An interactive computer terminal being installed in the Student Center will give students access to University information and student records,while providing shopping and entertainment opportunities, a marketing executive says.

Michael Gannon, national accounts director for Campus Interaction, the company providing the terminal at no cost to the University, said the three-station, touch-screen computer is called IKE, or Interactive Kiosk Experience.

We provide (one station of) the kiosk, a very substantial piece of equipment, to the University for free, he said. The other two screens are basically a one-stop shop for entertainment and information.

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Gannon said that when fully operational, the University portion of the system will provide student records, event schedules, maps of the campus and curriculum information.

There will be a voice phone connecting students to departments or even individual professors just by touching the screen, he said.

Doug Daggett, Student Center associate director of operations, said he wants to have the Student Center terminal operational early this semester.

My hope is to get the center section going very soon, he said. It will provide service identical to the Unilink kiosk computers elsewhere on campus.

Gannon said the other two terminals may be operational as early as the end of the spring semester and will be up and running for sure by summer.

This is definitely a new medium, and it’s growing, he said. (Campus Interaction) will have machines on 40 campuses by the fall and 90 by Dec. 1996.

The system is paid for by advertisers, including local businesses, who offer students coupons, magazine subscriptions, samples of current music videos, credit card applications and contests through the interactive computers, Gannon said.

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We designed this system especially for students by asking the students themselves what they wanted, he said. Of students surveyed, we found that more enjoy the interactive kiosk than other sources like magazines or newspapers because of the control this machine gives them.

Gannon said national sponsors of the company include Time/Warner and American Express.

Our company was formed in January, 1995, he said. We took a geographical approach to distributing IKE by placing it on campuses from the West to the East Coast.