Minutes of the Computing Advisory Committee Meeting

24 April 2000

 

Those attending: JP Dunn, Duke Koch, Pierre Barrette, Michael Wainer, Dennis Leitner, Ruth Bernhardt, David Blakesley, Larry Schilling, Geoff Nathan (recorder).

I-drive: Geoff contacted the company selling i-drive, who quoted a price of approximately $20,000 for 20,000 students, plus an additional $20,000 one time only set-up fee. Questions taht arose included whether SIUC could provide its own web server to cater for the same number of websites for that amount of money, with less to worry about in security issues. Michael noted that Computer Science provides web space for its majors, for example. Some wondered whether the new technology fee money would be an appropriate source for a webserver that would permit students (at least) to have their own space.

Smartforce: Larry Schilling provided some information that he had garnered from various websites and contacts. Michael wondered how it was envisioned that Smartforce's training materials would fit into the academic curriculum, as opposed to being used either as remedial material or as training for faculty and staff. Michael noted that the Smartforce proposal is closely related to proposals such as those Computer Science has been making for a basic computer literacy course within the core curriculum. He stated that Bill Wright has been working on this idea for several years, and would be glad to come to the committee to talk about it. The last two proposals raise a more general question that the committee should look into, namely how the university should respond to external vendor proposals in general. To deal specifically with the Smartforce proposal Michael suggested a subcommittee, which will consist of Bill Wright, Duke Koch, Pierre Barrette, Larry Schilling and a representative from ASA (to be named later).

ATS Proposal: Glenn Poshard has asked the committee to closely examine the ATS proposal and to give him a recommendation, not only about whether to pursue the connection with ATS in specific, but whether SIUC should be thinking in general about a desktop management system. Since there is some urgency in the request, the proposal will be translated into pdf format and distributed to the members of the committee by JP Dunn. Discussion will be run through the listserv to save having to have an additional meeting before the end of the semester.

E-Mail Policies: The subcommittee met and discussed various issues. It will meet again before the next meeting of the whole committee.

Pierre has volunteered to maintain the website after David Blakesley leaves. In addition he announced a meeting of the Internet2 committee to be held in Pulliam 113 from 10 to 12 on Wednesday, April 26. A representative from Sisco will talk about infrastructure needs.

Questions to be asked of Don Olson included how IT was going to set its spending priorities. It was also suggested that we present him with a list of what issues we are currently dealing with, such as i-drive, Smartforce, e-mail policies. The future of the Oracle system is also something we could ask him about.

Pierre recently attended the Syllabus conference, where he heard a talk by Birks Oakley on 'credit banking' (collecting academic credits from various universities and building a degree program around it). The handout for the talks is available from Pierre if you e-mail him.

It has been suggested that the Chair contact the new USG president and request undergraduate representatives that will make a commitment to attend regularly and contribute to the discussions.

The next meeting will be Monday, May 8 at 8:30 in the Library Dean's Conference Room.