Tuesday, June 17, 2008

VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:   PHILIP TURNER, CHAIR, TIM CHRISTIAN, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, CATHY GONZALEZ  (for JOHN HOOPER), JIM BYFORD, LOU ANN BRADLEY, BILL JONES, FRANCES MAY, PATRICK PLUSCHT, WILL SENN, WIL CLARK (for JOHN PRICE), RAMU MUTHIAH, DONNA KEENER NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:   MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary) MEMBERS ABSENT:  JOE ADAMO, JON NELSON, DON GROSE,YUNFEI  DU, BRUCE HUNTER, JUDITH ADKISON, GARY MATTHEWS, NOREEN GOGGIN, CENGIZ CAPAN, SCOTT WINDHAM, RAY BANKS, ABRAHAM JOHN, SEAN-MIKEL FLOWERS GUESTS:  CHARLOTTE RUSSELL

Distributed Computing Support Management Team**

DCSMT met on June 6, 2008.  Krysta Kaye of CITC Data Communications reported that the campus-wide data switch replacement project was approximately half complete with only minor difficulties encountered during the work so far.  DCSMT commended Krysta and her team for the lack of any noticeable outages as the result of the switch replacements.

DCSMT discussed the need for establishing naming conventions for distribution lists in Exchange and for objects in the Active Directory.  It was decided to hold a special meeting to discuss this issue on June 13, 2008.  Also discussed was the issue of EUID assignment for new employees.  Philip Baczewski reported that Maurice Leatherbury (CIO) was working with CITC and HR staff to address this issue.  Richard Sanzone (CITC Helpdesk) reported that a computer account modification service request would be ready on the IT Help Center site by the next week.

DCSMT discussed the ITSM call tracking system which was exclusively in use for about a month as of the meeting. Don McClure (CITC Call Tracking Administration) urged managers to provide him with the names of their support staff who needed to be able to respond to tickets for IT Security.  Chris Strauss commented that he noticed a number of tickets left open as a reference for fixing a problem, even though the incident had been resolved.  He offered to turn on the problem management feature of ITSM for any areas who wished to use it and said it would be available to all once documentation on its use could be created and made available.  Philip Baczewski demonstrated a custom report that managers could use to extract data on their area's ticket activity.

Jason Myre (CITC Messaging) reported that the last set of GroupWise to Exchange mailbox migrations would be happening during the next week (the week of June 9) after which the entire campus would be off of GroupWise. He reminded distributed managers that the GroupWise system was contractually required to be shut down by August 31, 2008, and said that his target to shut off logins to that system was July 11, 2008.

DCSMT held a special meeting on June 13, 2008 to discuss a naming convention for Active Directory objects and groups.  It was decided to use an up-to three-level schema to show the area associate with an object, the type of object, and a name or identifier for the object. Also at that meeting, DNS operation with Active Directory was discussed and despite a few limitations to the current configuration, it was decided to maintain that configuration for now while UNT gains more experience with operating Active Directory.

Learning Enhancement Planning Group 

Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that following the last IRC meeting, the recommendation to renew BlackBoard Vista was taken to the Provost and was approved.  A notice will be sent out campus-wide to let everyone know that BlackBoard Vista has officially been approved for renewal, pending successful contract negotiations.

Patrick announced that another round of learning enhancement grants for faculty who want to develop courses that are on-line or partially on-line will become available, in the amount of $150,000.  The focus of these grants will be “green learning” meaning courses that relieve students of the burden of coming to campus so often.

Patrick also announced that an iTunesU team has met a few times to decide how to implement iTunesU at UNT.  Right now they have looked at the designs of all the sights that are up on iTunesU and narrowed it down to what they think is good design, have given that information to the University Information participants and are expecting them to show them what they’ve come up with thus far, on Friday, June 20th.  There is a group that is developing copyright materials for training faculty on how to deal with all the copyright issues.  Their next step is to pick out categories, and organize the content.

In addition, another  new initiative is to implement a pilot group for clicker technology for student use.  A grant proposal for $10,000 was written and was denied, but the Provost was interested in the proposal and said it should be done.  Patrick  is working on launching a pilot in the Fall.  The goal is to standardize on one type of clicker that will be available in all classrooms.

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner suggested that a category be set up on iTunes for student services.

EIS Planning Group

Cathy Gonzalez reported for the EIS Planning Group that the ImageNow system is in the process of being set up, with consultants on campus for that purpose, and that project  is going very well.  In addition, Financial Aid reporting is now being done out of the data warehouse and there are current reports that can be accessed through the portal.

Standards & Policy Planning Group

Tim Christian reported that the Project Policy and Handbook has been successfully tested by three groups, System Center Dallas, CITC and CAS. 

Student Computing Planning Group 

Elizabeth Hinkle Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that Freshman Orientation starts this week with half-hour presentations on student computing services to students, then a second half-hour presentation to parents.  They have purchased more lanyards and will be handing them out again during this orientation.

IRC, IRSC Policy

Maurice Leatherbury reported that he sent the revised IRC and IRSC policy to Andrew Harris, answered some questions about it, made a few changes and Mr. Harris approved it.  Now the policy goes to the President’s cabinet for final approval.