Teachers and students will now have to work together to obtain all of their printed materials.
The decision to dissolve reprographic services on campus was made at a committee meeting held by faculty, classified staff and managers, Business Services Supervisor Nick Dimitri said.
Originally, reprographics services was a team of two classified workers and one student worker. Teachers in the past would fill their requests for copies of their syllabuses, readers and other handouts given at the start of the semester to the college Bookstore who would then give the information to reprographics, who would then make the copies.
Bookbuyer Darris Crear and a student worker have taken over the Bookstore's copier needs.
"Myself and a student worker have been learning what the copier is capable of and trying to do the best we can with the one copier we have. We have been trying our best to meet the many deadlines for the teachers," Crear said.
According to Dimitri, "This brings the possibility of having better efficiency over the long run. The Bookstore, instead of having a third party print for them, can now truly meet the demand of what they need to distribute. This could also bring the possibility to print on demand for customers. All in all, this will come with time, but ultimately it will save us funds and make it a more efficient process."
"The reprographics service was taken out due to cost issues. So when we were deciding what to remove, taking out services like reprographics just made sense. Since we have other services like WebCT and Insite Webportal, students and teachers can communicate with each other and use the services and tools we have," college President McKinley Williams said.
"The (reprographics) service being cut seems to me a cost issue. It's simply cheaper to move the jobs over to other people," Crear said.
The different divisions all have their limits on paper and ink usage with their copiers. Plans for moving extra copiers to high-use areas around the campus is in the making. The bookstore is holding onto one copier to meet their needs, Vice President Carol Maga said.
Funding is still going toward the 19 major copiers across the campus and toward printing projects of bigger sizes. There are still more areas that will receive copiers.
One has already been given to the Bookstore for the printing of syllabuses, readers and other handouts. The Liberal Arts Building will receive a copier in the future due to the high amount of usage and traffic in that building. The Applied Arts Building will also receive a copier to accommodate the departments that have moved to the building.
"With bigger printing jobs, we have found a third party member to do business with. We have begun to do business with Gurbrinder Kang of Unique Printing in Richmond. He has stayed true to his word with giving us good deals and we have ultimately been saving more money by going through him for big orders," Dimitri said.
Some students and teachers have complained about the changes with reprographics being removed.
Student Jack Supuya said, "I'm used to having my teachers print out my handouts and syllabuses. I don't have the resources or funds to print my own materials."
Maga said, "We're all upset and sad to see it go, we enjoyed having the service, but ultimately its better than cutting even more courses. But yes, people will have to end up doing more than what they like, but all the kinks will more than likely be worked out as time goes by. Its just something were going to have to get used to."
http://www.accentadvocate.com/...g-services-1.2461481
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