GateWay Community College complements its renovation with a state-of-the-art AV system

Background

GateWay Community College (GCC), in Phoenix, Arizona – with approximately 13,000 students – is part of the largest community college district in the United States.

During a recent renovation, the college added 23 new classrooms, a PC networking lab, a vocational skills lab, two conference rooms, and a tri-divisible multi-purpose room. This new 125,000-square-foot Integrated Education Building also has 15 dual-screen classrooms, a single-screen art studio, and a three-screen multi-purpose room with over 200 seats. Around the same time, the college also remodelled the Maricopa Skill Center, a vocational school and division of Gateway Community College.

Goals

GateWay Community College wanted a state-of-the-art AV system and IT classrooms to complement its new Integrated Education Building and remodelled Maricopa Skill Center. The system needed to allow students and faculty access to digital AV and HDCP content in a simple-to-use configuration. 

An intuitive model that would be identical in all rooms was required, to reduce the need for troubleshooting by technical support staff. The college also needed to integrate digital and analog devices in the classrooms and reduce the size and cost of lectern-to-projector cabling.

Solution

For the classroom systems, the GateWay AV team selected the Kramer VP-729 ProScale® digital scaler/switcher and Kramer TP-573, and TP-574 DGKat™ twisted pair transmitters/receivers for HDMI, bidirectional RS-232, and IR signals – all of which are housed in a slim lectern in each room.

The VP-729 sits at the heart of the conference rooms. Videoconferencing equipment and a 60- or 70-inch display were also added. All multi-purpose rooms follow the same configuration and include a Kramer VS-66HDCPxl 6×6 DVI Matrix switcher, TP-581T/582R HDBaseT twisted pair transmitters/receivers, and FC-46xl audio de-embedders.

“After comparing the features, complexity, and pricing of a variety of products, we decided to use Kramer as a core infrastructure in designing our standardized classroom because it met our needs to handle both HDMI and HDCP,” says Senadz Lubovac, Coordinator of Audiovisual Information Technology at GateWay Community College.

Value

The relevant rooms in the Integrated Education Building and remodelled Maricopa Skill Center are now equipped with a state-of-the-art AV system. Intuitive to operate, the new technology gives students and faculty easy access to digital AV and HDCP content. And there’s little need for help calls to the college’s technical support team.

“This design with the VP-729 scaler/switcher as the backbone enables us to display any analog or digital AV device on the screens with easy interface control,” says Lubovac.

With the budget, a major success factor for GCC, “Kramer’s pricing made a real difference.”