University Council on Technology
3/12/99 Minutes
3:00 p.m. to 5:00.p.m.
316 KSC
Kent Campus
Present: Cathy Bakes, Ray Craig, Peggy Doheny, Rosemary DuMont, Paul Farrell (chair), Brad Foust, Pamela Grimm, Larry Jones, Barbara Hanniford, Judy Hirschman, Alice Iden, Mike Kreyche, Terry Kuhn, Jeremy Ohde, Bernie Reynolds, Arden Ruttan, Greg Seibert, Roberta Sikula, Don Tolliver and Denise Zelko
Absent: Lowell Croskey, Alan Evans, John Kerstetter, Pam Mitchell, Bruce Petryshak, Pam Ramey, Drew Tiene, Darrell Turnidge and Kevin West
Guests: Tom Klingler
Paul Farrell (Chair) welcomed the council and called the meeting to order. The agenda, and copies of the recommendations from the Academic Computing Study and the Networking and Information Systems Study were distributed to those who did not receive them by mail.
II. Approval of 2/5/99 Minutes
The February 5, 1999 minutes were sent previous to the meeting. A change was made in the attendance absent paragraph. The name Brady Foust should have read Brad Foust. With this change the minutes were unanimously approved.
A motion was made with a unanimous vote of approval to change the April 16, 1999 meeting to 3:00 p.m. on April 23, 1999 with the location to be announced.
II.1 CIO Search
Paul Farrell asked that this item be inserted into the agenda since Don Tolliver was in attendance.
Don Tolliver stated that President Cartwright has appointed John Watson, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, as the Chair of this search. Other known committee members include George Stephens, Bruce Petryshak, Steve Tapp, Bonny Mills, Cathy Bakes and Arden Ruttan.
Discussion ensued regarding the fact that the UCT was not contacted regarding this search. A motion was made to request: that UCT be consulted (by e-mail) on the contents of the advertisement prior to its publication and that visiting CIO candidates meet with UCT as a group. This motion was voted on and unanimously approved.
II.2 Informational Issue
The Chair informed UCT of the distribution plan for OBR House Bill movable equipment funds. The CIO will get 20% of the funds, to be used specifically for UIS, and the remaining 80% will be distributed by the Provost. Some discussion had occurred at the Provost's level on whether the funding should be concentrated in one area for more impact. The conclusion was that the distribution should be driven primarily by student FTEs as in previous years.
Bruce Petryshak stated that UIS regularly receives 20% of these monies and it is built into the budget to offset expenses associated with central computing facilities, the VM operating system, the SP-2 processor, updated software and similar items.
It was stated that there are no known matching funds available. Rosemary DuMont stated that there is small sum of money from the OBOR Technology Challenge Fund, which is being distributed, to Kent and the regional campuses. Kent will get $175,000 and each regional campus will get $30,000 with half already received by each campus. The Technology Plan needs to be submitted before the other half is released. There is currently discussion to spend that money or a portion of it to put chairs and directors into the faculty refresh program. The cost to do this would be $60,000, involving 43 departments.
III. Old Business
It was agreed that the minutes and agendas would be distributed through electronic mail to each council member with copies going to the President, Provost and the CIO. The minutes will be put on the bulletin board system and members can also ask the people they represent if they would like to get copies.
At the last meeting before Ilee Rhimes left, he showed a proposed policy to the committee and received comments regarding technical and privacy issues. The two major problems were the restrictions on the use of the University logo and the privacy of faculty mail on university systems. Until this item came up for discussion, Don Tolliver had never seen a copy of this proposed policy. The matter was tabled for later discussion.
Discussion occurred that this program is not addressing all the technology needs of those in the employment Kent State. Concerns were expressed regarding machines not being available for individuals, such as chairs, directors, deans, non-tenure track faculty and administrative staff. It was also stated that very little has been done addressing the recommendations of the ACT study to replace and make technology available in the average classroom. John Kerstetter was asked to meet with the ACS/NISS Review Committee specifically to talk about what has happened to the implementation of these recommendations. Rosemary DuMont expressed a concern stating that aside from faculty refresh, which is on going, there is no money allocated for replacement or updating the equipment in the open labs.
Judy Hirschmann suggested that maybe some of the classrooms in Moulton Hall could be used. Paul Farrell stated that one of the things that needs to be done in the current review is to detail what is available and current levels of usage.
The availability of dedicated computerized testing facilities on campus was raised. It was stated that various testing models were being looked into on the web, including ones where labs are available but are not supervised. It was stated that this issue was not addressed in ACS or NISS and had just arisen recently because of a change in the mode of delivery and testing.
The issue of laptop use and access points was raised. Greg Seibert stated that a minimum of four ports in each classroom have been implemented as part of the intra-building wiring process, and that next fiscal year some funding should be available for undertaking a pilot study of wireless access.
The Chair indicated that Rosemary DuMont had circulated material from EDUCAUSE on these issues:
http://www/educause./edu/issues/stucomp.html http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/biztech/articles/25frosh.htmlInformation is available on-line stating what other universities current policies are in terms of technology fees and requiring laptops for students. More universities in Ohio are charging course fees for courses that use computers. Nationally 90% of American universities are charging technology fees and Akron is seriously considering it. It was mentioned that some universities require computers but only for some programs/colleges, and that computer ownership could be included in financial aid packages. Discussion occurred on ways to charge technology fees through time usage, course fees and non-tuition fees. It was stated that it would be useful if we knew what the current and emerging practices were at other Ohio universities.
Rosemary DuMont brought up the issue of the state asking what difference is it making. They want real numerical measures of the impact of such initiatives/requirements.
