Hello!
Welcome to the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering! Whether you are a fresh-out-of-high-school first year student, a graduate researcher, or an expert in your field with 35+ years of experience, we at Engineering Technology Services are happy to provide you with Software, Hardware, and Network resources to help you do great things. The ETS Team wanted to make sure everyone knows about all of the resources we provide, so we created this helpful guide for anyone joining the College of Engineering, or anyone who has been with us for a while and wants to learn more about the services we provide.
Your Engineering Account
First things first! Create your engineering account here: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/ets/tools/create-account/ (note- new faculty/staff should reach out to your supervisor who will need to submit an account approval request first). It may take 1-2 days to process your new account, so please be patient. Your Engineering Account is your one-stop shop for access to computers, printers, network resources, and more. Using your Engineering Username and Password you can access ETS computers, a College of Engineering owned desktop, or one of our many compute servers. You can also use your Engineering Credentials to access network drive space, printers, and more. Read on to find out about all of these resources!
ETS Lab Spaces
Computer labs are a staple of just about any school these days, and the College of Engineering is no exception. ETS manages 20 College of Engineering computer labs and electronic classrooms (generally referred to as “labs”) for student and faculty use within the College. In the ETS computer labs you will find PCs running Windows, thin clients connected to Windows servers, or both. These lab spaces are located in the Engineering, Glover, and Scott Bioengineering Buildings, the Academic Village Engineering Residence hall, and on the Foothills and Powerhouse Energy campuses. These lab spaces can be accessed by anyone with a valid CSU ID (your RamCard), and many of these spaces can be reserved for a particular use (Classrooms can be reserved for up to 15 consecutive weeks, and Labs can be reserved for up to 6 consecutive weeks). You can find out more about our lab spaces, including where they are and how to reserve a space here: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/ets/labs-and-classrooms/
The Virtual Classroom
In addition to physical lab spaces across CSU, ETS also provides a virtual service called the "Virtual Classroom" or "VCL" for short. The Virtual Classroom is a full Windows computer that can be accessed remotely from anywhere in the United States (connection, access, and usage speeds cannot be guaranteed). This Windows instance comes with access to any engineering software your professor might be teaching, such as Matlab, Ansys, ArcGIS, Labview, Mathcad, Solidworks, and more. The Virtual Classroom also has web browsers, Microsoft Office, and other general use software. Please note, this service is a student funded project. Because of this, it is not available for research use, and can only be used for education/teaching purposes. Only Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering students have access to the Virtual Classroom.
College of Engineering owned Computers
ETS facilitates the purchasing of laptops, desktops, and other computer hardware for the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering. There are a wide variety of reasons one might need an Engineering computer. Staff members and administrators may need office desktops or laptops. Faculty members may need access to a high powered desktop for research work. Graduate students may need a computer to work on research projects or classwork. Regardless of your reason, ETS is here to help with computers to fit any workload and budget. Please have your Account number ready before submitting a Hardware Purchase Request ticket: https://csu-ets.freshservice.com/support/catalog/items/41 . (Computer purchases may take up to 4 weeks or more before arriving. Please be patient as we cannot guarantee how long it will take for a new computer to be shipped).
*Note, undergraduate students do not usually need an engineering owned computer. ETS recommends using the available lab spaces, or purchasing your own computer. We recommend Windows 10, and something similar to the HP ProBook x360 435 G10. Please see our "Student Laptop Recommendation" solution article for more information.
Network drives
Engineers generate a lot of data. Unfortunately, shipping a 2TB hard drive with every computer simply isn't cost effective or practical, as not every computer needs this much space. Instead, ETS provides network drive space to students, faculty, and staff members on the U:\ and T:\ drives (there are also other drives that might be accessible, depending on your affiliation with the College). These network drives can be accessed from anywhere, on any computer (including personal computers). For information about accessing these network drives, visit our website: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/ets/mapping-drives. For more information about Network drive space in general, click here.
Your U:\ drive
Every member of the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering has a personal U:\ drive, with a default quota of 15GB for students or 25 GB for faculty and staff (5GB for affiliates outside the College of Engineering). With faculty or staff approval, students can request an additional 15GB for free. Any space beyond this can be purchased by contacting ETS.
Your T:\ drive
Faculty or staff members can also request a project space in the T:\ drive by contacting ETS. The faculty/staff member who requested the space can manage access (add or remove users) and request the drive space be deleted when the space is no longer necessary. The drive space will also be automatically deleted when the staff/faculty member leaves CSU.
Personal or Project Websites
Within your space on the U:\ or T:\ drive, there is a folder titled "public_html". In this folder, you can place .html files to build your own website, hosted on ETS servers. This website can be accessed by going to www.engr.colostate.edu/~your-eid-or-project-name . Note, you will need to set your permissions correctly. For more information about building a website on ETS servers, please click here.
