Abstract

CSDE currently operates a
student access computer lab
in room 106F of Savery Hall.
This 300 square foot room
contains 13 high performance
Dell Precision workstations,
a large capacity network
printer and a scanner, all
of which were purchased
under previous STF grants.
In 2003 CSDE will move into
new, and larger, facilities
in Raitt Hall. Included in
this expansion will be a
larger computer lab. In
order to make available to
more students the
specialized resources
supported by CSDE we wish to
purchase additional
workstations and associated
software licenses for this
lab.

Background

The Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology
is interdisciplinary, supporting UW students and
faculty interests in demography and ecology.
Demographic research covers a broad spectrum of
topics, including issues related to health,
AIDS, crime, welfare policy, family, sex roles,
race, ethnicity, segregation, gender,
inequality, poverty, family planning, and
environmental issues. At present, the Center has
affiliate students from many departments on
campus including Anthropology, Economics,
Geography, Political Science, Sociology, Public
Affairs, Social Work, the Jackson School, and
the School of Public Health and Community
Medicine. Most demographic research is very
computer intensive, and the field is one of the
most quantitative of the social sciences.
Success in the field requires demonstrable
computer literacy, and a record of publishing
quantitative work. Many data sets used in
demographic research are very large, sometimes
involving millions of cases. For example, the
1990 1% Public Use Micro Data sample (1990
Census) has 1,105,583 household records and
2,500,052 person records. Students may also use
a 2% sample of the Chinese Census, which is far
larger. Processing large data sets without high
speed processors and very fast I/O is very time
consuming. Increasing I/O and CPU speed makes a
huge difference in the amount of time it takes
to process large data sets.

We are privileged to serve a variety of non-
traditional students, and have received funding
from a variety of sources to allow us to do so.
The David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have provided
funding for the "Population Leadership Program".
(See http://courses.washington.edu/plpsem/) This
program solicits applications from professionals
from developing countries working in population
policy, family planning and reproductive health.
The program aspires to provide persons with the
skills, knowledge and support that can sustain
them as they rise to higher levels of leadership
in their countries. Fellows in this program are
provided with a stipend, tuition, and the
services of the Center.

It is part of the Center's mission to help
University of Washington's demography students
attain success in their field. To that end, we
provide a varied range of support, including:

1) A weekly colloquium series. (See
http://csde.washington.edu/ and click on
Seminars.) We use this forum to bring in
respected national and international demographic
scholars. We also use it to provide
opportunities for students to present their own
work. This series provides an extremely valuable
service to students. It allows them to see first-
hand the work of scholars in their field, and
exposes them to the breadth of the discipline.
At the end of each colloquium, time is set aside
for students to meet with the scholar.

2) We provide computing infrastructure
(partially funded by previous STF grants). This
includes a computer lab with high end
workstations, a selection of specialized
statistical software, high capacity online file
storage, file backup and archiving and remote
computing via Windows 2000 Terminal Services.
3) We provide consulting in computer use,
computer programming, statistical methods and
help with specific software packages. Among
others, these software packages include SAS,
STATA, SPSS, R and SPLUS. Learning programming
software commonly used in quantitative social
science is very important to the future careers
of students in demography. Computing in
demography is often data and CPU intensive.
Speed of I/O and CPU makes a big difference in
the productivity of students. Manipulation of
large data sets is typical of demographic
research.

4) We provide a library and library support to
assist students with their research. This
library houses a collection of over 15,000
volumes focusing on population research.

5) The Center also provides informal support
that is the beneficial by-product of people
working together. The Center is fortunate to
attract students with diverse backgrounds and
diverse interests. We serve students from many
departments, and from many countries. This
diversity provides a synergy of ideas and
cooperation that serves the students well.
Students consult with each other as they work on
projects, and help each other as they work on
class projects, theses, dissertations, and
prepare for professional meetings and job talks.
The cross-fertilization between cultures and
disciplines is extremely valuable. Having a lab
with up-to-date hardware and software is
critical to this mission.

We currently have 160 students on our mailing
list, and the number is growing. Any student
with interests in demography can become an
affiliate and use Center resources.

Benefits

CSDE's facilities, including the center's
computer lab are devoted to demographic
research, and the needs of the students we
serve. Here students can work on projects for
their classes, theses and dissertations and get
help from Center staff and faculty located
nearby. This combination distinguishes CSDE's
computer lab facilities from other student
access computer labs on campus.

