About

The College of Arts and Sciences Information Technology is the support group for the faculty and staff of the College of Arts and Sciences. For others, assistance can be found at the Boston University IT Help Center. We have a full-time staff of 11 and around eight student staff members, depending on the time of year. Please visit the CAS IT homepage for more information and specific requests.

Staff

Contact Information:
College of Arts & Sciences Information Technology
Boston University
685 Commonwealth Avenue Room 331
Boston MA 02215

617 353-5930
cashelp@bu.edu

Hours:
Monday–Friday 8AM–6PM (when Fall and Spring semester classes are in session)

Monday–Friday 9AM–5PM (otherwise)

Services

Borrowing Equipment

  • Do you have laptops to loan out?
    • Yes, we loan laptops out for use with the projectors in classrooms. These are intended for short-term (less than a day) loans.
  • Do you have projectors?
    • Yes, we have two portable projectors available for loan, and adapters for old and new Mac computers.
  • How do I make an equipment reservation?
    • You can check and reserve equipment through e-mail or you can submit a help ticket. Reservations are for faculty and staff only.  Students will require a full-time employee to make the reservation on behalf of the student.

Equipment Disposal

  • How do I dispose of old equipment?
    • We provide environmentally responsible disposal of old equipment, including old toner cartridges, CPUs, monitors, and other peripherals. Just submit a help ticket with details on where the equipment is and we’ll arrange for a pick up.
  • What kinds of equipment do you take?
    • We dispose of any electronics, including monitors, computers, peripherals,etc.  We also collect floppies and hard drives for media destruction
  • Do you ever reuse old equipment?
    • Yes, all of the time.  In many cases, with a little rehab and a few new parts, many computers can be repurposed for general access computers for students or in some cases replacement of equipment in other departments that have older machines.

Crashplan Backup Service

CAS Information Technology provides desktop and laptop services to faculty and staff.  There is a one time licensing charge of $78 that will allow you to backup the data on up to 4 devices, including smartphones and tablets (depending upon the models).  For more information, either submit a help ticket or contact cashelp@bu.edu.

Filemaker Database Hosting

CAS Information Technology provides Filemaker Database hosting.  We currently host over 300 databases for various departments and we can host yours as well.  Let us know if you have database hosting needs and we can work with you.

Here is the link for the Filemaker Databases on casfm.bu.edu:
http://casfm.bu.edu/fmi/webd

Here is the link for the Filemaker Databases on casfm5.bu.edu:
http://casfm5.bu.edu/fmi/iwp/res/iwp_home.html

Cumulus Image/Content Hosting

Virtual Machine/Virtual Server Hosting

Virtual Desktops

Students enrolled in AS312, CS103, PY421 or select Economics classes using Stata 14 can be granted access to the CAS virtual desktop environment. By downloading and installing the VMware Horizon Client, the virtual machines are accessible from any computer connected to the BU network. Please refer to the documents below for detailed instructions.

The virtual desktop software can be downloaded here.

Download instructions for installing the Virtual Desktop:

Virtual Desktop Installation Instructions (Mac)

Virtual Desktop Installation Instructions (PC)

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is necessary for using the VDI off-campus. Download instructions for using VPN

For information regarding additional services, purchasing information and other IT related questions, please visit the CAS IT webpage.