IRC News Minutes provided by Sue Ellen Richey, Recording Secretary

IRC Regular Voting Members: Ginny Anderson, Fiscal Affairs; Donna Asher, Administrative Affairs; Walter Bowen, Academic Administration; Bill Buntain, Communications Program Group; Sue Byron, Faculty Senate; Carolyn Cunningham, Student Affairs; Don Grose, Libraries; Jenny Jopling, Instruction Program Group; Joneel Harris, Administrative Program Group; Allen Livingston,Graduate Student Council; Dennis Mueller, Research Program Group (on Sabbatical); Ramu Muthiah, School of Community Services; Jon Nelson, College of Music and Standards & Cooperation Program Group; Robert Nimocks, Director, Information Technology,UNTHSC; Steve Oeffner, UNT Health Science Center Russ Pensyl , School of Visual Arts; Patrick Pluscht, Distributed Learning Team; Jim Poirot College of Education; Mark Rorvig, Research Program Group (acting for Dennis Mueller who is on Sabbatical); Kathleen Swigger, College of Arts and Sciences; Neal Tate, University Planning Council; Philip Turner, Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs for Distance Education and Dean of the School of Library and Information Resources (Chair, IRC);; Virginia Wheeless, Chancellor; John Windsor, College of Business. IRC Ex-officio Nonvoting Members: Leslie Bowden, Telecommunications; Wil Clark, GALMAC; Jim Curry, Microcomputer Maintenance Shop; Michael Forster, UNT Health Science Center; Richard Harris, Computing Center; Coy Hoggard, Computing Center; Maurice Leatherbury, Computing Center; Sue Ellen Richey, Computing Center (Recording Secretary). [As of 1/99]

April 20, 1999

Distributed Computing Support Management Team

Maurice Leatherbury reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that it has been involved in two issues in its most recent meetings:

1. a study of position descriptions of computing support staff at UNT to insure that people with appropriate qualifications are hired to fill the available positions;
   
   
2. the Dell Laptop purchase and support program has been re-evaluated following its first year of operation.

One hundred twenty laptops have been sold by Microcomputer Maintenance Shop with resulting problems of breakage due to negligence or carelessness by the users, as well as lack of knowledge or training as to the operation of the laptops. Jim Curry has suggested that, since Dell will not repair machines that are broken due to negligence; if MMS repairs them, the repair cost will be passed through to the user department.

Neal Tate raised a question about the repair of the laptops, inferring that if MMS plans to repair the laptops, they should add a certain percentage to the purchase price to cover repairs of any kind. It is understood that laptops are more likely to be broken than desktop computers, since they are carried around. Neal cautioned that if departments think that they will have to pay for repairs of laptops, then they will hesitate to use them, for fear of breaking them. Neal agreed that users of laptops should use caution when carrying them around; however, when one is broken, MMS should treat the repair just like they handle repairs of desktop machines. The Chair asked that Maurice bring this issue to the attention of the DCSMT.

Instruction Program Group

Jenny Jopling reported for the Instruction Program Group that they have been discussing the issue of General Access Lab computers having necessary instructional software installed on them. The committee is documenting what software is needed in the labs and will present the information to the General Access Lab Committee. They are also discussing the possibility of making a headphone jack more accessible on GAL computers, the cost of which would be $10.00 per machine. The committee is also discussing the popularity of E-Book Readers and the possibility of UNT adopting a standard device.

Year 2000 and the Administrative Program Group

Joneel Harris reported for Year 2000 as well as the Administrative Program Group. The APG has been focusing on Y2K testing in the new Administrative computing environment with all the latest software releases loaded in the LPAR created for testing. They have actually repeated the testing that was conducted prior to the Christmas break. She reported that everything is going very well, although there are some batch reports still to be tested in the area of Payroll and Personnel. There are also some large batch jobs in the student area to be tested. Joneel also reported that a purchase order has been issued to UNT’s current voice response system vendor for an upgrade to that system which will make it Y2K compliant. The program group has also been discussing the need for web development strategies in an effort to expedite the development of more web applications in all areas. A grant has been applied for that could provide funding for web development.

Research Program Group

Mark Rorvig reported that Dennis Mueller officially resigned as Chair of the Research Program Group. The members of the group will meet soon to elect a new chair.

Standards & Cooperation Program Group

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Standards & Cooperation Program Group that they have begun preparation of a report which will show what uses faculty and staff are making of their computers. This information will allow the committee to develop a list of supported processes showing what hardware and software is recommended for those processes.

Distributed Learning Team

Patrick Pluscht reported that the Distributed Learning Team meets every Thursday. Their recent discussions have been about copyrights and intellectual property rights. They have been working with Leslie Bowden in Telecommunications regarding an increase in ISDN rates. The Teaching with Technology Grants have been awarded. Maurice Leatherbury reported that 19 or 20 grants were awarded in the amount of $99,995.00 Patrick added that 17 of them had multi-media components written in them.

TIF Grant Request

Maurice Leatherbury reported that the TIF grant was sent out on Friday, April 16^th. The amount requested was $l,459,093; which was requested for upgrades of the Libraries’ server machines, including their on-line catalog, CD ROM servers, plus adding some software to provide universal client access for the library catalog. In addition, data communications switches for the campus backbone upgrade were included; a new switch for video conferencing; a multipoint control unit which will allow connection of 8 simultaneous video sites, and 2 or 3 new video-conferencing rooms; some equipment in the Center for Distributed Learning for the production of multi-media content; seven high-end workstations and other production machines plus an upgrade to the College of Music’s multimedia production machine.

Alliance for Higher Education Meeting

Maurice Leatherbury also reported that last Wednesday, Bill Buntain, Patrick Pluscht and he went to a meeting called by the Alliance for Higher Education, in Los Colinas, because AHE is interested in setting up a connection to a GigaPOP in the Dallas region for Internet II connectivity. The grant proposal that Dr. Rorvig submitted stated that UNT would connect to a GigaPOP but exactly where was uncertain. Quite a number of universities in the Dallas area were represented at the meeting, as well as representatives from Alcatel and Nortel, who are corporate members of Internet II. UNT has not identified the funding to connect to Internet II, but they want to continue to work with AHE to see what will be needed to accomplish the link to the new network. The Alliance wants to explore the possibility of joining together to establish a Dallas GigaPOP. The Alliance has a fiber spine that connects TCU, UT Arlington, UT Southwestern and UT Dallas so these schools would not have to pay for T3 lines to connect to the GigaPOP. UNT would have to pay to connect, possibly $150,000 to $200,000 a year. SMU was granted one of the NSF grants and will be connecting to the Internet backbone in June. A committee member from UNT will be appointed to work with the Alliance task force to find out what is needed to join in their effort. Bill Buntain clarified that Qwest already has a GigaPOP in Dallas and AHE is trying to allow universities to join under the auspices of AHE. Buntain also indicated that his group is investigating less expensive ways to get a circuit to Dallas.

Maurice added that AHE is gathering bids from various service providers to get the commodity backbone and UNT’s technical plan would be for UNT to get 45mb from here to the spine and then split off the Internet II traffic to that backbone of network and thereby have a faster connection to the Internet. There are still a lot of questions about how to do that.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:40 p.m.