At Friday’s Board of Trustees’ meeting, the board received a technology report as well approved the candidates for honorary degrees that will be awarded this academic year.

Robert Martin, the vice president for university advancement, presented the candidates for honorary degrees.

“Anybody can recommend a candidate to receive an honorary degree, but the selection committee can only recommend a maximum of four for the board to approve,” Martin said. “Most of the candidates are usually Eastern alumni but they do not have to be.”

This year the committee recommended four candidates: Sean Payton, coach of the New Orleans Saints; Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer who specializes in First Amendment and communication law; Robert Holmes, founder of the Astronomical Research Institute; and Julie Nimmons, the chairperson for the EI&U Expect Greatness Campaign and a former board member.

Of the four, only Holmes is not an alumnus.

“He has volunteered as an adjunct professor, and has helped many universities get observatories including Eastern,” Martin said.

President Bill Perry said Holmes lives in Ashmore and has been involved with Eastern’s physics department.

All four were approved and all will receive their degrees at commencement except Payton who has scheduling conflicts. He will be awarded his degree at the May 2013 ceremony.

Along with the approval of the honorary degrees, the board also heard presentations on technology.

As a part of Perry’s report, he focused on the Improved Technology aspect of the Strategic Plan, which was endorsed at the meeting.

Perry entertained a presentation by the Information Technology Systems and the Center for Academic Technology.

John Henderson, the assistant vice president for academic affairs for technology, and Kathy Reed, the assistant vice president for information technology services, gave the presentation.

The two said in their positions they work closely despite each overseeing different parts of the department.

Reed talked about three of the areas she oversees, which are information systems, infrastructure technologies and user services.

“We have 140 physical servers housed on campus as well as 10 virtual servers, which hold the equivalent of 150 physical servers,” Reed said. “We are working toward the virtualization of the servers.”

She also talked about increased wireless internet use on campus. Currently the campus has about 700 wireless access points.

“In 2009, we had about 600 users on at peak times and now we have about 2,100 on at peak times,” Reed said. “Peak time is around noon and 3 p.m. when faculty and staff are on and for students around midnight and 2 a.m.”

Henderson focused his talk on the Center for Academic Technology Support and the four aspects of it, which are digital and multimedia, the Gregg Technology Center, training services, and web and mobile applications.

He also spoke about how Eastern has uniformity within its technology, something that is currently very uncommon among public universities.

“All 205 of our classrooms currently have the same basic technology in each one as well as some extra that has been requested by faculty,” Henderson said.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].