This fall, the college’s new chief information officer, Gayle Barton, put together an “IT Index” that begins to illustrate just how much has changed since Bennison’s days in the Computer Center. Here are some items from the index.
Percentage of applicants to the Class of 2016 who applied online: 99
Number of applicants without an email address: 1 (out of 8,461)
Percentage of the Class of 2016 who are members of their class Facebook page: 79, down from 99 percent four years ago
Student tablets registered on the campus network:
iPads: 145
Kindles: 48
Students own nearly twice as many Macs as PCs
Percentage of new faculty requesting Macs: 69
Number of film titles in the college’s digital video streaming collection: 3,673, nearly triple the
number from 2008
Average daily number of emails received on campus: 155,000, down from 180,000 in 2008
Percentage of email that arrives as spam: 80, down from 94 percent in 2008
Ratio of students who forward their Amherst email to another account: 4 in 10. Of those, 91 percent are forwarding to a Gmail account.
Percentage change in calls placed from college phones in the past four years: down 30
Members of the Amherst College Alumni and Friends LinkedIn group: 4,676
Following @AmherstCollege on Twitter: 3,838
Following @BiddyMartin on Twitter: 5,477
Source: Amherst College Office of Information Technology