By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
Contributing Editor

The university is one of the nation's top 10 most wired universities, according to the latest Yahoo! Internet Life (YIL) magazine.

UB is ranked No. 10 by the magazine, which each year makes the criteria for inclusion in the list more difficult. Last year, the university ranked No. 11, up from No. 47 in 1999, the first year that UB made the survey.

UB is the only university in New York State that made the top 10 in this year's survey, which is viewed as an accurate barometer of how widely colleges and universities embrace technology in their approach to education.

Voldemar Innus, UB's chief information officer, said the distinction is the result of the university taking "an integrated and institution-wide approach to technology. It's something the whole institution is doing."

According to the magazine's criteria, UB ranks highest in its overall technology infrastructure, the public computers it makes available to students and the network that supports them; student resources, such as the use of technology to make quick and relatively easy work of such chores as registration, grade reports, payment and even buying computer equipment; its Web pages; its ability to get students and professors to share in the best of the Internet by nurturing and supporting technology access for all educational endeavors, and UB's solid commitment to all aspects of technical support—from help for computer problems to human-taught computer courses—so that students have the tools with which to use technology most effectively.

Earning a special citation in the magazine's listing for UB was the New York Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation (NYSCEDII) as demonstration of UB's "commitment to emerging technologies" because of its emphasis on multidisciplinary use of virtual reality techniques, and UB's internationally known Electronic Poetry Center, which, it noted, "caters to left-brained e-poets."

"We're pleased that we've been recognized for a second year in a row as a national leader in the use of technology to support academic programs and services to our students," Innus said.

"We provide the experience in the use of technology that most students will be required to use once they graduate," he added, noting, for example, that UB this year is continuing a program begun in 2000 that places into the hands of every one of UB's students and faculty and staff members the newest, most popular Microsoft software on the market.

"We continue to invest strategically and to use technology effectively," said Innus, citing the fact that UB this year has experienced more than a 100-percent growth in the number of courses using course-management software, which facilitates the use of technology for professors and students in courses.

"That software allows students to access course materials anytime, anywhere," he added.

Additional investments in the archiving of electronic materials in the libraries, pervasive Internet connections for all residence halls and campus apartments, and the addition of new wireless capabilities for some areas on campus all further demonstrate UB's commitment to technology.