zwicky%tut.cis.ohio-state.edu@osu-eddie.UUCP (Elizabeth Zwicky) (08/20/87)
OSU as a whole (not just the CIS department) has recently seen donations (or equipment grants) from IBM, Xerox, AT&T, NCR, and Apple, to my knowledge. Most of these were clearly brought about by active attempts to get the machines. I don't know about NCR's gift to the Business Administration college, but I know Apple's gift to the English department was based on the fact that they wanted to do something new and interesting with them. I'm not going to touch the question of whether or not we are a first-rank university in any of the departments that received donations, except to say that I've heard both sides of the question argued. So what does this say about equipment grants? It's not so much quality of the department, as active requests for donations, with solid and innovative plans of what to do with them, that produces donation. It seems God isn't the only one who helps those who help themselves. Furthermore, our experience has been that the equipment we actually requested has done us a lot more good than that simply bestowed upon us by benevolent computer companies looking for tax breaks. Elizabeth