Xavier Technology Committee
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Smith Hall Room 344
Minutes
Attending:
Committee Members: Joe Christman, Mike Flick, Steve Herbert, Tom Kessinger, Annette Marksberry,
Judy Molnar, Alison Morgan, Heidrun Schmitzer, David Yi
Advisory Members: Susan Abel, Mark Brockman, Tim Bucher, Ravi Chinta, Eddie Hooker, Carol Maegly,
Debbie Tesch
Annette Marksberry began the meeting giving a brief explanation of the committee structure. Annette will be co-chairing the committee from the administrative side and asked for a faculty member to cochair from the faculty side. Since Mike Flick previously co-chaired the Academic Technology Committee
(ATC) Eddie Hooker nominated Mike as the co-chair of the XTC and Mike agreed to co-chair for this year.
Annette feels it is important to talk through technology concerns along with what we want to accomplish during the year. Committee members are directed to use the website www.xavier.edu/xtc to access the meeting agenda’s, minutes and other committee information.
Recent Technology Concerns: IT has been researching the possibility of outsourcing the help desk.
Annette shared with the group that she attended the faculty committee meeting Tuesday, October 22,
2013 to address the concerns regarding the outsourcing and talk through the IT Cross Functional Team
(CFT) findings. During the summer Fr. Graham held a cabinet retreat and as part of addressing the
University budgetary constraints and concerns he formed several cross functional teams. One of the teams was for technology and the charge of the group was to reduce expenses by 10% and/or to generate revenue. Because IT is an expense to the University the group had to come up with a way to reduce expenses. Judy Molnar spoke about the decision making process to outsource the help desk. In the last year IT started looking at metrics as to how the help desk was being used and what kind of problems were being address. Judy created two new student help desk jobs, the student manager and student assistant manager to help beef up the help desk. Student managers oversee students on help desk and make sure the students are properly trained. IT also instituted a new phone tree on the help desk. Option 1 is for password reset, option 2 is student problems, and option 3 is for faculty and staff. A tier two was added to handle tickets that are escalated from Tier 1, provide software, hardware and network problem resolution, and troubleshoot more complex technology issues providing onsite support for faculty, staff and public computing. The new system seems to be working well. Annette came to leadership team and told them we need to look at reducing the workforce. Information
Technologies looked strategically at all of their options and outsourcing the help desk seemed to be the most viable option. As part of the process IT also looked at other higher ed organizations and learned that the number one thing that is outsourced is printing. Xavier still provides print support for students

and Xavier still allows their students unlimited printing. The second option is outsourcing the helpdesk.
Judy has experience in outsourcing the help desk at her previous position and was asked to research the possibility of outsourcing the help desk. Judy worked with Ellucian to see what services they provide as well as references and costs involved. After looking at all of the options Judy proposed outsourcing faculty/staff help desk calls and Ellucian would take those calls. (Calls centers are in Florida and
Rochester, New York) Xavier will still have some staff along with students manning the help desk. Not all calls will be sent to Ellucian. An advantage to contracting with Ellucian includes the ability to reach someone 24 x 7 should you have a problem. Judy feels we would have an improved level of help on the help desk because of the 24 x 7 capabilities and the University would actually save money by outsourcing. Two of three current full-time FTE on the help desk would be eliminated and other staff would be reallocated. Estimated savings for FY14 would be $50-60 and FY15 savings would be over
$100. Faculty asked if there is anything we would lose by outsourcing. Judy feels the service would be just as good if not better. There would be a weekly call with Ellucian to touch base and address concerns. There is a potential that there could be more expertise from the outsource.
The XTC asked if Ellucian would assist with Canvas issues. Xavier has contracted with Canvas for faculty and staff to call for assistance and would not be calling the help desk for Canvas issues. After the first year with Canvas the University will reassess to see if we need to continue support with Canvas. There are also Xavier people in place that can answer questions regarding Canvas. Debbie Tesch raised concerns about moving to Canvas before next fall because not all classroom software interfaces with
Canvas at this point. Tim Bucher talked about the fact that faculty need to move to Canvas by summer because of pricing issues with Blackboard and Canvas. Eddie Hooker suggested the transitions from
Blackboard to Canvas take place sooner than later. Alison Morgan raised a concern that there would only be one full time help desk person responsible for faculty/staff on campus. Judy explained that students are able to assist faculty and staff. Recently, Judy has been trying to steer the help desk employees away from going out to individual desks on campus and has encouraged help desk staff to assist individuals remotely whenever possible. Help desk employees were recently notified that the decision is in the works and that IT hopes to advise employees of the final decision in the next few weeks. IT looked at printing that cost approx. $125,000 per year. IT is currently working with SGA to move students to use their All card for printing access which will limit the amount of free printing per year. That is the model used at other schools. Most faculty do not feel students should be allowed to print freely. IT knows this is an issue that has to be addressed and is working with SGA and faculty committee to come up with a resolution. A suggestion was made to include Bill Moran in these conversations. Printing costs are approximately three cents per page. Last year one printer alone printed over one million pages. Faculty are encouraged not to have students print course materials. Some faculty do still hand out paper copies of syllabus.
