Nathaniel Nelson / Winonan
Graphic design and digital art professor ChunLok Mah has been unable to teach high tech design courses for the past six years. These are lasses he believes his students desperately need to excel and compete in the professional world.
“You can only teach with the proper technology,” Mah said.
The MacBook Airs Winona State University distributes use a dual-core 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, with an integrated graphics processor, the Intel HD Graphics 6000. For an average user, this is more than capable of covering everyday needs.
For a graphic designer, however, it does not even come close.
“The laptops that we get from school are the lowest end of laptop,” Mah said. “A graphic designer usually needs the highest end of laptop because of the one criteria that graphics need: the graphics processor, which is the most expensive part of the computer.”
Recently, Mah proposed a new laptop program for graphic design students. For anywhere from $300-400 a semester, students would be able to get a high-end MacBook Pro instead of the MacBook Airs the school provides.
When working on a computer, the graphics processor, or GPU, is the graphic designer’s lifeblood. While the processor, or CPU, handles the operating system and general function of a computer, the GPU handles any and all graphics related processes. This is integral to graphic design as well as to video editing and any sort of gaming.
With integrated graphics, like in the MacBook Air, the computer is forced to split its computing power between the operating system and graphics-based processes.
While this may not sound like a bad thing to the technical novice, it can prove to be a death sentence for a designer.
By splitting computing power between two power-hungry processes, a computer can end in a standstill. Imagine trying to run two cars with one engine.
The MacBook Pro contains an AMD Radeon R9 M370x. The Radeon, unlike the MacBook Airs’ Intel HD, is a dedicated graphics card with the ability to easily handle high-stress graphic processing and rendering.
“I have talked to the IT department to get that approved, so the students have the option to pay a little bit more and get a better laptop,” Mah said. “You can’t have one laptop that fits all, especially in my program. We need a way, way higher end laptop. IT realizes this, but they’re kind of tight. And nobody is willing to change the rules.”
However, the IT department did manage to obtain a few powerful desktop computers for the program to use. According to Mah, this was a step in the right direction
“It has allowed me to teach independent study for students who want to really learn high tech design, and those students benefit a lot from it,” Mah said.
While the desktops did help open the door to high tech design, Mah said, they did not fix the real problem.
“Unfortunately, I can only help a small amount of students that have access to the limited amount of computers that I have,” Mah said. “For the rest of the students, I have to lower what I can teach based on the laptops.”
Many of the graphic design students work with the community in what they call live projects. According to Mah, students have worked with multiple local and semi-local organizations, such as Frozen River Film Festival, Dancescape and Twin Valley Milk.
These projects not only help the students perfect their craft, but also benefit the local companies who would not be able to afford graphic designers by other means.
It does not stop at the community, either. According to Mah, graphic design students also work on countless projects for Winona State itself.
“That’s why I’m fighting for a better laptop so that I can do more not only from an education standpoint but from a community standpoint. My students can provide much better solutions,” Mah said.
These live projects are the heart of the graphic design program, acting as a way for design students to hone their skills while helping the community. Without the proper equipment, Mah said students will not have the capability to do these projects for much longer.
By hindering students’ ability to work for the community, Winona State hurts both itself and the community in which it resides, according to Mah. He said he acknowledges that every department always has problems with funding, and funding for computers is just one of them.
“What I’m trying to do is putting more value in why the program needs funding,” Mah said. “We’re not educating just the students. We’re trying to kill more birds with one stone. It’s like trying to create more value for the money that comes in, not just benefiting students, but the school and the community.”