The University is preparing to implement a new printing system at the beginning of the fall semester that will provide students with fewer free pages in an effort to reduce waste and provide a more efficient printing system. The new printing system has been approved by the instructional technology fee oversight committee and is pending approval by the President’s Cabinet.

When the new system is implemented, students will receive a quota of pages that can be printed. Once the quota has been reached, students will be required to pay before additional pages can be printed.

The University is providing for a transition period in the fall. The quota has been set to 250 pages for the fall semester. Beginning in spring 2009, students will be allocated 100 pages for printing each semester.

The price per page after the quota is reached will be determined by the cost to operate and maintain the printers. According to the academic computing office, the cost is estimated at either four or five cents per page.

The system will be connected with the Colonel Card office and students will use their Colonel Cash to pay for pages that exceed the quota.

The new printing software will use a queue system. When a student clicks the print button, the item will enter the queue.

Students can place all the pages they want to print in the queue before it actually prints, which eliminates the need to get up and go to the printer after each item is printed.

The queue system will show students how many pages they are planning to send to the printer and the amount of pages remaining in their quota. Students will have the option to remove items from the queue to reduce the amount of pages that will be printed.

The system also has a fail-safe, which will prevent students from being charged twice if the print quality is poor or the printer jams.

“We’re not going to make you pay again,” Nicole Methvin, instructional technical support computer specialist, said.

The goal of the new printing system is to reduce the cost of student printing so that the University can purchase better printing equipment. According to the academic computing office, the University is planning on purchasing color printers that print on both sides of the page.