Printing
Many of the student computer labs at Southeastern are supported through the Student Technology Fee and approximately $100,000 of the funds annually pay for printing in the labs. Unfortunately, an estimated 40 percent of all printing in the labs is considered waste due to lack of awareness of the size of documents or through duplicate printing. The dollars spent on wasted prints means fewer funds that are available for new and updated equipment.
Southeastern's Student Technology Fee provides computer labs on and off campus for actively enrolled students. These computer labs have a print-management
software called LionPrints installed that allows each student to manage the number
of prints he or she uses each semester. The goal of this system is to fairly distribute
an adequate amount of prints to each student (50 pages per academic hour) and decrease
the amount of printing waste. Significantly reducing printing waste will enable the
university to spend student technology dollars more efficiently.
Tips for Reducing Waste
Southeastern recommends that students review the following criteria before printing
in order to maximize printing efficiency (to help you save prints) and reduce paper
waste.
Before releasing a print job, consider using online resources when available and print
only what needs to be printed.
If the document is excessively large, consider ways to reduce it.
- Attempt to eliminate white space.
- Change font size to fit more material on a page.
- Change margins in order to fit more on a page.
- Use single spacing when possible.
- Use print preview before sending pages to printer.
- Highlight specific content to be printed instead of entire documents or web pages.
- Print multiple slides per page for PowerPoint documents.
Other things to consider before releasing a print job:
- If you send a black and white document to a color printer your account will be reduced by 5 pages (as of Spring 2024) for that color print.
- Should the document be printed in black and white, instead of color (color prints cost more)?
- Is your print job a final copy?
