1963: Indiana State College enlarges computer center in the basement of Clark Hall. Director Anna Wink is the first computer professional hired.
1964: First disk drive is added. For the first time, computers are mentioned in the undergraduate and graduate catalogs. President Willis Pratt writes in the yearbook that the computer center is one of only two at state colleges.
1965: Kenneth Shildt is hired as the first computer center assistant director. He later becomes a Management Information Systems faculty member.
1966: First online printer is added.
1967: New computer center opens, occupying nine rooms in the basement of Sutton Hall.
1968: The School of Business, established just two years earlier, offers two new computer technology concentrations. Math Department offerings grow to nine computer-related courses.
1968: More than 400 students are enrolled in computer-related courses, up from 60 five years earlier.
1972: Computer Science separates from the Mathematics Department. Howard Tompkins is the first department chair; James Maple is the first faculty member, transferring from Mathematics a week before Tompkins arrives in Indiana.
1976: Basement of newly built Stright Hall becomes computer center’s new home.
1984: Computer center becomes Information Systems and Communications Center. Among its first service offerings is e-mail.
1985: President John Welty announces the first major purchase of personal computers: $200,000 in PCs for the faculty.
1987: Registration by touch-tone telephone is piloted to a group of randomly selected students and fully implemented the following year, ending waiting times associated with arena registration and other methods.
1988: IUP joins BITNET, an academic network predating the Internet, allowing employees and students to interact via computer with users and resources beyond campus. The first computer executive is hired: Garrett Bozylinsky, associate vice president for computing.
1991: IUP obtains first Internet connection; bandwidth is 56 KB/second (0.56 MB). The Cosmos administrative information system goes live, effectively ending 28 years of mainframe computing at IUP.
1993: Registration via computer terminal is added to telephone registration.
1997: First university-wide website is launched.
1998: IUP starts implementation of Banner, the software system still used to manage business operations. Criminology professor Robert Mutchnick offers Crime and Justice Systems as an online hybrid course.
1999: IUP offers its first fully online courses.
2000: Students begin registering for classes using a Web browser.
2001: Establishment of the Student Technology Fee leads to growth in instructional technology, including multimedia classrooms and advanced computer labs.
2007: Information technology functions become centralized under IT Services. The IT Support Center, providing tech support to students and employees, opens in the building to be named Delaney Hall. The center handles more than 100,000 service requests in its first five years.
2008: IUP pilots the Winter Session, offering solely online courses over a three-week period during winter break.
2010: IUP is chosen to be one of 13 core nodes across the state for PennREN, a high-speed computer network designed to connect national networks with regional and local networks in Pennsylvania.
2011: Eight percent of courses are offered online.
2012: IUP prepares to launch a mobile application for tablets and smartphones. A new Web portal, through which students and employees will be able to access university applications, is under development for a spring 2013 unveiling.
