Information Technology Advisory Committee
Minutes for April 25, 2006
Present: Dee Ann Rexroat (chair) Mike Cerveny (for John Dixon) Ian Dees, Jean
Donham, Elizabeth Schau, Kay Schirm, Todd White, Andy Wildenberg
Web Policy Subcommittee Report
• Subcommittee is updating college Web policy and will bring a revision to ITAC
in May.
• James Clark is doing research on a Content Management System (CMS) and is
putting together a matrix to present to the subcommittee and then to ITAC.
• Full Web redesign will happen over the course of the next year; in the meantime a
cosmetic redesign of the homepage and headers will take place this summer.
• Discussion followed regarding CMS and its many uses – tracking Web hits,
interfacing with administrative pages, etc., and the question was raised, “Have we
considered fully what we want from this?” – Dee Ann will email her WP
committee so they can be prepared to discuss at their meeting Monday 5/1. They
will invite Andy Wildenberg to join them.
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Re: Online Catalogue status and plan
The 2006-07 catalogue will be online only, although this first year the college will
make printouts in the Service Center for faculty and staff; likely only the front
half with academic information. This is similar to what is done with the onlineonly campus directory. Archives will be given copies of the full catalogue printed
out. Webmaster is creating the first online catalogue but after CMS is installed tne
07-08 version will be different. The question was raised whether we will move
away from Jim Freeman’s perl scripts. [Note: follow-up conversation with James
Clark – the perl scripts will stay this first year, but not after that.] Registrar’s
office will be responsible for updating their portion, OCC will be responsible for
contacting the offices needed to update the balance of the catalogue (financial
assistance, student life, admission, athletics, business office, etc.).
Jean questioned whether this was faculty approved. Jackie Wallace had
announced it at a faculty meeting, so they are “aware.” Rexroat said Brenda
Tooley cleared it with President Garner, who had requested time to discuss it with
the Administration Committee. Jean voiced further concern with regard to
advising and the need for “paper” in order to flip between pages and courses.
Rexroat said the online version would be fully hyperlinked within the catalogue
and to the term table so that the viewer could go link from course to course
online.
Original concern Admission was alleviated when talking to HS counselors it was
determined that the catalogues are rarely looked at. Admission fully supported the
move online.
The catalogue being a “contractual agreement” (depending on year of
matriculation) – archived copies will be kept to determine requirements for
majors and graduation. They will also be archived online as they currently are.
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It was suggested there be an evaluation at the end of the year to see ‘how it
worked’ or if it could be improved. Dee Ann said they would ask some faculty to
“test drive” the online catalogue before school starts in the fall.
Ian mentioned student’s interest in an “online” junior check – which the Registrar
appears to be interested in as well.
We will contact Registrar’s Office for leadership in providing good online
catalogue models.
IT Report (Cerveny for John Dixon)
Remote Desktop/VPN
• A list of summer projects went out in mass email yesterday from John. Although
Remote Desktop is “on the list” (though not on the white board) it is not high
priority, so there’s a chance it won’t be ready next fall. The major projects include
the new network and the change from public to private IP addresses.
• Various reasons for Remote Desktop include faculty and students studying off
campus, staff members traveling (currently 3 staff members in Admissions use
VPN) Virtual Private Network – allowing access of personal computer files from
off campus. Currently people can access the W: drive, but not their H drive. If
VPN would become available, would FTP go away? Yes.
• Use should be more for getting work done that could not otherwise be accessed,
not just for the sake of convenience.
• John will be asked to contact other ACM schools to see how they are handling
this.
Student Print Allocations:
• Currently students have $90/year to use for printing. First semester, 5.8% of the
students went over their 40% (4 blocks) allotment. In 2004-05, 4% went over for
the year. Actually costs have increased from $28,300 in 2003-04, to $34,600
(2004-05) and we are on schedule to finish 2005-06 at $41,462.
• Comments were made about particular majors apt to exceed the printing allotment
due to being required to print large amounts of reading materials for their classes.
• Quite a bit of discussion followed with regard to suggesting an “upfront”
printing/technology fee – which the College has not wanted to do – and so we will
suggest John also inquiry (ACM schools) about who uses additional fees, how
much, etc.
SPAM filter
• Compared to 52 days prior to the upgrade, the new version of Microsoft’s spam
filter has cut spam by 1/3. This product, unlike the previous version, updates itself
2 times a month. Old version never updated.
New Internet Capacity
• Lightedge will be discontinued around June 4 – and ICN will become sole
Internet provider to campus.
• Average 5-5.5 mg throughout the day.
Est. Capital costs for new equipment and upgrades
• Jean said AV is coming in under budget.
• Mike reports the estimates were 3 to 6 mo. old and quotes were only good for 3060 days, therefore the desktops are coming in lower as prices come down in the
meantime.
• They are moving from Dell laptops to IBM Think Pads for a various reasons.