BT-121 is a general computer laboratory used for a wide variety of technology courses.  While its main utilization is for the Middletown sections of EET-110 (Computer Applications & Graphics), it also hosts several other courses, primarily CIT 111 (HTML) among others.  It currently seats 23 students.  This number arbitrarily limits the number of students we can serve in a single course section.  Expanding this lab to 30 seats would help us to more appropriately schedule laboratory sections.  For example, the current cohort of PTECH students enrolled in the Cybersecurity program contains 24 students.  This required that we split the group into two separate lab sections (with 12 students per section) for each of their Cybersecurity core courses with laboratory components.  This would allow us to consolidate some of the laboratory sections, freeing up department resources (laboratory rooms and faculty) and alleviate some of our scheduling woes.  To build out the lab to 30 stations would currently require an additional 7 computers and appropriate furniture (including chairs).

 It should be noted that IT has some reservations regarding adding new workstations to this lab, as they would be a different model than the remaining machines, and thus may cause difficulties for maintenance and administration of the lab.  IT suggested that we wait until the next machine rotation and add the new machines when the older machines are swapped out, so that they are all of a standard model.  Our Department is not against this way or moving forward.  However, without specific information on the timing of the next lab rotation, we decided to put in this PIP entry.