and the Office of Information Technology. The project was conceived by CIS faculty members, Ladner and Scotty Polston, CIS network administrator.
TREE has three initiatives: to reduce the waste of usable electronic equipment at Ole Miss, to support education in the state and to provide ACM students with hands-on experience.
Pamela B. Lawhead, CIS associate professor, said she is proud of the cooperative effort and is awed by the amount of work students are willing to invest in TREE.
“Computer science students have very rigorous schedules, and to see them going the extra mile to clean and refurbish these computers for public schools is simply amazing,” said Lawhead, also director of the Institute for Advanced Education in GeoSpatial Sciences.
Dawn Wilkins, CIS associate professor and faculty adviser of the ACM chapter, agreed.
“TREE is a zero-budget operation and is labor-intensive, but our students are determined and dedicated to use their time and skills doing something very few people can do,” Wilkins said.
So far, TREE has provided computers for students at Water Valley and West Tallahatchie high schools.
ACM members want to do even more, and the chapter has established a Web site, http://tree.olemiss.edu/, to help others learn about TREE, Ladner said.
“Many people believe an old computer is a worthless computer. It’s not,” he said. “Many parts of those computers can be cleaned and put together to make one great computer for an elementary student just learning to type. We are able to recycle keyboards, monitors and even mice.”
At the Web site, faculty, staff and departments can transfer outdated computing equipment to be cleaned and refurbished. This spring, public schools will be able to request the refurbished computers at the site as well.
For more information, e-mail tree@olemiss.edu.