From the piece:

When Robert Howard first took over as CIO at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Ga., last year, there was little doubt of his mandate.

“Wireless connectivity and general bandwidth issues were a point of concern among students,” Howard says. And that concern was warranted — the university’s bring-your-own-device policy had sparked a 250% increase in the number of devices attaching to the network in the previous 12 months.

Wireless access points, core switches, network pipes and Internet connections all had become choke points, according to Howard. The network simply had to be unclogged because the university used mobile access to attract students, faculty and staff, and because it had plans to shift key applications — including its email, ERP and learning management systems — to the cloud to save money and foster business continuity.

The Armstrong team couldn’t continue with stopgap measures such as adding new access points whenever the switches and pipes behind them were at capacity. “We had to stop trying to do the math to make the old network work and start at architectural ground zero on a new one. Unless we removed the bottlenecks, [the university’s mission] was going to suffer,” Howard says.

And that’s just the first four paragraphs of an article that spans five webpages — the first two pages return again and again to the upgrades at Armstrong.

It seems like many Savannahians still think of Armstrong as that quiet commuter school way out there on the Southside, but it’s a buzzing hub of activity — social, cultural, artistic, scientific — with over 1,500 students living on campus.

According to Alexa, Computerworld is among the 5,000 most popular sites on the world wide web, and among the 2,000 most popular sites in the U.S.

Here at Savannah Unplugged, we’re satisfied just to be the 3,241,117th most popular site on the web.

Now a series of lectures called “A Moveable Feast” will present the broader community with unique opportunities to see and hear Armstrong’s faculty experts from the College of Liberal Arts.

And each lecture will be held in a fitting historic venue. Those sites might be worth attendees’ time just on their own.

Consider the lecture that kicks off the series on Thursday, Sept. 12: Assistant Professor of Economics Nicholas Mangee speaking at the Savannah Cotton Exchange on Factors Walk. The title of Nick’s lecture: “On the Relevance of a Liberal Arts-based Economics Education for Society”.

Aside from the inherent interest of the topic, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis, consider how rarely the Cotton Exchange is used for public events. I’m definitely planning to attend that lecture.

From Armstrong’s recent release about the series and its name:

As Ernest Hemingwayâ€s friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner remembered him saying, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” For many, the lingering impact of college continues throughout oneâ€s life and becomes a moveable feast itself. Armstrongâ€s Moveable Feast lecture series offers to the Savannah community the opportunity to experience the generosity of mind and spirit that a higher education rooted in the liberal arts extends to its students.

I’ll list the various dates and speakers below, but click here for more on the lectures. Please note the special appearance by author Andrew Delbanco in February.

All events begin at 6 p.m. except the final presentation/performance in April, which begins at 7 p.m.

On the relevance of a Liberal Arts-based Economics Education for Society
September 12, 2013
The Old Cotton Exchange, East Bay Street
Nicholas Mangee, Assistant Professor of Economics

Presidential Authority and national threats: thinking critically about Power
October 24, 2013
The Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, 460 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Lara Wessell, Assistant Professor of Political Science

To Be Beautiful in Light: The Role of Photography in Shaping the Modern Black Identity
November 14, 2013
The Beach Institute, 502 E. Harris Street
Lauren Mason, Assistant Professor of Literature and African-American Studies

“A ghost in His Supposedly Safe Old House”: Uncanny Homes in American Fiction
January 30, 2014
The Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, 207 East Charlton Street
Laura Barrett, Professor of English and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts

What is College For? The Future of American Education
February 25, 2014
Temple Mickve Israel, 20 East Gordon Street
Keynote Address
Andrew Delbanco, Mendelson family Chair of American Studies
and Julian Clarence Levi, Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University

Homeless: Poverty and Place in Urban America
March 27, 2014
Georgia Historical Society, 501 Whitaker Street
Ella Howard, Assistant Professor of History

Letters from Composers: Musicians Speak
April 24, 2014
Fine Arts Auditorium, Science Drive on the Armstrong campus
Emily Grundstad-Hall, Assistant Professor of Music

As has become routine, both teams advance pretty easily — see here and here.

Both teams won national championships last year.

The women’s team also won the NCAA crown in 1995, 1996, 2005, 2008, 2009, and 2010. The men’s team also won in 2008 and 2009.

Given the back-to-back championships in 2008 and 2009, it wouldn’t be unprecedented for both teams to defend their national titles successfully this year. But, wow, talk about a challenge.

I made it to the regional semifinals on Sunday and took some photos. I’m only posting a couple of dozen of the best photos here, but I’ve posted a whole lot more to the Savannah Unplugged Facebook page. Click here for the men’s gallery and click here for the women’s gallery.

Congratulations and best of luck to Coach Simon Earnshaw, Assistant Coach Iuliia Sherrod, and all the players, as well as all the Armstrong employees who support the team.

I’m always surprised by how many Savannahians don’t seem to know that Armstrong has an excellent athletic program. As they head into serious tournament play, the softball team is ranked #2 in the country in NFCA Division II, behind #1 Indianapolis. On Tuesday, the team won the Peach Belt Conference championship.

I had not seen a fast pitch softball game in a while, and I was struck by the sheer athleticism required for pitching. Megan Barnwell pitched an impressive complete game, stranding 14 Flagler runners in the 3-1 win. The Pirates ended up losing the second game of the doubleheader.

Click here to read more about the game in the photos below. I don’t really do a lot of sports photography, but I did get a shot of Alexis Mercer hitting her 1st inning opposite field home run. You can also see a couple of shots of my student Haley, the catcher.

I’m going to post these same photos to my Savannah Unplugged Facebook page.

Like many other universities, Armstrong has a significant and growing Hispanic population. Unlike many of those universities, Armstrong is dealing with that growth and a panoply of related issues in a forward-thinking, proactive way through a variety of initiatives, including HOLA (Hispanic Outreach and Leadership at Armstrong) and Goizueta Foundation Scholars Fund.

President Obama’s speech outlined three straightforward principles that have broad bipartisan support: increased border security, a path to legal status for undocumented workers, and reform of our legal immigration system so that the country can benefit from the ideas and ingenuity of immigrants in the future as it has in the past. (I should note that the nation has already made huge strides in border security, an effort aided by a weak economy: the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. is estimated to have fallen by almost a million since 2007.)

I’m struck by the increasing boldness and forthrightness of young Hispanic adults, especially those who were brought here as young children by their parents and still don’t have legal status. Three Armstrong students — including an absolutely stellar former student of mine — are profiled in this separate piece by CNN, Immigrants’ days filled with fear, uncertainty, separation:

If I see a video clip of the Q&A with students after the speech, I’ll get that embedded or linked here on the blog.