IRC News Minutes provided by Sue Ellen Richey, Recording Secretary

February 17, 2004

VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT : PHILIP TURNER, Chair, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, COY HOGGARD (for JONEEL HARRIS), DON GROSE, JUDITH ADKISON, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER, BRUCE HUNTER, RAMU MUTHIAH, LOU ANN BRADLEY, JON NELSON, CHUCK FULLER, WIL CLARK (for JOHN PRICE), ERUM SHAIKH NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: JOE ADAMO, MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PATRICK PLUSCHT, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary) MEMBERS ABSENT: RICHARD HARRIS, ABRAHAM JOHN, SCOTT KREJCI, JENNY JOPLING, KATHY SWIGGER, MAX KAZEMZADEH, CENGIZ CAPAN, KENN MOFFITT, DONNA ASHER, JIM CURRY, ROBERT NIMOCKS, DOUG MAINS, ARMIN MIKLER, BOBBY CARTER

The minutes of the January 20, 2004, meeting were approved as submitted.

IR Steering Committee

The Chair reported that there has been no IR Steering Committee meeting since the last IRC meeting.  However, Richard Rafes has asked for a copy of the GroupWise Email policy and guidelines for review.

Distributed Computing Support Management Team 

Maurice Leatherbury reported that the Distributed Computing Support Management Team (DCSMT) met last Friday, at which time the main topic of discussion was a division of responsibility between CITC and distributed areas for the remediation of security violations. Maurice explained that the first line of support for this type of thing is in the distributed area and the second level of support is in CITC.

New Representative 

The Chair introduced and welcomed a new member of the IRC, Erum Shaikh who is the new Graduate Student Council representative.

Communications Planning Group  

Lou Ann Bradley reported that the Communications Planning Group will meet Thursday, February 19^th.

EIS Planning Group 

Coy Hoggard reported for the EIS Planning Group.  He stated that detail expense reports are now available in Excel spreadsheet format, with payroll data in summary form in those reports. They have discovered that there are certain error conditions in the financial system that can cause a purchase order or invoice to hang up and not get processed. As a remedy for this, queries will have to be written to search for these. Hoggard announced that the E-Procurement training has been scheduled for the first pilot group in the first week of March. In addition, the Student System Go-Live date for the Health Science Center, as well as the Financial Aid  System in Denton is April 1^st.  He noted that continuing students are scheduled to register for the Fall semester using the legacy system; summer registration and enrollment will be on the legacy system also. 

Hoggard explained that they plan to roll dates forward on the PeopleSoft servers to emulate certain dates that are critical during the year, to test automatic functions to be sure they take place as they should.

Research Planning Group 

Maurice Leatherbury reported that since there have been questions about the role and function of the Research Planning Group, he, in conjunction with Armin Mikler, Angela Wilson and Kathy Swigger, have called for a meeting of a group of faculty members. They have asked faculty members who have a heavy need for computational intensive computing research support to state their research needs. It has been determined that their most critical need is for technical support personnel, not hardware or software. To meet this need will require CITC to hire an additional staff person to help with Linux systems. The group that met has agreed to write a white paper to make a case for an additional support person for Linux. In addition, they will ask the Research Office if they want to add some funding for this new position. In response to questions, Maurice explained that they will go back to faculty to find out who specifically needs support with Linux, and that this new position will not provide teaching support.

Standards & Policy Planning Group 

Maurice Leatherbury reported that there has been a request from the current Chair of the committee to find new members and a new chair for the Standards & Policy Planning Group. As a result of a request from Dr. Turner for appointees from various departments, Maurice has been given the names of about 10 faculty/ staff that he will contact to set up a meeting to reorganize this committee.

Student Computing Planning Group

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that they are compiling the raw data from the student survey.  She stated that even though the data is rough right now, her initial observation is that students are pretty happy with what UNT is doing in all areas.

Distributed Learning Team 

Patrick Pluscht reported that the Distributed Learning Team has not met, but he reported that the ground-breaking for e-campus was held, with Chancellor Jackson and Dr. LaBrecque as speakers.  Media coverage included local and regional newspapers and radio, including the Dallas Morning News and KRLD.  Patrick reported that there have been over 28,000 hits to the website.  He reminded the council of an upcoming satellite program on the real cost of on-line courses which will be held Thursday, February 26, 2004, in Chilton Hall, Room 245 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm.

Virus activity on campus 

Maurice Leatherbury announced that the latest virus, bagel.b, has hit UNT, explaining that it grabs a machine and sends spam from it to everyone in the world. Occasionally CITC has to shut down machines, because this kind of thing overloads UNT’s Internet connection. To combat the virus, CITC has facilitated a method of blocking mail going off campus in any way other than through the central mail host.  At the central mail host, mail is filtered to be sure this virus is not going out from UNT.

^* For a list of IRC Regular and Ex-officio Members click here.