Also, many CSDE students teach classes of their
own, and use our lab to prepare their classes.
Teaching will be an important part of the
careers of many of our students. As they prepare
classes, working in a lab where there are other
students with similar interests and experience
is very helpful.

General purpose computer labs do not have
powerful workstations, sufficient or centralized
storage space, the appropriate software or the
consulting ability for demographic work. In the
CSDE lab students have access to high
performance machines capable of working on the
large data sets typical of demographic research
and can store their data, access their email,
and work on papers in one location. CSDE also
provides services that distinguish it from
CSSCR. First, CSSCR serves general student
computing needs in the social sciences whereas
CSDE's lab focuses on the large data
requirements typical of demographic analysis.
Second, unlike CSSCR, CSDE provides 24-hour
access to its computing facilities for those
students affiliated with the center. And third,
CSDE provides specialized software and
consulting on demographic issues. A full time
statistician is available for consultation.
The ability to do cutting-edge demographic work
depends on access to, and manipulation of, large
datasets. In our year 2000 STF proposal we
addressed the problem of insufficient network
storage space for student files. In our year
2001 and 2002 proposals we expanded the lab in
order to provide services for a greater number
of simultaneous users and upgraded the available
hardware. The addition of more and newer
machines had an immediate impact. The lab is
heavily used and currently insufficient to meet
demand. Expanding the lab again will provide
more students with access to these up to date
resources.
We wish to provide on the new workstations the
same core software that we offer currently
available on all lab machines. These are
primarily statistical packages commonly used by
CSDE social scientists.
Splus, SAS, SPSS, R and Intercooled Stata are
software for statistical analysis, database
management, graphical presentation, and
statistical programming. The software provides
programming languages for developing new
statistical models and methods. Knowledge of
these programmes is invaluable for students
doing quantitative social science research.
These statistical analysis tools are commonly
used in education, government and industries
associated with demographic research
Endnote is a commonly used bibliographic
software package used in preparing papers for
courses or publication. It is becoming the
standard in the social sciences, so is
increasingly important for our students to have
exposure and access to this program.
Acrobat has become a defacto standard for
posting complex documents to the web and for
grant submissions.

Student Access

Any student on campus with an interest in
demography will be given access to the lab upon
request. Currently any student who wants to use
CSDE resources can get an account on the
center's network and use the computer lab. The
lab is open during business hours and students
who affiliate with the Center can get keys for
24 hour access.

Available Resources

CSDE WINDOWS NETWORK :

Includes a variety of servers and other
resources which provide secure file storage and
transfer, remote computing, web services, print
services, backup and authentication. Total
current storage capacity for students and
faculty is in excess of one terabyte. Multiple
dual processor servers connected to a gigabit
backbone provide high performance remote
computing applications.

- Dell Poweredge 4300/2x700 server with 350GB
RAID 5 array - used for faculty file storage
- Dell Poweredge 4400/2x1000 server with 350GB
RAID 5 array - used for student file storage
(previous STF grant)
- Dell Poweredge 2550/2x1260 server with 100GB
RAID5 array - used for terminal services.
Supports remote computing sessions for faculty.
- Dell Poweredge 2550/2x1260 server 100GB RAID5
array - used for terminal services. Supports
remote computing sessions for students (previous
STF grant)
- Dell Poweredge 2450/2x1000 server used as a
terminal services web gateway. Permits access to
the terminal servers via a web browser (previous
STF grant)
- Dell 705 NAS with 80GB RAID5 array - used for
auxiliary file storage.
- Dell Poweredge 4100/200 server used for
network backup on a daily basis
- Dell Powervault DLT autoloader and Retrospect
Enterprise edition for tape backup of network
(Previous STF grant)
- Five Dell Precision 410 workstations acting as
network Domain Controllers in four subnets.
- Two Dell Precision 410 workstations acting as
departmental web servers.
- One Dell 410 workstation acting as a print
server.
- Two 2200 watt UPS’s (previous STF grant)
- Four 1400 watt UPS’s
- Two gigabit Ethernet switches
- Two KVM switches
- Dell 42U rack
- Assortment of monitors,cables, etc.


STUDENT COMPUTER LAB:

Thirteen high end workstations with a complement
of software typically used in demographic
studies (previous STF grants).