Your OneDrive (with your @colostate.edu account)
Your NetID@colostate.edu account (your CSU Office 365 account) can be used to access OneDrive. All students, faculty, and staff have up to 5TB of space in your OneDrive account (that's right, 5 Terabytes, or 5,000 Gigabytes) and you can store anything you want there for as long as you have your @colostate.edu account.
Printing
Printers are provided in all ETS supported lab spaces, as well as staff printers in common areas and faculty/staff common office spaces. You can print to a Lab printer from an Engineering-owned computer, an ETS Lab computer, or your personal computer using our Web Print tool. The printers in our lab spaces are student funded, so in order to print to one of our lab printers, users must have print quota available (while this print quota is listed like money, it has no monetary value, and cannot be refunded if it is not used). Each Engineering major starts the academic year with $21 in print quota ($5 for non-engineering majors who have an engineering account). Staff/faculty members are not given print quota, but may purchase print quota if you choose (or you should be able to use your office/department without any print quota). If you need more print quota, you can purchase more from ETS. Printing costs just a few cents per page depending on the printer, and this is deducted from your print quota. If something goes seriously wrong, ETS may be able to refund a print quota. You can print whatever you want (it doesn't have to be class-related), but please make sure to abide by CSU's Acceptable Use Policy.
The Engineering Residential Learning Community
If you are a student in the Engineering RLC, and you will be living in Academic Village Engineering during the school year, your Academic Village Program Charge for Service entitles you to have one thin client in your room.* The thin client comes with a 23″ widescreen monitor, keyboard and mouse. Using this, you can connect to a Windows session which you can then connect to on any other thin client in the Academic Village AND the Engineering college’s many computer labs! It’s like carrying a laptop around with you, except without the actual laptop. When you move out, you will be required to return all equipment in good working condition. You can learn more and request a Thin Client here: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/ets/thin-clients-in-the-academic-village/
*One per requester. If you have a roommate, you may each request a thin client for a total of 2 in a room.
The ETS Helpdesk
Of course, computers don't always work as intended. The ETS Helpdesk is available during regular business hours (except on holidays) to assist with software installs, computer access, account issues, hardware problems, network troubles, remote troubleshooting, and more. You can contact the ETS Helpdesk by coming to one of our desks (we often have staff members in our Lab spaces, and our front desk is in Glover 100), by calling (970) 491-2917 , by emailing help@engr.colostate.edu, or by submitting a ticket. We do our best to respond to tickets within 1 business day. Our typical semester business hours are 8:00am - 6:00pm Monday - Friday. Over fall/winter/spring breaks, and during the Summer Session, our typical business hours are 8:00am - 5:00pm Monday - Friday.
Some things we can do
ETS can perform software installs on engineering-owned computers, we can help troubleshoot problems like audio, video, or internet problems, and we can do most of this in person or remotely (some issues may require the computer to be brought into our office in Glover 100 to solve). We can help get you connected to your network drives, create or maintain your engineering account, and we can assist with Global Protect issues. We can install the latest version of Windows to an Engineering-owned machine (all of our lab spaces are kept updated, but office computers might not allways be up to date). Installing the latest version of Windows is necessary to patch security issues, avoid bugs that can lead to bigger issues, and use the latest feature updates.
Some things we can not do
ETS Staff are computer savvy, and we can often provide tips, suggestions, advice, and instructions in areas beyond just engineering-owned computers. However, ETS can only offer limited support for personally owned computers. We cannot install software on personal computers (but we can sometimes provide instructions, depending on the software/license restrictions). We also cannot perform hardware maintenance or upgrades to personally owned computers (but we can offer suggestions if you are looking for an upgrade). If you need help with personal hardware issues, please reach out to your computer manufacturer for official support, or go to RamTech in the Lory Student Center or to ACNS's IT Helpdesk in the Morgan Library.
One last thing - Global Protect!
Many engineering resources cannot be accessed from outside the CSU network, as a cybersecurity best practice. However, by connecting to CSU's Virtual Private Network (VPN), you can continue to access these resources even if you aren't connected to the Campus Ethernet or the CSU-NET WiFi (if you are already connected to the Campus Ethernet or the CSU-NET WiFi, you should not connect to Global Protect, as this can cause problems). In order to access Engineering resources like the VCL, Remote Desktop, Network Drives, Printers, or other resources, you will need to install Global Protect by using one of the downloads here: https://www.acns.colostate.edu/security/ under the Global Protect/VPN section in the Manual Installers tab. Please make sure you have DUO set up: https://duo.colostate.edu/ so that you can log in to Global Protect. For more information about Global Protect, please visit: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/ets/vpn/
Welcome!
We're happy to have you in the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering. If you have any questions, or run into any issues, please reach out, and we will to our best to assist.