Lunch dates via the Web

By Marisa Palmieri

Forget e-mail, text messaging and cell phones. Electrical engineering doctoral student Jeff Dickman and his mother, Elaine Langhorst Dickman, AB '68, have pioneered a new means of hometown to campus communication: the University Web cam.

"My son's been at OU since '94, so when the Web cam first went up he sent me the site and said, 'This might be something you'd have fun with,'" Elaine says.

Since then, Jeff, BSEE '99 and MSEE '01, and a group of his friends have made a habit of eating lunch at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on the College Green, where the Web cam is positioned. He says that as an engineering student who is "cooped up in Stocker" all day, he enjoys fresh air and the walk up Richland Avenue to the College Green at lunchtime. So it's become a tradition. "If the weather's nice, we're out there," he says.

Elaine knows what time to expect him, and from her PC in Dayton, Ohio, she accesses the Web cam via the University front door.

"I figured it was kind of neat to call her when I was up there and wave," he says. "It's just a neat way to connect."

Marisa Palmieri, BSJ '05, is a student writer for Ohio Today.

Related Link

University Web cam