Title III Equipment Mini-Grants
Equipment (software) Grant
Progress Report
Submitted by: Ihsuan Li
Business and Economics Department
5-11-2007
Progress Report
On February 2006 I requested
a mini-grant funding to purchase a laptop for my office. The rationales for the
request were: I did not have a school computer in my office; the personal
desktop computer was having many technical issues and necessitated numerous
visits from CIR; a need for faster computer processing for classroom material
preparation and professional research.
Title III funding allowed the
school to purchase the requested laptop (Dell Inspiron 9400). This computer has
performed brilliantly in all aspects cited in the rationale for the mini-grant
request. As evidence, I submit a copy of the help ticket list I have submitted
to CIR since the laptop materialized. The number of help tickets, related to
hardware performance, has decreased from five to zero (tickets from April 2006
to March 2007 as compared to the period prior to March 2006.).
For my research, this laptop
has not had any problem in running regression analysis of several stages using
Stata. The regressions were part of a grant proposal to AERA that was submitted
in January 2007.
Furthermore, I submit the
link to the Department online newsletter as evidence of productivity (I am the
webmaster to department website). The newsletter was created using softwares
installed on the laptop. The online newsletter is current and linked to the
department news page, in the new Wesleyan website:
In terms of evidence on the
impact of the having the laptop on teaching effectiveness, Wesleyan CollegeÕs
standard student evaluation questionnaire does not address this specific
question, therefore assessment of the impact cannot be made.