IRC News Minutes provided by Sue Ellen Richey, Recording Secretary

April 20, 2004

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

The minutes of the March 9, 2004, meeting were approved as distributed.

The Chair proposed the merging of the Instruction Planning Group with the Distributed Learning Team in view of Jenny Jopling’s resignation. The IPG had not been charged with any new projects for quite some time, and its interests and the interests of the Distributed Learning Team are somewhat parallel, so it seemed a logical merger. This proposal will be voted on at the May meeting.

Communications Planning Group, EIS Project 

Lou Ann Bradley reported for the Communications Planning Group that at their recent meeting they were given an update on the LEARN network and also discussed everything that is going on regarding communications on campus, particularly wireless. They also discussed the Network Connections Policy that is being brought before the Board of Regents for approval at their next meeting. Lou Ann pointed out that this committee does not have a particular charge at this time. 

Joneel added that there are now two out of four student administration modules in production at UNT and all four are operational at HSC. HSC has been registering students, with 14 students successfully registered so far. They have turned up a few problems with security where a student is also an employee, as well as a firewall issue where students coming in from outside have gotten past LDAP Logon screen and into the portal where they experienced problems at certain application pages, and they are working on the problem. 

Joneel announced that the Student Records and Student Finance Modules will go live on April 30th at UNT.  She also recognized Kenn Moffitt for his work with the EIS project technical folks  in getting the portal up before the Financial Aid GoLive. She said that new students who have been accepted for the Fall semester have been sent their EUIDs and PINs so they can access their admission and financial aid status information on the web. It is expected that continuing students will be sent formation about accessing the portal by the end of May. 

In addition, Joneel said they are preparing for testing using Mercury Interactive do some EIS load-testing in the latter part of May and early June.

They have been working with Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner on issues related to some students having ID cards with EMPL IDs and others with Social Security numbers. Admittedly this will create some confusion, but they are working on solutions. 

Joneel stated that she would be sending out an official notice of a business practice change soon, to let academic units know that the processing of departmental scholarships  will be handled by the Student Financial Aid and Scholarship Office for Fall of 2004 rather than by the Student Accounting and University Cashiering Service office, as it has been.

EIS Planning Group 

Joneel Harris reported for the EIS Planning Group that the pilot project for the Finance Application, E-Procurement System, has gone very well.  She said that making the account balances viewable has been more difficult.  She stated that the timekeepers are still struggling in the larger departments, but efforts are being made to alleviate the struggle.

Regarding Contributor Relations, Joneel stated that this has become a renewed priority for HSC due to some staffing changes that have occurred.  Amy McNabb has been chosen to be the new Product Head for UNT’s Contributor Relations, and they hope to make more progress now.

Standards & Policy Planning Group

Kenn Moffitt reported for the Standards & Policy Planning Group that they are still working on their charges.

Research Planning Group 

Maurice Leatherbury reported for the Research Planning Group that he has been working with faculty members to propose the addition of a staff member to support research needs in Academic Computing.  Dr. Chestnut in Research & Technology Transfer has agreed to fund half of a position, with CITC funding the other half, and the position request is being reviewed by the budget committee.

Student Computing Planning Group 

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that she has the results of the Student Survey and is preparing a report for the different areas.  She remarked that the general feelings expressed by students who completed the survey were positive.

Richard Harris interjected a comment to let Elizabeth know that he had received a compliment from the Student Government Association for Elizabeth’s assistance in helping to get the SGA election publicized on the General Access Lab computer desktops.

Distributed Learning Team 

Patrick Pluscht reported for the Distributed Learning Team that they met on Thursday to discuss the WebCT –Vista conversion. They have hired a five-member team to help with the migration and conversion in an attempt to make it easier for faculty to migrate their courseware to the new version. WebCT Vista 3.0 was made available last Thursday and Austin Laird will be setting it up in a test environment for faculty by May 31^st with an eye toward having it up and running for Summer II or Fall of 2004.  All courses will be converted by Spring of 2005. Patrick noted that CITC has a CSMI position posted, which will be for the purpose of helping with the support of WebCT Vista.

Patrick announced that the Texas Distance Learning Association’s Annual Conference was held on March 29 – April 1 in Galveston and was attended by 686 persons.  For the second time, Patrick received an award for Individual Commitment.  In addition, UNT e-Campus is now 70% populated for courses through May-mester, Summer I, II and Fall.  They continue to work at getting it to 100%. The e-Campus group plans to have a representative at the UNT Services Fair and in attendance at all of the Freshman Orientation sessions. He offered e-Campus T-shirts and Sunglasses clips to IRC members today as they leave the meeting.

Dr. Turner added that there will be an Ice Cream Social for faculty who have entered their information in E-campus, in ISB 201 on April 28th.

Patrick Pluscht also announced the showing of a PBS satellite down-link program on ADA Compliance dealing with accessibility issues and course development on Thursday, April 22, from 1:30-3:00 p.m. in Chilton Hall, Room 245.

Paul Hons reported that faculty were having some problems using Web Dev on Vista. Maurice Leatherbury said he would look into that and follow up with Paul.

Graduate Student Council

Erum Shaikh stated that the Graduate Student Council has a concern about general access labs being so full towards the end of each semester that graduate students could not get in to do their research. Dr. Turner replied that there is a Graduate Student lab, for exclusive use by graduate students, in ISB 203. She also asked if it would be possible to offer Microsoft Office XP at the Campus Agreement price for TAs and TFs. Maurice Leatherbury replied that the cost to add a student component to the agreement would be prohibitive. 

Electronic Theses and Dissertation Processing

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner announced that Academic Computing Services will be taking over the processing and serving of electronic theses and dissertations by putting the documents on-line and making them accessible as students wish.  In connection with that, Elizabeth is developing a short course geared to graduate students on how to digitize documents and how to make pdf files, for digital storage.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.

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