Strictly Business at a Community College

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

You rarely hear students at Northern Virginia Community College talk about using Napster to download music. For one thing, many of the campus's 1,054 incoming students

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don't even have computers at home, and those who do often end up sharing them with parents and siblings. For another, many students here juggle work with studies, so they have little time to indulge in entertainment over the Internet.

Students at the college say they view the computer mainly as a practical tool for algebra exercises, architectural drawing, learning Microsoft Word, or surfing the Internet to find a job or track down information for courses.

When Erin Smith needed to find out about the local history of native Americans, for instance, she turned to the Internet search engines Ask Jeeves and Yahoo.

Ms. Smith says the Internet is indispensable for her honors history course. She and three classmates recently created an online tour that depicts Alexandria in the 18th century. The Web site that they created focuses on buildings that have been preserved for tourists (http://home.earthlink.net/~rsslsschic/rsslsschic/index.html).

Ms. Smith, 21, contributed information that she found online about the Dogue Indian tribe and Captain John Smith of Jamestown, Va. Then, through a link in the Blackboard.com virtual classroom that her history course uses, Ms. Smith sent electronic mail to her classmates about the project.

Ms. Smith also goes online before class to review the lecture notes of her history instructor, Jud Sage, which are available on his Web site (http://www.nv.cc.va.us/home/nvsageh/Hist121/index.html).

"I love his idea of having everything online," Ms. Smith says.

Like many community-college students, Ms. Smith juggles work with studies. She works for the U.S. Air Force's public-affairs office full time, performing office tasks and helping to update its Web page of air shows. In addition to the history course, Ms. Smith is enrolled in an honors English course.

Ms. Smith and her mother share a Gateway computer at their home in Springfield, Va. Ms. Smith primarily uses that computer for word processing, since it isn't connected to the Internet. The Micron computer she uses at the Pentagon is hooked into the Net. Does she use that Pentagon link for any of her course research? Ms. Smith says the Defense Department has a policy that bars employees from using department computers for anything but work-related activities.

Fortunately for students like Ms. Smith, Northern Virginia Community College does offer the use of its computer center and e-mail accounts to all of its students. But Ms. Smith, like most of her classmates, doesn't use the e-mail account; many students here say they aren't even aware of the accounts. Ms. Smith uses two other e-mail accounts, one provided through her work and another through Hotmail, which is for "junk mail," she says.

Sandeep Singh, another entering student, also has a Hotmail account, which he uses to communicate with friends. Mr. Singh, 20, said he learned how to use a computer when he moved from Punjab, India, to Falls Church, Va., early last year.

Currently, Mr. Singh delivers pizza five days a week, but his goal is to become a computer engineer. "That's my hobby," he said. "I love to work on computers."

College administrators, however, told Mr. Singh, whose native tongue is Punjabi, that he would have to develop a greater command of English before he could enroll in computer classes here. So he is taking a class with other immigrants seeking to improve their English pronunciation and spelling.

Mr. Singh is a regular computer-center user, although he also uses a Dell computer at home that he shares with other members of his family. When he's not doing class work or e-mailing friends, he visits -- like so many other students -- sports sites on the Web, including ESPN.com, where he checks out the latest basketball news. Unlike many of his neighbors here in Virginia, however, he also stops by Myindia.com -- to keep up with professional cricket.

At the college's computer center, staff members, working like taxi dispatchers, direct students to any one of 95 available Gateway microcomputers. The computers, connected to laser printers, are available until 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and until 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Students use them for homework, to search for jobs on the Internet, and -- in at least one case -- to keep abreast of the stock market.

Unlike students at many four-year institutions, many students here have little or no experience with computers. So, in the same sense that Mr. Singh must take remedial English before he can move into his core course work, the computer-deprived are encouraged to take free, noncredit workshops in basic computer usage.

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