Judy Molnar has been working to be proactive about replacing old technologies and making the transition from VHS to DVD is a proving to be a challenge. Some departments still use VHS but not all students have access to VHS. There are issues in making the changes to be considered such as naming issues, and copyright issues. Most schools are making the transition from VHS to DVD. Librarians are
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assisting in the migration to DVD as well as streaming options. XTC feel faculty need to look at their resources to make sure it is value added to use something old in their courses.
Committee Governance Structure: Per Mark Brockman there are between 40 – 50 projects waiting to be worked on and Team Dynamix is used to keep projects cataloged and provide project status. As projects, that are larger initiatives, come to Mark Brockman and Tim Bucher, Annette would like to see them proposed to the XTC for approval before they are put in the project queue. Annette will be transparent to XTC as to what projects are in the works. Tim can provide project reports if the group can determine what data is needed. With our current system every project is a green light all the time and no one has to wait. There is no method to determine what projects are or should be a priority. The XTC could be used to vet and prioritize projects. The biggest projects in the works right now are the mobile app course add/drop, Canvas and SharePoint requests. Tim is trying to bring business office management to Xavier. Faculty load and compensation is an example of current process reengineering.
Tim Bucher is going to work with Risk Management to see if there is a way to digitize their paperwork and implement a work flow. Ravi Chinta would like there to be a way to differentiate between administrative computing and academic computing since there may be projects on the academic computing side and faculty may need assistance. Because of the synergies across colleges there is no way of knowing if any of those academic computing projects are being worked on. David Yi questioned the charge for XTC. Specifically “information gathering and make recommendations.” What kind of information should the committee gather and who does the committee make recommendations too and what is the process? David would like feedback so he has more understanding of what the committee really does and have a better idea of where he can help. Mike Flick feels the committee will vote on issues at some point. Ravi Chinta feels, at a high level, there are two categories – efficiency, doing things right and are we doing the right things? Are there new technologies that we should be embracing? Two big buckets – efficiency and effectiveness (what should we be doing?) Two types of information we should be embracing. The consensus of the XTC if that the committee wants to make sure they are proactive and not reactionary. They want the opportunity to steer the technology decisions of the University. Debbie Tesch raised a concern that there is a large group of advisory group on the XTC. Should the advisory group refrain from talking? Annette would like the advisory members to share and provide different perspectives to the group. It is important for the committee to have different lenses before voting. Only actual committee members will vote but all perspectives are important and should be included in the decision making. Tim Bucher asked the committee if they envision XTC as being a gate keeper. Tim would like for him and Mark to be able to present business cases to XTC. An additional function of XTC would be for the committee to be able approve projects or stop projects that should not be worked on. Projects should have to be vetted through the committee in an effort to manage them strategically.
Future Meeting Dates: is there a time or date that works for everyone? After a brief discussion it was determined there is not one time everyone on the committee is available to meet. Claudia will work to schedule additional meetings for fall semester and will be asking for the spring schedule from everyone in an effort to schedule meetings now for the spring.
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Office 365: Annette passed out a proposal to move to Office 365 as an example of the type of information that will be brought to the group for their feedback before taking it to faculty and staff committees. Student email was outsourced to Microsoft approximately 3 years ago and Xavier had to move students to Office 365 in August. IT has been researching making the move for faculty and staff as well. The move will not replace any FTE but will save approximately $13,000 per year. There is no cost to move to Office 365. IT is proposing Xavier make the email move to the cloud. The committee appreciates the proposal but made the suggestion when submitting proposals in the future to not just provide “pros,” but include comparisons and alternate options. The thought is to give all the facts to allow for better decisions. Mike Flick asked how secure our information will be compared to what we have now. Judy feels the security is more than adequate. Larger corporations are moving to Office 365 so this is not unusual. The size of mailbox will determine how long it takes to migrate. The migration might take from 1-12 hours to migrate. The committee asked about the service support when there are problems and if Microsoft is responsive if there is a problem. Judy indicated IT is still gathering information on support concerns. If we move to Office 365 the migration will probably occur during the middle of a weekend night.
Ravi Chinta asked that a future meeting topic might be to talk about forgetting things – what is ok to leave behind. Don’t save everything forever but we have to respect that not everyone embraces change. The committee should address human nature and have a good explanation for change. Tom
Kessinger would like demonstrations of innovative ideas during future committee meetings and feels the committee should employee technology as often as possible. Tom also suggested sending videos or links about different technologies in advance of meetings that could be discuss at the meetings. Mike
Flick will add a “Pending Proposals” tab on the website and the first item will be Office 365.
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