The minutes of the March 8, 2005, and the April 19, 2005, meetings were approved as distributed.

The Chair introduced Ray Banks, who is the new representative from the Student Government Association.

Distributed Computing Support Management Team**  

Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that the committee met on May 6 and discussed protection of sensitive data stored on desktop pc hard disks and on laptops.  Charlotte Russell proposed that a policy be developed regarding safe storage of data.  At that same meeting, representatives from Hewlett Packard provided an overview of their documentation management hardware & software.  Maurice Leatherbury added that in view of recent incidents of theft of or loss of laptop computers that had sensitive data on them (such as social security numbers, and personnel records), it is essential that great care be taken regarding the protection of data on laptop computers, as well as desktop pc’s.  It is important that users be discouraged from storing this kind of sensitive information on laptop computers.  Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner added that there are good courses available in the SkillSoft and KnowledgeNet courseware offerings that deal specifically with security and encryption.  These resources are consistently mentioned in Benchmarks Online articles.  https://cbt.acs.unt.edu/logon.htm is the URL where one can access these resources, with the use of an EUID and password.  Dr. Turner suggested a link to these resources from e-Campus. 

Learning Enhancement Planning Group 

Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that they did not meet in April but plan to meet on May 26^th.  He has invited a company named Turning Point to join the group for a demonstration of their student response systems.  They are still forming the review committee for the online teaching award nominations.

EIS Planning Group 

Joneel Harris reported for the EIS Planning Group that at the first of two EIS Users’ Group meetings the members discussed what was learned at the recent Higher Education Users’ Group conference, and the timing for Oracle’s 8.9 release of PeopleSoft  and eventual transition to Version 9.0.  The 8.9 release will be a first step toward separation of the Human Resources database from the Student/Contributor Relations database.  At the second meeting they discussed data warehousing infrastructure and its various stages.  Joneel distributed a document that outlines these stages.  At that meeting, HSC presented a demonstration of their datamarts which they have begun to develop.  Human Resources is now distributing their reports by the Cypress reporting product.  The campus will begin to see more and more reports being generated by EIS.   Joneel mentioned that this Summer the registration will be for one single session, rather than two, but courses will end at various times during that larger session.  They anticipate some issues will arise as a result of this.  Joneel also mentioned that Cengiz Capan and the College of Business have been participating in a pilot project to test a software product that would pull data from the data warehouse and allow manipulation of it.

Disaster Recovery 

Coy Hoggard added that Disaster Recovery is being worked on; at the present time CITC is duplicating servers as they can. Maurice Leatherbury estimated that in the event of a disaster in the GAB, it would take a minimum of several hours to get back into production, and he added that CITC plans to purchase a duplicate storage system and perhaps duplicate tape backup system for the Research Park when the budget will allow.

Student Computing Planning Group 

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that all of the General Access Labs are ready for Freshman Registration.  All the labs now have P-counter and the universal settings that will immediately go into effect on lab printers are: (1) no more than 20 sheets printed at a time; (2) no multiple copies of documents and (3) no duplicates.  Another issue being discussed is the possibility of re-directing large print jobs to a central printer rather than tying up the lab printer while students needing to print only one or two pages are waiting.  It appears that the P-counter tool will be very useful to the labs.

Distributed Learning Team 

Dr. Turner reported that the Vista migration has started again; the new load balancer will go in this month and in August service pack 4 will be installed.  Tom McElwee, CITC’s Director of Enterprise Systems Technical Services, set up a conference call with WebCT to discuss how they do testing . There has been discussion about setting up a test center at UNT to test new releases and service packs before actually implementing them, in an effort to minimize problems.  A pilot project is going to be set up this summer that will allow students or faculty to upload photos into a database and install a program whereby anyone can click on an icon and pull up a student’s photo.  This has been requested by a number of faculty. 

There was some discussion about the schedule of final exams, and there having been some conflicts between exams scheduled for on-campus classes and on-line classes.  Joneel Harris noted that there are some real issues concerning the scheduling of classroom use that they will have to find solutions for.  She said that Lynn McCreary plans to discuss the scheduling problems with the Associate Deans.  Dr. Turner said he would get in touch with Lynn to be sure that the DLT is involved in the solution of the scheduling problem.

Wide Area Network 

Joe Adamo, CITC Director of Communications, reported that they have installed additional capacity within the wide area network which will provide redundancy.  They have installed a network connection between the Research Park and the Health Science Center in Ft. Worth.  This establishes a “ring” topology so that if a link is lost it will allow the re-routing of network traffic around the link and through to this connection.  The next step is to upgrade the link from main campus to Dallas, and to that end a fiber splice is being conducted this afternoon.  Within 60-90 days that additional capacity should be ready for utilization.  In response to a question from Joneel Harris, Joe explained that the wiring between main campus and Research Park is all above ground, which is still susceptible to damage by severe storms.  Joe explained that they are working with Verizon to try and get some underground fiber strung between main campus and the Research Park.  Joe added that CITC is continually working to improve the capacity and reliability of the wide area network.      

In response to a question from Patrick Pluscht, Joe Adamo explained that the connection between main campus and Research Park is running at least on 1GB of capacity.  From Research Park to HSC there is 1Gb; from HSC to Dallas campus there is an OC3 which provides 155Mb capacity; between Richardson and main campus there are 2 DS3s which provide 45Mb each.  Joe expressed the hope that by Fall there will be 1Gb total connectivity in the ring.

The meeting adjourned at 3:00 pm.  

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

**DCSMT Minutes can be found here.

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