A new state of the art computer lab has been commissioned at the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College Division of Technical and Vocational Education.
The official handing over ceremony was held on Tuesday at the Division’s compound and is part of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, Universal Service Fund (USF).
USF Administrator, Kyron Duncan, said handing over is the third and most significant of such ceremonies for equipment under the SMART Project, which was signed by telecommunications provider LIME on Nov. 20, 2012 at a total cost of $1,698,998.
Under the Smart Project, equipment is being provided to St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College (SVGCC) to offer existing programmes online and in real-time. Duncan said the new computer lab will also facilitate the offering of two new tertiary level programmes online at the SVGCC, namely a certificate programme in application development, scheduled to commence this semester, and an associate degree programme in cyber security.
Duncan said the lab consists of 35 high-power computers, 15 of which 15 are 27-inch iMacs and 20 are 21-inch Lenovo desktops. He said these computers have 16 gigabytes of RAM and also have specialized software installed such as visual studio, AutoCAD for Mac, Final Cut Pro for Mac, Adobe Creative Suite 6 for Mac and XCODE to aid students in audio-visual production.
“We hope that this effort, which the USF invested in the SVGCC Division of Technical and Vocational Education, will be fully utilized, as we are in harsh economic times,” the USF Administrator said.
He added that the development of the nation’s people in the area of access to and the use of telecommunication services and tools is paramount.
(A. Sam/API)