A lot of initiatives were launched by TSAN, a few were successful and others are pending action. This is a quick recap of our efforts this semester and a look at the plan for next semester.

1. ENTS Lab: The first effort on our behalf. We helped in procuring a large room for the new ENTS lab and gave recommendations for equipping it with a number of software and hardware products. We’ve been in constant touch with the program office about its progress and we’ve been assured that the lab should be ready for use in the spring 2007 semester.
   Update: New ENTS lab in function. Ordered equipments from Cisco, Juniper and Opnet v12 on all the PCs. TSAN helped in equipment ordering.
2. Newsletter: Telescopes 2005-2006 and 2007-2008 were published and distributed to companies through alumni and during the career fair. There has been a largely positive response to it from our alumni body. The committee is working on the next issue, which should be ready by the end of next semester.
3. Sports team – FC ENTS: We had a soccer team which played in the intra-murals and each of the players had TSAN sponsored T-Shirts. We hope to have more teams for other games next semester- we achieved a lot of intra-class interaction through the soccer team.
4. New course proposal: We stressed on the need for adding new courses this Fall and the department has been very supportive with the addition of the new VOIP course.
5. Dr. Joe Bailey appointed as Business School Advisor.
6. ENTS 608 seminar: We voiced the students’ dissatisfaction with the seminars conducted this semester to the program office and Dr. Tretter, and hope to see some action taken regarding this matter.
   Update: More number of seminar lectures –total 8 , and the topics and speakers were all Telecom industry as per TSAN’s recommendation. Proposal for elimination of seminar is considered for Fall 2007
7. Assistantship Scholarship: Due to the unexpectedly (but pleasantly) large number of students with assistantships, the ENTS Asst. Scholarship per student was a very low amount this semester. We looked into the matter, consulted with the program office and the GSG and sent in a proposal (as attached) for the same. Due to large expenses incurred for the new lab and marketing of the ENTS program, the program found it inconvenient to increase the amount of the scholarship, but at a fresh request put in recently, Asante has agreed to re-consider the matter.
   Update: ENTS assistantship scholarship amount to be increased this semester. To be announced soon.
8. TSAN seminar series: We had two speakers, Rob Torres (From Hughes Networks) and Azita Mohaddam (from ASM Educational Services), come in to talk about Broadband Industry and Importance of Certifications respectively. Both the talks were hugely appreciated and we have more such talks by eminent personalities from the telecommunications industry scheduled for next semester.

Please feel free to send in your feedback at tsan-info@umd.edu