Bob Taylor, director of academic technologies for NUIT, said the Cresap Social Science Computer Lab, Tech MG47 NT Lab and Tech MG51 Computational Science Lab will cut their hours beginning March 26.
Taylor said NUIT mainly cut night hours because fewer students have been using the labs during those hours this year.
Next quarter Cresap will be closed on Saturdays and Sundays and will close at 10 p.m. instead of midnight Mondays through Thursdays, according to the NUIT Web site. The lab will open at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. Fridays.
The two Tech labs will open at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays and close at 10 p.m. instead of midnight. The labs will open one hour later on Fridays and Saturdays, and will close at 10 p.m. instead of midnight on Sundays, according to the NUIT Web site.
Kresge Computer Lab, NUIT’s only 24-hour lab, will not lose hours, although night usage at Kresge has “really dropped off this year,” Taylor said.
“We’re going to continue to keep it open even though there may be only five to six students from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.,” he said.
Every quarter NUIT officials evaluate whether lab hours should be adjusted, based on the number of users and traffic patterns, Taylor said. NUIT has adjusted lab hours for the past 10 years.
“Every term we look at the data from the previous term and see whether we should keep the labs open,” NUIT Vice President Mort Rahimi said.
Sometimes the cost of operating a lab can become an issue if there are not enough student users, he said.
“If a lab has one or two people using it, then it’s not really practical to keep it open,” Rahimi said.
Taylor said NUIT decides to adjust hours based on the number of users, not the availability of university funding.
“We spend over $100,000 per year on student wages to run NUIT computer labs, and I don’t want to waste that money for the university,” Taylor said. “We are constantly adjusting hours.”
NU students, in general, have used all NUIT labs less in the past few years, Taylor said.
One possible reason, he said, is that 98 to 99 percent of NU students own their own computers.
“We know the student ownership rate of computers is at an all-time high,” Taylor said.
Students also have faster, more efficient ethernet connections in their campus residences, so they do not seek faster connections in labs, Taylor said.
Taylor said another possible factor for the decreased use of NUIT labs is the printing fees enforced this year.
“There seems to be a correlation between us charging for printing this year and students using the lab,” Taylor said.
Some students working in the Cresap lab Monday afternoon said they believe the reductions will not be a big concern because primarily graduate students use the lab during the day.
“People really aren’t here on late nights or weekends,” said Lyndon Moore, an economics graduate student.
