MINUTES

UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

College of Business Administration InTuition Conference Room

October 7, 2002

 

Members Present:                                             Others Present:

Chairperson Richard Crosby                             Alison Cruess

Scott Bennett                                                    Kathy Hughes

Katharine Brown                                              John Sharp

Zella Boulware                                                 Terry Smith

Larry Daniel                                                     Lance Taylor

Tom Erdal (rep. Judy Perkin)                            Tony Turrin

Andrew Farkas                                               

Jace Hargis

David Jaffee                                                    

Marianne Jaffee

Jeff Lancashire

Jerry Merckel                                                  

           Rama Rao

           Fred Sudler (rep. Jeff Michelman)

 

Chairperson Crosby convened the University Technology Committee meeting at 10:35AM in the College of Business Administration InTuition Conference Room.

 

1.                  Announcements

a.       Chairperson Crosby announced that he was late for the UTC meeting because he was attending a dedication ceremony for the Coggin College of Business building.  He announced that Mr. & Mrs. Luther Coggin had donated $5,000,000 to the College of Business Administration.

 

b.      The UTC now has two new student representatives:  Richard Mack, SGA Vice President and Jeff Lancashire, SGA Director of Public Relations.

 

c.       The new Interim Director of the Faculty Enhancement Center is Dr. Jace Hargis who will now be a member of the UTC. 

 

d.      Ms. Marianne Jaffee is the new Executive Assistant in Academic Affairs and will be their new representative.

 

2.                  Distance Learning Action Team Report

David Jaffee reported that this Action Team has not met this academic year and Jace Hargis will now be chairing this team.  A co-chair position will also be appointed and the group will be convening soon. 

 

3.                  Mac Action Team Report

Zella Boulware thanked Alison Cruess for chairing this Action Team.  There are two recommendations that are being made to the UTC:

 

a.       that the University community continue to consider establishing a classroom that supports the Macintosh platform for classroom use; and

b.      that a dedicated Macintosh server (X-Serve) be established to provide the following enhancements:

(1)               consolidation of services running on several servers to one single machine;

(2)               rack-mounted chassis that will be protected, supported and backed up;

(3)               multi-platform unlimited client licenses;

(4)               Macintosh Manager Tools;

(5)               active directory integration for network authentication and services;

(6)               single repository for Macintosh software

(7)               imaging hosting (could replace Revrdist); and

(8)               remote monitoring and management of services.

 

She also reported that the only Macintosh classrooms are in the College of Arts & Sciences and that these classrooms are used quite extensively.  Chairperson Crosby suggested that she and Alison Cruess speak with the College of Arts & Sciences administration regarding a sharing relationship and report back to the UTC at the next meeting. 

 

4.                  I2 Action Team Report

Lance Taylor stated that there was nothing new to report.

 

5.                  Network Acceptable Use Action Team Report

Katharine Brown reported that this Action Team had met at the end of September and that Jace Hargis will be replacing David Jaffee on the Team. 

 

She stated that the student group and housing group surveys on current network use and issues have been distributed.  She will report back with the results by the end of November.  They are also discussing developing a faculty and staff survey for distribution with results ready by the end of November. 

 

She reported that there is concern that UNF has been reactive rather than proactive relative to network use issues.  More emphasis should be placed on educating students, faculty and staff on the best use of the network.  Web pages should be developed; however, there was a question as to who would support them. 

 

Kathy Hughes reported that the unacceptable network use in housing has gone down.  Students now have to register their computers when they check-in.  This will ensure that Computing Services is able to identify the specific port and the specific computer that is being used in case there is a problem.

 

Another issue that Kathy Hughes brought up was copyright violations.  It was the opinion of this Action Team that the General Counsel’s office should be the “designated agent” for UNF and not Computing Services.  Chairperson Crosby will meet with the appropriate parties to determine whose responsibility this is. 

 

6.                  Information Technology Security Action Team Report

Terry Smith reported that the group will meet on October 23rd and then continue to meet on a quarterly basis.  One of the issues to be discussed is whether to implement campus-wide firewalls.  He will report back to the UTC at the next meeting. 

 

7.                  Academic Technology & Support Services Committee Report

Katharine Brown reported that this Committee had not met over the Summer.  Some issues to be discussed this fall include:

 

a.       Classroom computer and projector location configurations (continuation of previous discussions)

b.      Internet plagiarism software (CIRT is currently looking at this – Kathy Hughes will report back to UTC on this issue)

c.       Status of web policy (Kathy Hughes will check on the status of this and report back to the UTC)

 

8.                  Currency

Chairperson Crosby stated that the University currently receives $542,000 in recurring funds for currency (this includes all information technology equipment campus-wide).  Kathy Hughes discussed the DRAFT 2002-03 Currency list previously emailed to UTC members.  This list gives a breakdown, by priority, of how the above funding should be spent this year.  Kathy requested that UTC members provide her with additional feedback before she finalizes the list.  Chairperson Crosby also noted that the University received a recurring allocation of $40,000 for centralized software currency. 

 

9.                  ERP

Scott Bennett provided the UTC members with the following ERP update.  During the summer, there were 3 institutions remaining in the ERP Consortium (University of North Florida, University of Florida and Florida State University).  When the Best and Final Offers were received from the three vendors in August (PeopleSoft, SCT and Oracle), the President, in consultation with UNF’s legal counsel, determined that it was in UNF’s best interest to pull out of the Consortium.  Following evaluation of all proposals, UNF selected SCT for its vendor.  The contracts were signed last week using the original UF ITN.  The cost for SCT is as follows:  $1.2 million for the license and $3.8 million for fixed implementation (over a 3 years period).  This covers financial, human resources, student and financial aid systems.  The financial system should be up and running by July 2004 with the Human Resources system up and running by January 2005.  UNF is still in the process of evaluating the financial aid and student applications and has an opt-out clause should we decide not to implement.

 

A question was raised as to the funding source for the above costs.  Scott reported that no state funding was provided and that these costs will be paid for out of carry forward and future salary savings. 

 

He reported that the other institutions have chosen vendors as follows:

 

SCT:  UNF, FAU, FGCU, New College

SCT Human Resources Only:  USF

PeopleSoft Financials Only:  USF

PeopleSoft:  FIU, FAMU, UF, FSU & UCF

UWF is still undecided

 

10.              Email Contact with Alumni

Kathy Hughes reported that this group had met one time and discussed mechanisms for email forwarding for alumni.  She has been in contact with FSU staff who have just implemented a system and will pilot this on a small scale at UNF.  She will report back to the UTC with an update.

 

11.              Summer Projects Update

Kathy Hughes reported the following:

a.       The dial-up upgrade (from analog to digital) has been completed.  She will do a traffic study in November.

b.      The bandwidth upgrade to 45meg has been completed.

c.       Computers in residence halls are now being registered on-line.

d.      There will be a new directory structure function coming on-line.

 

An upcoming project includes restructuring of the VLANs breaking out buildings into smaller subnets.  This will partition the backbone into smaller, more manageable groups and should be implemented by the end of December. 

 

She has also discussed the web policy and said that this it is located within the Visual Identity Guidelines that was recently approved by the President’s Council. 

 

The next meeting of the UTC will be held on Monday, November 4th at 10:00am in the InTuition Conference Room.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 12:10pm