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The Internet Lounge

In January of 2006 Temple University of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA opened the Teaching, Education, Collaboration, Help Center, otherwise known as the TECH Center.

The goal of the TECH Center is provide students with the technical tools they need for their studies, and to provide a collaborative, social environment where they can work on group projects together and socialize. It has become a social hub and a major landmark on Temple University's main campus. The TECH Center was initially conceived as a facility for consolidating many of the software packages used throughout the university into a single, 24-hour lab.

Since opening in January 2006, the TECH Center has received over one million visits. During the month of October 2006 alone, there were over 140,000 visits. It exceeded one million total visits between 10am and 11am on January 21, 2007.

The TECH Center is a 75,000-square-ft., facility. Designed with a variety of workspaces to enable students to work collaboratively or individually, the Center is the largest of its kind in the nation.

• 75,000-square-foot academic center open 24 hours a day.
• Wireless available anywhere on site.
• 500 PC workstations.
• 120 Macintosh workstations.
• 80 loaner laptops (70 PC, 10 Macintosh).
• 150 software packages pre-installed on the workstations.
• 13 breakout rooms in which five of them contain specialized hardware and software.
• 24-hour Help Desk for students, faculty, and staff.
• "Temple's Welcome Center", a 4,260-ft. facility to host University visits by prospective students.
• Specialized labs including video editing, graphic design, music composition, software development, and “quiet” labs.
• Custom-build workstation furniture that allow for both individual and group use of computers.
• A faculty wing which includes resources such as the Teaching and Learning Center, the Instructional Support Center, a faculty lounge, presentation room, and faculty breakout room with videoconferencing capability.
• Social space for students with lounge areas and plasma TVs.
• Lounge furniture that is especially adapted for laptop use.
• 24-hour Starbucks Café serving coffee and light refreshments.
• 12 preselected cable channels are available for viewing on each workstation.
• Students are also have a quota of 800 pages from the printers per year (two six-month periods).

• TECH Center Web Site
• TECH Center article, Chronicle of Higher Education