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Academic
Computing Steering Committee Minutes
of Meetings:
March 1, 2000:
3:30 Wednesday, Olin 206
Present: all members present
Review of last week's minutes
1. Upcoming conferences
Doug Klein urged members to themselves, or to have others attend any of a
number of technology-in-higher-education conferences. Dave Cossey noted that he and
his staff do attend and present at a number of these, including NERCOMP, EDUCAUSE, and
CLAC on a regular basis. Cherrice Traver will also present. Doug reminded the
committee that the Mellon
grant includes funding for attending technology conferences.
Here is a partial list of upcoming conferences, and the last
link is to Kesheng Yu's conference page.
International Conference on Learning with
Technology, Temple U., March 8-10.
NERCOMP / ITC 2000, March 19-21, 2000,
Sturbridge, MA.
SUNY Morrisville UNPLUGGED...the story on laptops &
wireless, April 6 and 7, 2000.
CLAC 2000, June 22-25, Wabash College.
and see the CDS
Conference list.
2. Budgets -- current and future
(a) The College is attempting to keep better track of expenditures on information
technology. This will involve a revision of the object code list with specific
categories for technology purchases.
(b) The College is converting to a capital budgeting system. The details are
still being worked out, and it will be important to clearly define what qualifies as a
"capital" good in the IT area.
(c) One desirable outcome of both (a) and (b) will be to assist the College in
formulating a long-range plan for its technology needs, and assuring that there is
adequate and stable funding for same. (See point 4
below.)
(d) Dwight Wolf reported that a number of technology items had been included in the
budget accepted by the trustees last week, including funding for: Curricular Design
Specialist, Associate Dean for IT, U*STAR, Distance Learning, and web support.
Other items which were not explicitly mentioned in the budget but which we would
like to pursue in the coming year include: internet upgrade, replacement for Idol,
Integrated Advising System development, and technical support staff.
3. Strategies for Integrated Advising
Doug Klein reported that the IAS working group will meet with the FEC
early next term to talk about the best strategy for moving the Integrated Advising System
proposal forward. John Boyer reiterated his point that faculty want to and need to
be involved in the planning process, especially if the new system will cause (or will be
perceived as causing) more work on the part of faculty. [Editorial comment: If
under the current advising system, some students do not see their advisors, and under the
new system, they do, then the new system may result in more work. But it will also
result in a much better an more useful advising system. -DK]
4. Assessment
Tom McFadden reminded us that one objective that we established at our first meeting was to conduct a campus-wide needs-assessment to
assist in long-range planning. In fact, many of the pieces of this assessment do exist.
Diane Keller keeps a list of faculty and academic staff desktop computers, and
public labs. From this list she prioritizes replacements and upgrades. Dave R.
keeps a similar list on the administrative
side.
We agreed that it would be important to pool all of the needs in one place for
planning purposes. Two examples brought up by Charles Batson were the Performing
Arts Department's request for a digital music studio, and
the Visual Arts Department's request for an additional workstation in the slide
library.
Next meeting, first week of Spring term, time and date TBA. |
