NEWS

Fall Training Schedule

SSCC's fall training schedule is now available, including sessions right before the start of the fall semester. To see the schedule and register for classes, visit our training page. If you're in contact with incoming graduate students, we'd appreciate you making them aware of these opportunities.

This is our second year of offering both "Introduction" classes and "For Researchers" classes for Stata and R. The "Introductions" are intended for students who need to use statistical software for class work, but won't be doing quantitative research for a while. The "For Researchers" classes cover everything in the Introductions, but in greater depth, and spend more time on topics like data management that are critical for research. You should pick either an "Introduction" class or a "For Researchers" class, not both (for the same software).

No Need to Change Your VPN Client Yet

The University is replacing Cisco AnyConnect with Palo Alto GlobalProtect as our VPN solution, but SSCC will not be transitioning by August 15th as described in InsideUW. We'll have instructions for making the switch for you soon, but if you're out of town for the summer we suggest you wait until you return. We'd hate to have you run into trouble with VPN right when you're most reliant on remote access to campus resources.

Transitioning to VoIP

The University is also switching from our current Centrex phone system to a Cisco Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) system. The Economics department will start their transition on August 6th, and the rest of the Sewell Social Science Building will transition on September 17th and 18th. This transition is being coordinated by departments, not by SSCC, so if you have any questions please talk to your department's administrators. But if you need a network jack activated to support a VoIP phone, please contact the SSCC Help Desk well before the transition date.

You may be asked to choose between a "hard phone," which looks and acts like your current phone, and a "soft phone," which is just a headset that plugs into your computer using a program called Jabber. We strongly recommend you choose a hard phone. A hard phone will still work if your computer crashes or has other problems—and there's already been one campus outage that shut down all soft phones. If you have questions about phone choices the Help Desk can assist you with that.

After the transition, you'll have the option (regardless of the phone you choose) of installing Jabber on your smartphone, which means you can take calls to your office number on your smartphone regardless of your location. This can give you the portability of a soft phone and the reliability of a hard phone in your office.

Teaching Stata in the Fall?

If you're teaching an undergraduate course that includes Stata, we're happy to help! SSCC staff can give your students a brief introduction to Stata, or an in-depth guest lecture as needed. Contact the Help Desk to make arrangements.

We've also created an extensive set of Knowledge Base articles, Stata for Students, that covers both the basics of using Stata and the most common tasks in undergraduate courses. We encourage you to refer your students to it. Our goal in writing Stata for Students was to improve students' experience with Stata, make Stata homework less frustrating, and reduce the number of students who need to come to you, your TAs, or our statistical consultants for help. If your class covers tasks that aren't in Stata for Students, let the Help Desk know and we'll do our best to add them.

New Help Desk Monitors

Please welcome two new student Help Desk Monitors, Lucas Lailby and Alex Sheng. Lucas is a senior Computer Science major who grew up in Wisconsin. Alex Sheng is a senior triple-majoring in Math, Economics, and Computer Science who grew up in China. We're very happy to have them with us.