A Lone Star classroom equipped with a Hitachi projector
Lone Star College, which has six different campuses and nine centers around the Northern Houston Suburbs, recently installed approximately 1,200 Hitachi projectors. Associate vice chancellor of campus services Butch Juelg is responsible for all desktop support, end users, and AV for the college, meaning he’s responsible for the heavy Hitachi influence.
In order to create the best learning environments for students, Juelg decided to standardize all of Lone Star’s projectors to the Hitachi CP-WX4022WN Collegiate Series model because of the ability to allow students to easily project and share their work. Each classroom, conference room, workroom, and collaborative space is equipped with one of these projectors.
“We first came across Hitachi quite a few years ago when we were doing an extensive projector review,” said Juelg. “After we chose Hitachi, we standardized across all of the campuses. Every three years we do a market analysis to make sure we are getting the best tech for the best value and each year we have come back to Hitachi.”
Lone Star recently joined Hitachi’s OneVision program for higher education. The program comes with perks such as specialized pricing, advanced replacement on projector maintenance, and extended warranties on both projectors and lamps. “The additional warranty was a big driver for joining the OneVision program,” said Juelg. “Warranty is very important to us with all of the campuses that we have.” As Lone Star looks to the future, Juelg hopes to take advantage of the "Buy 10 projectors, get the 11th free" OneVision perk to upgrade the campuses to the CP-WX5505, which comes with the HDBaseT connections and wireless connectivity he thinks the students will benefit from.
Juelg said he can see the difference Hitachi makes when he walks around the campuses. “Hitachi has provided more opportunities for collaboration and sharing and it shows. Now, several students can display their computers at the same time which makes group projects so much easier for them. More and more people want to display their work up on the wall to get feedback or to work together. There has been a big surge in forming these types of collaborative environments, and I’m so glad we have the Hitachi projectors to help make it possible.”