Resources:
Discussion occurred regarding the problem of retaining system staff. There is a recognized problem in regard to the review of job descriptions. It is recognized that technology and specifically networked system support staff are underpaid at the university. Because salary issues have been addressed in the CIO’s area there is now even more disparity between those employed by UIS and ACT and those employed in the academic sector. It is not known if this is an issue in the other VP’s areas. The problem is now more serious because these staff are becoming more aware of what people are earning in the other sector because it is a matter of public record. It was stated that this is a losing situation until we can come close to industrial salaries. It was mentioned that salary is not the only issue. That staff may be retained, even if their salary is less than in the private sector, if they have access to cutting edge technology, have the opportunity to experiment and increase their expertise, and feel that their efforts are appreciated. However this compensates only for reasonable salary differentials.
Discussion occurred regarding how to get students involved in supporting our systems. It was stated that through proper direction students could be put into situations, where they would learn an enormous amount about computers, thus providing a pool of people who, under supervision, could help various departments. It was suggested that the Council could think about the possibility of developing resources to train students. One possibility would be the award of Technology Scholarships.
The solution to our current problems is to pay salaries sufficient to retain the staff and to endeavor to encourage a student population that could be used in ancillary roles.
It was decided to retain this item on the agenda and get current information about what has happened regarding the review, when it is going to the Board, and to obtain information on current pay rates for students and review this material at a later meeting.
IV. Standing Committee Reports
Rosemary DuMont stated that the subcommittee on KentVM migration met and were brought up to date with where the VM conversion is in terms of e-mail and research users. The faculty members are going to report back to the user population. The members appeared satisfied with the progress. No further meeting was scheduled. Instead, it was decided that each member of the subcommittee could call a meeting if (s)he felt it was necessary.
Bruce Petryshak distributed a handout on software that is supported by UIS, and recommended hardware configurations. UIS is currently reviewing the Information Architecture and how UIS supports requests for updates/modifications. They are examining how to interface legacy systems with the WWW. UIS will have a consultant coming in towards the end of April or the beginning of May to review the effectiveness of applications support and they will want to spend some time with the UCT members that are interested in having input. They will receive the NISS and ACT Reports and they will be interested in looking at the status updates if available at that time.
UIS have received the bids back in regards to the upgrade to the telephone communications infrastructure. This has a component in it that deals with the campus backbone upgrade, wide area networking for the regional campuses, and video distribution. UIS is examining this in some detail putting detail with the intent to submit it the Board at their May meeting.
There are a couple of Y2K workshops available next week. As a result of these workshops UIS will compile a report on the status in various areas of the university and will forward that to the Executive Officers. It looks like we are in pretty good shape. There will also be a follow up to these workshops in either April or May to see if there any outstanding issues.
Judy Hirschmann does not have a printed update yet. Learning Technology is just beginning to do the enrollment report for Spring with some interesting things are emerging. We had 604 students in the VTEL classrooms in Fall and 935 in Spring. LTS held off from soliciting new faculty participation for a little while because of the collective bargaining negotiations. Ownership of distributed learning materials is a major issue with faculty. It is difficult to move forward until we clarify the compensation and copyright issues. At that point we are going to try to develop some more things for Fall. LTS are trying to develop some assessment due to request from various people. LTS has a couple of regional campus faculty helping with the preliminary run that will just look at reactions and hopefully help with these matters.
There is a conference on Technology Use in Education on April 19 at Cleveland State. It covers higher education both public and private 2 year and 4 year colleges. The goal is not just the technology base but the technology show and what they are doing with it. LTS will be attending and demonstrating the kinds of things Kent is doing and also things that they would be interested in showcasing
Greg Seibert stated that they were continuing on the intrabuilding wiring projects. The first phase of buildings are starting to get turned over to us and shortly getting some buildings from the second phase with one being the Math & CS building which is very near completion. The third phase is part of the telephone project that Bruce Petryshak mentioned. If approved by the May Board meeting, that phase of the project will happen over the summer. After that we will be changing the entire backbone electronics as part of that project.
Research submissions are continued to be worked on, in particular the vBNS physical connection is in place. Before traffic can be routed on the link, Kent must decide if it wishes to connect through MCI or through the Ohio connection to Abilene (the Internet2 backbone, which became operational in January).
There is a statewide meeting in Columbus in April 8 to discuss the consequences of this choice.
Rosemary stated that they have lost three staff members since Christmas out of a department of seven people. These people are being approached with job offers, without actually applying for them. There are a lot of projects on hold as a result of this.
Paul Farrell stated that the Recommendations were sent and/or distributed here at the meeting. The subcommittee has divided these into subsections and broken into three groups, with two persons concentrating on each section and writing up conclusions, and then the entire subcommittee meeting to discuss them. The subcommittee has written material, which is basically, our personal assessment plus a certain amount of input on the recommendations. We have got some feedback but do not want to distribute the reviews until discussing their accuracy with the Ex-Officio members and soliciting their opinions. The committee will meet with them and try to write up a finalized interim report by March 24, 1999. It is intended to be distributed to UCT on March 26. We want to set up two general meetings with users for the University community as a whole to give feedback. We would like to get selected users to attend. People who have expertise in particular areas and maybe people who served on the focus groups for NISS and ACT. We hope to finalize another version by the 19th of April for discussion on the meeting on April 23. We would like all the feedback on your perceptions, including anything missing or wrong and whether there are there other things we should have covered.
Discussion occurred regarding noncredit courses to build up a supply of student employees and to offer basic training to students to equip them to help users in laboratories and to assist in network support. Arden Ruttan will chair the ad hoc subcommittee and report back at the next meeting what would be needed in such a course.
VI. Future UCT Meeting Date and Location
April 23, 1999 3rd floor conference room Moulton Hall.
NOTE THAT THIS IS A DATE AND VENUE CHANGE FROM THAT PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED.
C: President
Provost
Chief Information Officer