Students are not required to reserve the lab computers, but it is recommended that they do so during the lab's peak hours. Reservation are for 2 hour periods and cannot be made by phone. During the lab's 1,264 open hours last fall a record number of 16,087 student hours were recorded.
Peak loads tend to occur during the second quarter of each semester.
Totals for the month of last October are given below. A radial plot of the hourly head count taken each day for the PCs during the last week of October is given next. These numbers indicate that there were more than 15 students using the PCs at those time for group projects. Any students who were looking for a lab PC during those hours had to return at a later time when the lab wasn't so crowded. Some of this current stress will be handled by a second student computer lab that will open in the Ragsdale Center this spring.