Faculty & Staff
Self Governance » Technology Committee
Minutes
Thursday September 9, 2004 2:00 PM
Attending:
Kathleen Henson, Sara Brouse (by late teleconference), Rhonda Akins, Brian Burleson, Eugene Shek, Michael Veronin, David Watson, Patrick King, Neels Van der Schyf
Absent:
Brad Stanford (excused)
Kathleen Henson: Opened the meeting at 2:00 pm making note that the adjourn time from the previous meeting minutes should read 3:00 pm rather than 3:30 pm.
David Watson: Technology update. IT switches are to be changed on the 3rd and 4th floors to a GIG switch. Cost is about $50,000 each plus whatever expense will need to be incurred per port. Other discussion included the new printer has been shipped to Dallas but their new Electronic White Board has not arrived yet. Discussion was brought up about if and how there might be a technology upgrade in FY05. David made the comment that the FY05 budget will be very tight and that might be something that is dealt with more down the road as the year progresses. It was suggested to possibly have a "slush fund" available for such expenses or possibly have orders placed more on a need basis rather than a want basis in order to keep everyone about equal in technology features.
Patrick King: Center for Teaching and Learning Update. Reported that the new web access to the e-mail was up and in effect this morning at 6:00 am. Active X will be rolling out soon followed by an Outlook upgrade October 20-28th. Web pages for each department will then look the same with one central column on the left hand side making the overall web page more user friendly and easier to navigate. Patrick also reported that we now have the video technology to tape lectures turning them into streaming video that can be viewed by student, etc. at a later time in two segments per lecture. Faculty would need to schedule time with Garry to do a live recording and then the film would be converted and edited. Purchases in the works include another Electronic White Board for either room 208 or 335 and a new projector.
David Watson: Old Business. Agenda item IV. I. (inventory of faculty technology), expresses the need to know who has what. Items of main interest include speed of computer, memory and hard drive space. An e-mail survey has been drafted with an expected 60% response if sent out to all faculty members. The other 30% would need to be visited in person by a representative from each department. Once have a response from the survey, the general database would need to be updated. Problems include different brands, capabilities, etc. would make it hard to rank where everyone stands.
Agenda item IV. II. (apply/add ground rules), no discussion/nothing added.
New Business: Mike Veronin questioned the purpose and necessity of spending funds on printing a hard copy of such items as the annual report. Is it possible to have available on line? Save money? We print the annual report as a HSC policy to do so. It is used for recruiting purposes, sent to all alumni, etc. However, this committee could be used to investigate on ways to save printing costs school wide, currently $20-30k per year. Kaci Henson reported a note from Dr. Klein expressing concerns about the new e-mail address and ways to ensure that all e-mail is transfer/received to new address, i.e. publications, etc.
Meeting was adjourned at 2:58 pm.