UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY COMMITTTEE
MEETING MINUTES
February 10, 2000
I. Update on Statewide Initiatives
Ohio Supercomputer Center
Dr. Charlie Bender is the Executive Director of the Ohio
Supercomputer Center in Columbus, Ohio. The OSC was
established approximately twelve years ago as a shared
resource for higher education in the State of Ohio to
provide high performance computing primarily for science and
engineering support. At the present time, over 500,000
students are connected to the Internet via the OSC network.
The OSC provides the infrastructure and support tools to
enable faculty to input information on the network.
Several of the active projects currently underway are Ohio
Learning Network, Ohio State University Hospital
administrative systems, OhioLink, a joint project with
Silicon Graphics on storage dispersal of multimedia, and
many public service programs. A conference to discuss
applications and technologies present and future will be
held in Columbus, Ohio, June 13 - 15. For further
information on areas of support by OSC, visit their website:
www.osc.edu.
II. Faculty Computing Initiative - Paul Hernandez
After receiving and reviewing a request for increased
spending for better MacIntoshes, the Provost has decided to
stay with the original proposal to fund 50% of new purchases
up to $750 per machine. However, it was re-emphasized that
the colleges and departments are not limited to spending
only $1,500 per computer.
Larry Fox, CaTS, gave a brief explanation on the disposition
of the RFP for PCs. At this time, a review of four vendor
proposals are being evaluated and a decision will be made by
February 25.
III. Center for Teaching and Learning Update - Dan DeStephen
CTL is working with the Registrar's Office to align faculty
equipment needs with assignment of electronic classrooms and
to create a policy statement on how classrooms will be
allocated to colleges, departments and faculty. The
Registrar will present the final policy to the UTC members
when it becomes available.
CTL is continuing to move towards implementation of WebCT
and discontinuing Top Class. CTL will support Top Class
through Spring Quarter and is presently designing a training
course on WebCT for faculty to be implemented the end of
Spring Quarter. Faculty presently using Top Class will also
be receiving training for the transition to WebCT. The goal
of CTL is to have WebCT completely up and running by Fall
Quarter, 2000.
IV. CaTS Updates
1) Some of the modem lines being used by students are having
problems receiving constant busy signals. This appears to
be an Ameritech problem and should be resolved very quickly.
2) CaTS policy has always been not to block any Internet
sites; however, last week a site entitled "Napster" was
found to be a site which shares music. When a user downloads
music from this site, it unknowingly enables the user's
system to become a server, which, turn, uses large amounts
of University bandwidth. Therefore, CaTS has put a block
on this particular site.
3) Terry Anderson gave an update on current projects being
performed by CaTS Information Systems staff.
- Raider On-line Express (ROX) is a collection of services
which will permit users to access authorized University
records and academic processes.. Phase I of this project
will deliver a few basic services that provide students
access to various portions of their records and will be
deployed by end of March-early April; Phase II will
include registration and fee assessment and will be deployed
by Winter Quarter, 2001; and possibly a Phase III which
would allow students to customize their own websites and the
university to target correspondence based on student record
characteristics and preferences.
- Academic Data Warehouse - Around mid-2000, several common
academic reports will be made available to authorized
individuals in their Faculty/Staff Services menu. This
collection of reports will continue to grow to meet the
common and basic needs of the academic community's reporting
needs.
- Workflow Project - This project is scheduled to deliver
four Web-based electronic forms (1100, 1200, Budget Transfer
and the Personnel Action Form) to faculty and staff
throughout 2000.
- Budget Planning and Control system - This will replace
current mainframe budgeting system. It will be designed to
support a much more distributed process for maintaining
departmental budgets.
V. Other Business
Bonnie Mathies submitted a memo to the UTC asking the
members to endorse a request to purchase a T1 line to
connect the University's master control in the TV Center to
the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) in Columbus,
Ohio (see Attachment). Paul Hernandez made a motion to
request the Provost's office provide the funding for this
purchase. The motion to endorse the request was passed by a
unanimous vote and will be forwarded to the Provost.
VI. Future Meetings
Thursday, March 9
Doug Gale, Director of OARnet, will
continue Dr. Bender's discussion on statewide initiatives.
Dr. Bruce Berra will discuss projects underway at the
Information Technology Research Institute. THIS MEETING
WILL BE HELD IN STUDENT UNION E156A & B.
Thursday, April 13
College Technology Plan Updates
Update on Nursing On-line Program
Thursday, May 11
Mitch Wolff will give update on Internet
2 research project
Meeting will be in College of Nursing, 109 University Hall
Future meeting sites
Office of Disability Services
College of Education and Human Services
Future agenda items
Presentations by Internet 2 researchers
Presentation on Ohio Link project
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