Amherst College Academic Computer Center Records

The Academic Computer Center (later known as Academic Computing under the department of Information Technology) served the computational needs of faculty and students of Amherst College to support teaching and research. In 1977 it was located in Converse Hall under the direction of Paul J. Plourde, with Betty Steele acting as Academic Coordinator. Its operations were led by these administrators under the guidance of a Faculty Computer Committee, which in 1977 consisted of Peter Czap, Stephen George, Robert Grose, Charles Staelin and Alan Waggoner. The Center was staffed completely by student supervisors during its operating hours. These students were qualified to consult with users, write programs and maintain the operation of the system. The academic computer in use in 1977 was an IBM 1130 (16K), with a card reader, printer, plotter and two disk drives. Programming languages supported at that time were FORTRAN IV and 1130 Assembler. Faculty and students could also do timesharing with the CYPBER 74 mainframe computer located at the University of Massachusetts, connecting through a number of terminals on the Amherst campus. The college acquired a Digital VAX 11/780 computer in 1979. From that point on, academic computing at Amherst, as elsewhere, increasingly expanded into the curriculum of the college. The Academic Computer Center moved to the Seeley Mudd building in 1984.