You could try going straight to the department head and offer to buy the
unused cycles at your value. Do the math (what is a cpu-day crunching keys
worth for its contribution to winning the $4000) and take exact change. If
they have any higher offers for the spare cpu cycles they should take that,
the University should not be waisting resources.
As for running 'external' programs, did this department write all of it's
software from scratch including the operating system and compilers? Are all
of those microsoft applications personaly signed by Bill Gates? What
security do they get just because the software comes in a shrink wraped
box!
-- Dan Oetting <oetting@gldfs.cr.usgs.gov>