DRAFT

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

OCTOBER 1, 1999

9:30 AM to 11:00 A.M.

Present: Gary Anderson, Jan I. Fox, Don Combs, Layton Cottrill, Sarah Denman, Arnold Miller, Brian Morgan, Dennis Prisk, Mike Simmons, Terry Tomblin, Karan McComas, Gary Weis.

Arnold Miller: Gave a demonstration of the new video conferencing to South Charleston with the new ATM link. It uses the IP Network directly and is its own Web server. It is running on the same technology when you run Microsoft NetMeeting on your desktop. We have purchased 5 of these particular units. The connection today was to Mike Murphy’s office, but will be moved to a different site. Have not decided where that location will be. Several people were in Mike’s office to demonstrate this new technology. The South Charleston people introduced themselves and everyone was pleased with the results of how this video conferencing worked. The connection was then turned off and the meeting at Marshall campus continued.

Sarah Denman: Question: In Beckly there is an interactive classroom on the second floor and right across is a general-purpose classroom. Could we use this in the general-purpose classroom at the same time we are using the interactive classroom? Arnold responded. To play at this quality 768, we could not use both rooms at the same time, but if we ran at half speed 384 then it would be possible to have two conferences coming at the lower speed. The T1 speed is 1.54 mega bits which is half of that so as soon as you have two of them going you have no data access going out of that building if you have a single T1 in there. More money is involved for more bandwidth.

Year 2000 Update – Arnold Miller: Have been filling out and responding to surveys from different sources, especially from the Department of Education. First survey got very little return so they hired a firm to call everyone to answer their questions. I say this in good faith that we are approaching 95% completion on all our critical systems that I am aware that computing services run and that we have some involvement in. The remaining obstruction for me to respond 100% is fundamentally the conversion to the H-R System. There is a still problem with the machine it is running on, and the software itself is old. That is why we are pushing to get the new Banner HR on line to get that completed. Way we would do payroll is to run on our local system and transfer that data to the Ethic system. There is a delay in getting the Ethic system for payroll to run. They are still working on that.

On the student side, one piece of the MILO system is reported to have a Y2K problem. The parts are here. It is just a matter of scheduling. Do we try to do it before pre-registration, wait until grades are out to give us the test, or wait until after the New Year? Our plan is that grades will give us the test and won’t be quite the impact of not being able to register.

Desktop: Information for everybody on campus on what they need to do to test their computer can be found on the Y2K Readiness Page at www.marshall.edu/computing/Y2k/ There are basically 4 compliancy checks to be performed.

Systems Management Server (SMS) is one feature we are proud of that Bryan Morgan put in here for us. It has a component on your PC on the network that allows us to inventory the machine. We can bring up your screen and watch the process to diagnose and fix problems. If you are having trouble it allows us to get on the telephone with you and we can get into your computer and watch what you are doing. We only do this if we are invited to go there and you can refuse us. The same privacy criteria will be used with a limited number of people who are allowed to do this.

Contengency Plan for Y2K. Need to create a group. What if electricity doesn’t work; what if we can’t get food shipped in, what if there is a basketball game and lots of people on campus, etc. Jan Fox has a group that is working on that now.

Banner Committee: Terry Tomblin: The HR side of Banner is moving forward. A lot of data entered. Working overtime to run payroll November 16^th. This will be done on the new state system. Banner side will be ready by the end of the year. Jan Fox financed $4,000.00 for data entry help. On the finance side July reports are out. There will be more training in October. Rolling out Web for Faculty piece today. Instructions will go out on Monday.

E-Course Policy – Don Combs: Last Spring we made a presentation to the Committee and it was voted on and approved for certain changes. Dr. Gilley signed off and approved those changes.

Course Completion TimeTable. Instead of 1 year to complete will be 1 semester to complete. Students will be given I grade if not finished in that time. Sarah Denman discussed how one professor who was gone for 3 weeks out of the 5 weeks a student was taking the course and they had to complete in a week all the exams. There are three semesters – Fall, Spring and summer. Everyone agreed that Faculty must be available throughout the term they are teaching.

Authentication: Bullet format for easier reading.

Student Accounts: Terry Tomblin said the current policy is in place pertaining to forwarding hobbit accounts for e-mail. On the MU Online page you get your account through Marshall. When a student has been fully admitted, and is registered for Marshall University classes, a MUNet account is established detailing that student’s username and passowrk for accessing Marshall University networked computers.

E-Mail Policy: Gary Weis: Took policies from several universities, rewrote the 20 pages and condensed to 4 pages. Sent these to several people for review and there were very few changes. The group made the following recommendations.

#5 – Under Postmaster should be MU Postmaster. You can back up where term used first and qualify at that point to say here and after to refer to Postmaster as MU Postmaster.

#9 – Last paragraph take out the word serious.

#4 – Unauthorized Mass Mailing. Define verbiage Use and Abuse Policy and could even make a link to that Policy.

Arnold discussed the purging of e-mail for space.

It was decided to hold the vote until next meeting.

Information Strategic Planning: Jan I. Fox: The Strategic Planning Document from the Strategic Technology Planning Committee consists of 11 Goals. At this month’s meeting all will be finalized and we will have a whole real planning document for the entire campus on line. This committee will be looking at this document.

Dr. Dennis Prisk has returned to the faculty but will remain a member of the committee. A chair needs to be elected to succeed Dr. Prisk, who had served as chair. Layton Cottrill moved that Jan I. Fox be named Chair of the ITC Committee. It was second and motion carried.

Sarah Denman suggested that Don Combs be a part of the committee. It was approved.

Next meeting will be November 5, 1999 in the Drinko Conference Room 426 from 9:30 to 11:00 AM.

Juanita/ITCMinutes 10-99