- Five Dell Precision 420 workstations, 1.0 GB
of ram, 1.0 Ghz processor, 18GB and 36GB hard
drives. Flat panel monitors
- Eight Dell Precision 340 workstations, 1.0 GB
of ram, 1.5 Ghz processor, 18GB and 36GB hard
drives. Flat panel monitors
- Four Dell latitude 600 laptops available for
check out.
- LCD projector available for checkout
- HP scanner.
- Four C-pen portable scanners available for
check out.
- HP 8000 network printer.

ADDITIONAL EQUIPMENT (Also sometimes used by and
for students)

- HP 4000 printer for the library
- HP 4050 for a CSDE funded research project
- HP IV for the front office
- HP 2500C color printer
- Scanner in the library
- Various computers in staff, faculty and
student offices
- Computers for CSDE funded research projects

Installation Timeline

As soon as we get the funds and the new lab
facility is available, we will order the
equipment and the software. As soon as the
equipment comes in, it will be set up and made
available for use. Software will be installed on
machines as it arrives.

Departmental Endorsement

CSDE is a multi-disciplinary Center with
affiliate faculty and students from
Anthropology, Economics, Geography, Political
Science, Sociology, Public Affairs, Public
Health and Social Work.

Faculty have written to provide information
about how the proposed equipment would help
students affiliated with CSDE




The expansion of the CSDE student computing lab
will provide additional state-of-the-art
computing access to the many students who use
our system. It will also help to alleviate the
occasional bottlenecks in desktop machine access
in the lab. The expansion is made possible by
the University’s commitment of new space to our
Center, to serve the students and faculty in the
social sciences who need fast, powerful,
specialized hardware and software for their
research projects. CSDE has developed over the
past few years into a nationally recognized
center for population studies, and has been
successful in attracting increased external
funding for both graduate fellowships, and
computing staff support. The STF contributions
to our student lab are therefore able to
leverage the substantial new resources we have
for technical support. As importantly, STF
support has played an important role for us in
attracting matching external funding. The STF
investments (and the external funds they have
attracted) have made a real difference to
student computing.

The student lab is one of the primary places
that students learn to practice what they have
been taught in the classroom, and learn from
each other. Our policy is to provide 24-7
access, to give students the maximum
flexibility. With STF support, we recently
added a student Terminal server to enable remote
access. This has been a big help to students,
who can now work from home. But the pressure on
the lab has continued to grow as well,
especially during the daytime hours. The
additional space, and the computers (and
software) requested here, will help to reduce
the waiting times for our machines during these
times.

I believe that this STF proposal to expand the
student lab will significantly improve the scope
of computing resources CSDE can provide.
Speaking for the CSDE community, I would like to
thank the STF for the contributions they have
made to CSDE over the past few years. These
contributions have helped to provide a computing
environment that is one of the best on campus,
and we are proud to be able to offer these
resources to our students. It serves them well
in their research, improves their chances in the
job market, and makes them knowledgeable about
the cutting edge of computing in their fields.
We will continue to work to ensure that the
investments STF makes in our student computing
environment are well designed, well used, and
well matched.

Martina Morris
Director
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology



I have had a chance to review the CSDE computer
lab STF proposal. I believe this proposal, if
funded, will fill a real need for the students.
There are many anthropology students who
regularly use the CSDE lab for their research
and writing. They have nothing but positive
things to say for the lab, except that the lab
can sometimes become unavailable during peak
times. I am somewhat concerned that the lab
will become saturated more frequently once we
move to Raitt; the lab will be much more visible
and there will be more students using the
systems because of the recent growth of CSDE and
demography instruction on campus. Therefore,
adding some additional machines, as proposed, is
an excellent way of maintaining the high quality
computing environment available to the students.

The collection of software you have put together
for all lab machines provides an excellent
foundation for demographic data analysis. The
availability of these high-performance programs
on all lab machines will encourage students to
engage in serious research and learn these
tools, which, in turn will provide them with
important professional skills.

Darryl Holman
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Washington, Seattle



CSDE has 11 funded fellowship graduate students
and has many other graduate and undergraduate
student affiliates across the social sciences
using its information and library resources.
The success of the center is attracting many
graduate students to our facilities and thus the
need for more computers when we move to our new
facilities in Raitt Hall early next year. The
STF' program's support has been vital in the
past in providing demography students with
access to machines capable of supporting cutting
edge research. This request will maintain that
edge and enable CSDE to provide resources to an
even greater number of students, both graduates
and undergraduates.

