SEMO STUDENTS TO GET STATE-OF-ART COMPUTING

At 3 p.m. Thursday, 28 of the 40 terminals in the computer lab at Kent Library are occupied. Some students use them to solve math problems, most are writing papers. One is playing a game of solitaire.

By the end of October, students who use the lab will be able to communicate on state-of-the-art equipment with virtually any place on the globe.

The new software program, called Mosaic, allows users to send and receive pictures, even view a series of pictures that look like movies, and browse the Internet for information that is much easier to find than with the program currently available to students.

"It's a quantum leap above what we've had," says Andy Anderson, a 25-year-old programmer-analyst in the university's Computer Services Center. "This is the latest stuff."

About 80 percent of the colleges and universities in the United States -- including Southeast -- are connected to the Internet, the rapidly expanding web of computer networks once the province of college researchers, government and military contractors.

In just over 20 years, the Internet and related networks have spread around the world to cover all of North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, with only a large section of central Africa excluded.

Looking for information about moon landings with Mosaic, Anderson quickly keys up a map locating each NASA center in the United States, then summons from the computer at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a narrative of a particular landing and information about the crew.

Need a copy of NAFTA, the Roe versus Wade decision, the Magna Carta? In a few keystrokes it is yours.

Also to be installed will be a program called DOS Links, which allows pictures and data to be downloaded by less powerful computers.

Anderson downloaded pictures of the spectacular comet collisions with Jupiter before the networks broadcast them.

"A lot of times you can get things through the Internet faster than the news," he says.

It isn't all serious business, says Anderson, who wore a Bugs Bunny tie to work Wednesday. You can go looking for jokes on the Internet or send messages to TV producers.

The university pays a flat fee for its students to use the Internet. As yet, students who own PCs and modems won't be able to access Mosaic because the university doesn't have the necessary software or hardware.

Students in the labs already can use a number of programs available on the university computer system.

At Southeast, e-mail communication between faculty and students is becoming more and more common.

Some professors make assignments via the system, which allows for sending messages between linked computer terminals.

The same students might turn in their assignment on e-mail.

An e-mail account is available to any student who requests one.

David Gosche, a junior computer science major from Farmington who is a lab operator at Kent Library, uses e-mail regularly to write a friend going to school in Warrensburg.

"And I don't have to pay for envelopes and stamps," he says.

Students can use e-mail to contribute to or read the global conferencing network called USENET, which provides discussions on thousands of different topics.

Students also can access the library's card index, or the school's master calendar, or information from the registrar among other items on a system called Info SEMO.

Other programs allow students to access information from the libraries at the University of Missouri, Texas A&M, Yale and Cornell.

Using a program called File Transfer Protocol, students can move files between computers on the Internet.

Of the 1,600 PCs on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University, 68 are stationed in the three labs: at the library, at Crisp Hall and in the Greek dining hall.

The remainder are used by faculty and staff members. One of Anderson's jobs is to conduct seminars that teach the faculty and staff how to use the technology available to them.

"A few people are afraid of it, but most people get excited when they see what they can do with the technology," he said.

Eventually all the labs and the computer center will be linked through fiber optics.

Once the Crisp Hall and Greek dining room computers are upgraded, students at all locations will be able to use the powerful new programs.

By 5 p.m., a student is staring into the screen at almost every terminal at the Kent Library lab.

They are looking at the future, which is now at Dartmouth, where each student is required to own a computer.

And at the University of Minnesota at Crookston, where $750 of each student's fees goes toward the purchase of a laptop computer.