For Faculty

The software Swanson Faculty use plays a key role in their daily research and instructional activities. The School offers a number of packages at no cost to faculty - packages for research use and academic use.

The Swanson School has 24 advanced technology classrooms spread across Benedum Hall. Faculty are equipped at the podium in these rooms with a wide range of student device management tools, presentation tools and integrated components to ensure the optimal instructional experience.  The rooms are specifically designed to promote teamwork and collaboration amongst students and stimulate faculty-student interaction. Equipped with bleeding edge technology in instructor controls, audio visual systems and engineering software, these computing classrooms are a central part of the student experience. For more information on the capabilities of the rooms or for an instructional session, please contact the SSoE Associate Director of Technology, Nathan Pearce or call 412.624.7862. A listing of Swanson's advanced technology classrooms can be found here .

Understanding the range of instructional support resources both the Swanson School and the University offers can be daunting to faculty.

The University Center for Teaching and Learning

The University Center for Teaching and Learning delivers a wide range of services in support of faculty instructional activities including support of Blackboard.

EERC & Online Learning

The Swanson School's Engineering Education Research Center ( EERC ) provides a local, targeted set of instructional support to faculty including oversight of the School's online learning programs . The SSoE Technology Group aligns itself closely with EERC and takes guidance from its leadership and Board on the most effective approaches, environments and platforms on which our instructors work with our students. Instructors seeking support with Blackboard can contact our Associate Director of Technology, Nathan Pearce or call 412.624.7862 to set up an appointment.

An ever increasing requirement of Swanson faculty is ready access to high performance computing resources.  The Swanson School's core relationship with the Center for Research Computing (CRC) yields access to a wealth of powerful computational hardware. In addition, CRC employs HPC Consultants ready to assist Swanson faculty in their use of these resources as it relates to their research. You can contact the CRC Consultants or call 412.648.3094.

There are six design rooms located on the 3 ^rd floor of Benedum Hall.  Three of the rooms are designated for use in support of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative via the EERC. The remaining three rooms are set aside for use in support of senior design projects. Faculty interested in using these rooms should read through the Guidelines and contact the Design Room Scheduler for reservations.

The Swanson School uses FourWinds ^® digital signage software to display announcements across Benedum Hall, the MCSI Annex, Gardner Steel Conference Center, and the Center for Bioengineering. FourWinds ^® is the University of Pittsburgh enterprise digital signage package, enabling students to promote events, meetings, and other important information all across campus.

Please contact Paul Kovach for more information.

Swanson faculty have access to the Pitt's Microsoft SharePoint presences. Delivering document storage, version control, calendaring, announcements, discussion forums and other features, SharePoint is a great tool for departments, committees, research laboratories, and research project collaboration or proposal preparation and management.  To learn more, contact your Department Technology Lead or please visit CSSD’s My SharePoint Sites.

International travel is a common thread amongst most Swanson faculty. Awareness of technical security related threats has also become a common thread for international travelers. While we recognize the need to balance security awareness with operational realities, we have worked with the University and government agencies to craft a set of travel recommendations. You can view these recommendations here , and if you have any questions please contact your Department Technology Lead.

The Swanson School Technology Group provides a wide range of services to its students, faculty, and staff.  To learn more about these services, the Technology Group personnel assignments for each, please visit our Staff page.

SSoE faculty have access to a number of conferencing facilities across Benedum Hall. Rooms are outfitted with same technology capabilities. Some rooms are additionally equipped to handle video teleconferencing. For more information or to reserve a room, visit the Conference Rooms directory . For events or other meetings requiring video teleconferencing (VTC) services, contact your Department Technology Lead or the SSoE Technology Group Lead for Distance Learning and VTC Ken Doty or call 412-648-9821.