Mark Ellis
Professor of Geography
Director of Training, CSDE



I would like to endorse this STF proposal. In
recent years the quality and breadth of UW's
multi-disciplinary demography faculty has
substantially grown. As a consequence, more and
more UW students have been attracted to the
field and student use of the computer lab has
steadily increased. The workstations and servers
added in past years and funded by earlier STF
proposals allowed the Center to accommodate the
rising demand and improve the quality of
computing services. Adding additional machines
and the essential software for demographic
computing, as proposed here, will continue to
improve CSDE computing, serve more students at
peak times, and allow the lab to accommodate the
further growth in student demand that we expect.

Robert Plotnick
Professor, Evans School of Public Affairs
Former director, CSDE



CSDE offers a somewhat unusual computing
environment for graduate and undergraduate
students on the UW campus: the CSDE computer lab
provides access to comprehensive high end
computing, including hardware and software
(including a broad range of non-student-version
statistical packages). These resources are
extremely valuable for students, and very hard
to come by in any other venue on campus. For
example, the computing lab that Anthropology
offers has one statistical package available to
students.

As students affiliated with CSDE have learned
about the exceptional CSDE facilities, the
computer lab has become more and more popular
and is now prone to congestion in much the same
way as the Seattle freeways. Unlike the Seattle
freeway problem, however, the answer for the
CSDE computing lab is easy, inexpensive and will
have high pay off in academic quality and
achievement: more computers are needed. The
CSDE computing lab will be moving to new and
larger quarters in the near future, and will
thus be able to comfortably accommodate a higher
volume of computers and student users.

Kathleen O'Connor
Assistant Professor, Anthropology



This is a really well thought out proposal and I
am certain it will enhance the ability of the
CSDE to retain its reputation as an outstanding
place for formal training in demographic
research.

Gunnar R. Almgren
Department of Social Work

Student Endorsement

An expanded computer lab will allow us to server
a larger number of students than we do now. We
asked students what would help them get their
work done in the CSDE lab, and, specifically
about our current lab. Here are some of the
comments we got.



As a CSDE fellow I have put in many hours
working in the CSDE computer lab. I am writing
to say how much I have enjoyed and appreciated
the new hardware and software available in the
lab. It is clear that CSDE has renewed its
commitment to providing the best equipment and
tools to its student and faculty affiliates. I
hope that this trend continues when the lab
moves to Raitt Hall. One area that could be
improved is the addition of more computers in
the lab facility. With the addition of new
machines, the CSDE facility would be among the
best on campus.

Matt Steele



I'm writing in support of the effort to get five
new machines for the CSDE computer lab. I use
this lab several times a week and during peak
hours, like the early afternoons, the lab can
get a little shall we say full. This is highly
frustrating! It would be very nice for all of
the students in CSDE, including myself, if we
could have five more computers. I really feel
like this would make the lab, and the part of my
life associated with the lab, so much better.

Emily Brunson



I strongly support the addition of computers at
the CSDE computer facility. Since I began my
Doctoral program a year ago, I have immensely
benefited from the access to CSDE computers.
Recently, however, there are times when no
machines are available during the peak hours.
The proposed addition of five computers will
serve many students and faculty members work
more effectively. Thank you for your attention.

Masako Fujita



This is my second year utilizing the CSDE
computer lab and I would like to support the
proposal for additional computers and software.
I use the lab nearly every day for my class work
and research and since last year, there has been
a noticeable increase in the number of students
using the facilities. This has created a need
for additional computers. Having the CSDE
computer lab has been extremely beneficial, both
in providing excellent resources for my graduate
studies and research, but also in creating a
place where fellow students can work together in
a collaborative environment. Additional
computers and software are necessary to continue
to provide these benefits to all those
interested.

Lynne Taguchi



I fully support improving the number and quality
of computers available to students in the CSDE
computer lab(s). Please do apply for funding to
do this. Thank you.

Karen Brooks

Items

Below are the items making up the current proposal. The asterisk (*) beside items signify that they were approved by the committee. This however was not implemented correctly for our database before 2005, so earlier years may not show this.

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