Overview of the Taylor Center

The Taylor Center was designed as both a teaching facility and a multimedia production center. In addition to serving students and whole classes, our community outreach includes opening the facility to community groups and using our high speed network to facilitate interaction with groups outside the Boston area from Cape Cod to Puerto Rico. We had our grand opening on May 7, 2004.

Classrooms

Planned with the teacher in mind, each room is arranged with an open teaching area in the middle and twelve computers on the outside, so the class has clearly delineated areas for teaching and computer work.

The PC classroom has the standard Microsoft Office suite as well as data analysis and high end mapping (GIS) software. The Mac classroom has Apple's easy-to-use iMovie video editing software for student use, as well as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia's web production software. A high-end SmartBoard doubles as an electronic whiteboard and a projection TV for video presentations.

Multimedia Production

In addition to teaching multimedia production in our Mac classroom, we offer high end video editing in our video room using Apple's top of the line Final Cut Pro software. This room also features several types of cameras, both digital and analog tape decks, dubbing capabilities, and our streaming video server.

Beyond the Classroom

The College of Public and Community Service was the first College at UMass Boston to offer online registration and evaluations, and we are continuing to innovate by taking the lead on campus in offering wireless networking capabilities and online collaboration and discussion.

Planning for the Future

All architecture in the Taylor Center was designed for extensibility and easy upgrades. For example, this summer, we will be adding full remote login capabilities and roaming profiles so our students will be able to access their files from anywhere, share files, publish to the web, and collaborate online with other students in a group authoring environment. As we are streaming more and more video and using more internet based tools, we are also planning installation of one of UMass' most advanced data centers and will soon be the first College on campus with fully redundant internet access.