MINUTES

UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

College of Business Administration InTuition Conference Room

June 3, 2002

 

 

Members Present:                                             Others Present:

Chairperson Richard Crosby                             Kathy Hughes

Scott Bennett                                                    John Sharp

Zella Boulware                                                 Lance Taylor

Andrew Farkas                                               

Tony Turrin

David Jaffee                                                    

Jerry Merckel                                                  

Jeff Michelman

            Rama Rao (rep. Katharine Brown)

            Rick Roberts

            Diane Tanner

            Lucy Trice (rep. Judy Perkin)

 

Chairperson Crosby convened the University Technology Committee meeting at 10:05AM in the College of Business Administration InTuition Conference Room.

 

1.                  Announcements

David Jaffee will now be representing the UTC as the Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.  There has not been an appointment yet for the Director of the Faculty Enhancement Center.

 

Rama Rao has been appointed by the Faculty Association as a new representative beginning in the Fall.  He is attending today as Katharine Brown’s representative for the Academic Technology and Support Services Committee.

 

2.                  Distance Learning Action Team Report

Nothing new to report.

 

3.                  Mac Action Team Report

Nothing new to report.

 

4.                  I2 Action Team Report

Nothing new to report.

 

5.                  Network Acceptable Use Action Team Report

Policies are up in BlackBoard; however, the Action Team has not met.  

 

 

6.                  Information Technology Security Action Team Report

There will be a meeting of this Action Team this week; otherwise, there was nothing new to report.

 

7.                  Academic Technology & Support Se5rvices Committee Report

Nothing new to report.

 

8.                  Currency

Kathy Hughes went through the Currency 02-03 Priority List that had previously been emailed to UTC members.  She stated that Academic Affairs has been able to fund $42,753 for next year from this year’s budget.    She stated that 400 and below computers will be replaced with 2002-03 currency funds.  A motion was made to approve the Currency 02-03 Priority List (for $569,500).  This was seconded and the motion carried unanimously. 

 

9.                  ERP

Chairperson Crosby gave some ERP background as follows:  UCF & FIU are going with PeopleSoft; FGCU & FAU are going with SCT; USF is going with a PeopleSoft financial system and a SCT student system; UNF, UWF, UF & FSU are in a consortium to purchase an ERP.  Scott Bennett has now been official appointed as Project Manager. 

 

Scott reported that UWF has withdrawn from the consortium.  Four proposals were received in response to the ITN (Oracle, SCT, SAP and PeopleSoft).  A joint consortium evaluation team was convened to shortlist the vendors.  Linda Anderson and Lance Taylor were on that team from UNF.  The shortlist included Oracle, SCT, PeopleSoft and excluded SAP.  SAP then filed an official protest which, by law, caused the process to stop.  Following negotiations with the UF attorneys, SAP was back on the shortlist.  Scripted demos are now being finalized with the four vendors. 

 

10.              Unwanted Email

Lance Taylor reported that unwanted email has continued to get worse.  He stated that Computing Services does not turn on the filter for adult content/junk mail when new clients are installed.  He stated that this is an easy process; however, it is not 100% foolproof.  He stated that we may want to change the way our email addresses are published on the web so as to deter outsiders from harvesting them.  Following discussion, it was agreed that Computing Services should begin an education program for the UNF community on how to use these filters.  This will continue to be a topic for discussion with the UTC.

 

11.              AITP Student Programming Contest

Lance Taylor stated that he had been approached by the President of the AITP student organization (Association of Information Technology Professionals) about UNF hosing a national programming contest in late March or early April 2004.  This will most likely require the use of every computer in the general purpose labs in the Mathews Building on a Friday afternoon for 6 hours.  UNF will bear no cost for this event and can earn positive recognition for the university.  A motion was made that the UTC endorses this event so long as it falls in late March or early April (i.e., not at the end of the semester).  This was seconded and the motion carried unanimously. 

 

12.              System Status Hotline

Kathy Hughes stated that this issue was brought up as a result of faculty not being able to find out what was going on during a recent fiber cut.  Several suggestions were raised:  (a) that the Help Desk line have an auto-attendant which would put an automatic message at the beginning of each phone call stating if the system was up or down; or (b) a taped message only when there was a problem. 

 

13.              Email Contact with Alumni

Lance Taylor stated that he had been contacted by a faculty member regarding allowing UNF alumni to keep their UNF email address in perpetuity.  Lance polled the other IRM’s and received the following responses:

 

a.       FAU gives alumni two academic terms before canceling their email.

b.      UCF allows graduating students to maintain their university email addresses for a while, but does not maintain them in perpetuity.

c.       FGCU doesn’t have a policy.

d.      UF implemented this through a portal company in New England.  The company went out of business and has not been replaced.

 

He has also talked with Sprint representatives to discuss their Virtual ISP product.  VISP provides the back-end support in exchange for a monthly per email ID fee they charge the University.  There is a start-up fee of between $5,000 and $8,000 depending on the number of projected users and level of service desired.  Monthly individual fees range from $10.25 to $12.50.  Sprint also says that UNF would have to have at least 1,000 alumni to do this. 

 

An Action Team was established to see if this should be done.  Jeff Michelman will chair.  Members include:  Jerry Merckel, Diane Tanner, Faith Hall from Alumni Affairs, and a student representative. 

 

14.              Other Business

There was discussion as to whether a summer meeting of the UTC was needed.  It was determined that the July meeting would be held.

 

A question was raised as to UTC membership and the By-Laws.  Chairperson Crosby will re-convene the Strategic Issues Action Team to discuss this.

 

A copy of the technology section of the new School Code will be sent to UTC members.

 

Zella Boulware brought up two issues raised by the College of Education & Human Services Technology Committee that should be discussed at a future UTC meeting.  They are:  (a)  Can the I.C. personnel be merged into CIRT; and (b) is there a way that all the different video capabilities on campus could be pulled together so that in-house video production could be available to all colleges on campus.  Chairperson Crosby stated that he would invite both Hank Camp and Joann Campbell to attend the July meeting to discuss this. 

 

A question was raised as to the status of the memo from the Academic Technology & Support Services Committee regarding problems that faculty face while using classrooms.  This was discussed at the April 3, 2002, UTC meeting.  Ramo Rao will poll the faculty to identify specific classrooms and report back to the UTC at the next meeting. 

 

A question was raised as to the status of dial-in lines on campus.  Kathy Hughes reported that faster/better lines will be installed over the summer.  She will continue to do traffic studies and report back to the UTC in the fall. 

 

The next UTC meeting will be held on July 1st at 10:00am in the COBA InTuition Conference Room.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 11:45am.