ITC Meeting Minutes 10.15.2015
In Attendance: Angela Neria, Randy Roberts, Tracey Mussa, Josh McElhaney, Liz Mascher, Erin Sullivan,
Melinda Roelfs, Dai Li, Lee Young, Brenda Frieden, Cody Lindbloom, Hilary Unruh
Angel started the meeting – Small briefing of KBOR meeting and how the new IT Plan needs to be in sync
with the University Plan.
Guest Speaker: Dr. Janet Smith - Assistant Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness
1. Review of the newly adopted Campus Strategic Plan
Special Guest, Dr. Jan Smith, is joining us to share the new plan!
---- http://oie.pittstate.edu/planning/strategic-plan.dot
As a reminder, our goal this year is to develop a new campus-wide strategic IT Plan based on the
university’s new strategic plan.
Mission Statement – The mission of Pittsburg State University is to provide transformational experiences
for its students and the community.
Four Goals –
1. Academic Excellence
2. Student Success
3. Partnerships
4. Responsive and Innovative Campus Culture
Dr. Smith was introduced – Pathway to Prominence Strategic plan 2016-2022
She showed the website.
16 interviews, 38 groups, 1200 survey responses which Dai Li organized by themes, and the themes are
attached to the plan.
The plan is more streamlined, there is a concise mission statement and the goals are easy for people to
know and remember. There is not a goal for IT in the current plan although there was in the previous
plan. It was determined IT was not needed as its own goal, it’s threaded into each one of the four goals.
For each goal there is rational and identified objectives. IT is involved with each aspect of these
objectives. When Dr. Smith was meeting with President Scott it was asked: Who is the lead person?
What is the timeline for this? What is the budget and resources? This course of action was much more
purposeful to measure progress while putting together the new plan.
Strategic planning model in the past asked everyone to turn in their plans at the same time. In the new
plan model, there is vertical alignment and horizontal alignment – planning council (top priorities
blessed by the president), provost, then deans, chairs and directors.
There were 120+ action statements per Dai, the goal was to pick 25-30 that are critical gains and easy
wins for the next year or two. ERP is on that list.
Assessment – Student learning assessment, the data Dai collects – great job collecting, not great job
using it to inform decision making.
Task force – What was working, what needed to be in place to support plan.
There is also core values on the website.
Angela asked Dr. Smith, as we look at doing a SWOT analysis, would the action items and statements be
available? Dr. Smith said it is internal working document, however there are groups on campus that
preform a key management role so if we find it helpful to look at, absolutely. But to keep in mind first,
it is a living document. Second, the most important items are flagged, and no one should be concerned
if their items are not flagged. It was always asked, “what can we handle, what can we take on?” It
doesn’t mean the non-flagged are not important. And third, some of the things that were important get
moved around.
Angela was concerned with duplication of IT action items. If there were two, Dr. Smith thinks it’s not a
bad thing but should be looked at more closely. Angela stated she has seen the old plan and there is
important information about ERP and data collection that will help influence the new plan. The IT plan
is a 5 year plan.
Dr. Smith also mentioned there will be a town hall meeting next month with President Scott.
2. Post Review of IT Campus Support
There was the Introduction of ITC’s two students Josh McElhaney introduced himself – Grad student
Cody Lindbloom introduced himself – Undergrad student
Angela gave a review of campus wide IT resources from last meeting, stating we need to remember the
structure and the processes that we go through to get things done IT-wise on campus.
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Center for Teaching Learning and Technology: Report to Provost
Instructional Support Consultants: Report to College Deans
Technical support Consultant: Report to College Deans
Library Systems Manager: Reports to Library Dean
Web Site and Social Media Services: Office of Marketing and Communication
Campus Services: Reports to Office of Information Services
Development and Implementation : Reports to Office of Information Services
Infrastructure and Security: Reports to Office of Information Services
Process and Project Management: Reports to Office of Information Services
3. Reflection in Small Groups
Angela asked everyone to connect with a partner to review last month’s meeting.
– A questionnaire was handed out for feedback.
4. Campus IT Updates
Oracle Cloud
 Oracle Cloud is on campus working with Michelle Sexton and Barbara Winter focusing on
finance. Finance went through 5 weeks of training and now they are working with Oracle to
learn how to implement this training.
Gus Portal
 Gus Portal was released on Monday. All positive feedback! Tracey brought up how she is still
having to re log into since it’s timed out (40 minutes). Angela stated this is for security reasons
and she is going to find out which apps specifically time you out.
National Cyber Security Month
 Event was held on the Oval Wed. Oct. 14th. There were two brown bags for password security,
and a cyber security contest.
IT Trainings
 Go to OIS or Gorilla Geek page to sign up for trainings. Onsite training is available.
KBOR IT Presentation
 Angela gave presentation to KBOR about campus IT, IT across the state, and ERP.
 The KBOR meeting and IT Presentation all went very well!
Brenda Frieden
 Canvas is changing its interface and looks more like GUS Portal. Can go onto Beta server to get a
sneak peek: pittstate.beta.instructure.com.
 She is going to the Open Education Conference next week to learn about lowering education
costs for students.
 There is a new library employee named Debora White who will be working with digital
initiatives.
 Adobe Creative Cloud is available in KTC and in the library. It has gone over well.
o Angela asked how students can access these areas. Do we need to make a map so
students know? How can we track it? KU and Emporia have the techs keep track.
Randy Roberts
 Deborah will also be working with the library’s institutional repository. Transitioning to Digital
Commons for streaming audio and visual and media files as well as original files.
 Activity Insight is in process now.
Lee Young
 Read&Write Gold – www.texthelp.com
o
Product for students taking text materials and turning them into audio and image files.
Available to everyone on a number of campus computers and library computers. There is
testing on the product taking place now.
Leadership PSU
 There will be a poverty simulation offered by Jene Dockers, on November 20th from 2-4pm in the
student rec center. There will be 60-80 volunteers needed. Please email Tracey Mussa if you
are interested. There will also need to be 20 volunteers to facilitate it.
The next ITC meeting is November 19th at 9:00am in Hughes 316