Meeting Minutes- March 29, 2004

Attending: Joe W., Anna S., Jason R., Vincil B., Mary H., Ray S., Steve C.

Meeting Minutes:

Ongoing Topics
Software licensing – ICUT for students : Mary
Free student licensing would cost 60K/year based on current enrollment. Students are currently able to get heavy discounts on Office products (including Access). Student costs are approximately $68 for the Office suite. Mary sent a list to the TLTR on Microsoft licensing. Steve is looking into coupling MSDN (developer software)
Wireless update : Mary/Bill
How we do determine student needs? Other locations: residence halls, PEC. PEC may currently have wireless, but its characteristics are unknown. Ray will investigate wireless PEC options. Other areas? Where is it now & where are problems or known gaps? What is needed? What has the helpdesk support been? What percentage of students have laptops or robust PDAs? We currently do not a strategy for Bluetooth and may want to investigate.
Wireless focus group: Bill, Jason, Steve, Joe, Mary, Keith, Bill, Brenda/Abe, Richard (or other CS faculty), Ray, Vincil
Other technologies to explore: Secure card access to all machines.

Update from Bill: SEU is now at 45 Mbit connection, upgraded from the original 18Mbit through Texas.net, + 3 racks of co-located servers for disaster recovery. Working target for disaster recovery has been mid-summer.

Edshare update : Jason
Education and BSS schools have been informed. Helpdesk has started to received calls for faculty installs. PEC installation is holding for firewall configuration. NSCI faculty will be visited on Wednesday. A strategy for communicating with Humanities faculty will need to be developed as they do not have regular faculty meetings. Staff offices are systematically being converted.

Dynamic Web content update – Steve / Vincil
There will be a meeting on Friday to discuss a dynamic web content pilot. One of the goals is to define the scope for dynamic web content and discuss options for server technologies. Progress will be reported at the next TLTR meeting.

New Business
Removal media in classrooms : Richard
IT classrooms currently support zip disks & floppies as removable media. Current media isn't reliable. IT is currently looking at moving away toward USB keys. Keys will work on powered USB ports. The bookstore can stock USB keys. Richard has requested that IT: remove floppies, use the extension cable to bring the connection to the front of the Macs, front USB ports need to be activated. Discussion will follow.

Major IT Initiatives : Mary / Ray
The next classroom to be upgraded is 126. The help desk is adding 1 FTE staff member to provide continued excellent service. 50K has been budgeted to upgrade Arts 121. Projects – Edshare will continue until installed, the new Information and Technology Policy will be completed. Software – since most faculty do not want mid-semester changes, classroom software is systematically upgraded and faculty are notified after the semester. Software for individual faculty are installed based on request.

Richard/Steve have proposed that Blackboard or other software/system changes be proposed to the TLTR prior to scheduling a system upgrade.
Spam prevention: Steve/Vincil has proposed that mechanisms be put in place that make email harvesting difficult.

Media Services and Tech Services are meeting new faculty in their offices to help with the transition to a new machine.

Product lifecycle management: An IT group has looked into managing e-waste and now has a sophisticated process to recycle components.

Bookstore – onlne process - Less Linn – Replace a 3 part form for requesting text books. Design of an online system could be developed in CARS.

Residence Technology Assistants – Students have been hired to manage help calls from the residence halls that follow-up on calls.

IT Funded initiatives for 04 – 05 : Bill/Mary

Change management:
Data warehousing initiatives – Bill is looking at Cognos for data warehousing. More to follow.
(non-funded) initiatives – looking at a video teleclassroom as well as an audio media recording facility for faculty.
E- College : Bill is looking at alternatives for current Blackboard support for online programs – global business. Other alternatives may include 24x7 Blackboard support. Richard has requested that we present on E-College.
Virus protection: Ray is looking at processes to manage networking issues to ensure protection against virus propagation.
Spam Filtering: Ray has a group working on piloting a spam filtering system, piloted by IT staff.

Additional Discussion Topics
Next Meeting time: current time will not work for Brian & Lynn. Tentative meeting time: week of May 10 th . Subgroups will meet in April and report back at the end of the semester.