Case Study: University of Massachusetts Lowell extends STEM education and enables anytime, anywhere learning with VMware

Umass Lowell Extends Stem Education With Digital Workspaces

The University of Massachusetts Lowell, a growing research university serving more than 17,750 students, faced rapid enrollment growth and limited classroom space while needing to provide access to resource‑intensive STEM software. With traditional computer labs constraining flexibility and costs rising for high‑performance workstations, the university needed a way to deliver consistent, secure desktop and application access to students, faculty and staff anywhere on any device.

UMass Lowell deployed VMware Horizon virtual desktops with App Volumes and User Environment Manager through a vLabs portal, added NVIDIA virtual GPUs for high‑performance apps, and used StacksWare for app‑usage insights. The result: students and faculty can run STEM applications from any device, faculty can perform research in the field, campus workflows are more efficient, three IT staff now manage the environment, and 66% of students reported improved academic success after adopting vLabs.

University of Massachusetts Lowell

Steve Athanas

Director of Platforms & Systems Engineering