UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: PHILIP TURNER, Chair, JUDITH ADKISON, PHILIP BACZEWSKI (for ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER), COY HOGGARD (for JONEEL HARRIS), PAM HIGHT (for DON GROSE), JON NELSON, WIL CLARK (for JOHN PRICE), ROBERT NIMOCKS, PATRICK PLUSCHT, MICHELLE AMORUSO (for DONNA ASHER), LOU ANN BRADLEY, JIM CURRY, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER
NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: RICHARD HARRIS, JOE ADAMO, MAURICE LEATHERBURY, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary)
MEMBERS ABSENT: JUDY HUNTER, CRAIG BERRY, VIRGINIA WHEELESS, JENNY JOPLING, KENN MOFFITT, CAROLYN WHITLOCK, DUNCAN ENGLER, CENGIZ CAPAN, DOUG MAINS, TOM JACOB, ARMIN MIKLER, BOBBY CARTER, ABRAHAM JOHN, RAMU MUTHIAH
Lou Ann Bradley moved for approval of the minutes of the April 15, 2003 meeting; Jon Nelson seconded and the minutes were approved as distributed.
The Chair reported that the IR Steering Committee approved the Web Accessibility Policy at their recent meeting, and he commended Kenn Moffitt for his presentation at that meeting.
Maurice Leatherbury reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that at their recent meeting they continued their discussion of desktop back-up alternatives. The committee also discussed the development of a retention schedule for electronic records, including GroupWise email. In addition, Maurice reported that Dell is making every effort to be competitive with Hewlett-Packard in providing UNT with servers, and although H-P has a new program which will give UNT even deeper discounts, Dell is planning to make a new pricing proposal to try and beat that.
The Chair noted that Dell has a workstation deal on their website for faculty and students in which they offer a 10% discount plus commercial level support.
The Chair announced that a new UNT committee called Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Policy Committee has requested that a member of the Information Resources Council be elected to serve on it. Philip Baczewski nominated Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner for that position, Jon Nelson seconded, and the council elected Elizabeth by acclamation.
There was no report from the Instruction Planning Group since they had not met.
Lou Ann Bradley reported for the Communications Planning Group that they continue to work on a revision of the policy on Addition of Devices to the UNT network.
Coy Hoggard reported for the EIS Planning Group that everyone was working very hard and that things were going well and on schedule. Plans are to begin using the centralized purchasing application in July, not by distributed areas, but by the Purchasing Dept. staff at first. The General Ledger system will be live by September 1, 2003, as well as Admissions and Development, with Payroll and Personnel systems going live in January of 2004. Coy stated that Joneel Harris is doing a series of overview presentations in the coming weeks and all of the sessions are full; however, additional sessions will be scheduled and their times announced later. Coy pointed out that those interested can go to the EIS website at www.unt.edu/eis where there is a navigation tutorial under Presentations.
Maurice Leatherbury reported for the Research Planning Group that they have met and have come to the conclusion that there are no pressing items to recommend to the council. There was discussion of the Storage Area Network (SAN) and plans were made to conduct a trial connection of an academic department (Library & Information Sciences) to the SAN in the Computing & Information Technology Center.
Maurice Leatherbury reported for the Standards & Policy Planning Group that they met to discuss GroupWise "Everyone" message guidelines and plan to continue that discussion at their next meeting.
Philip Baczewski reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that they are continuing the development of questions for the Student Computing Survey which will be conducted in the Fall.
Patrick Pluscht reported for the Distributed Learning Team that a new release of WebCT called VISTA will be out shortly though an official release date has not yet been announced. The committee is planning a migration path to the new version, making plans for CDL staff to be trained, and planning pilot courses in the Fall, with a roll-out of the new product in Spring 2004. The current WebCT version would be concurrently supported until Fall 2004 with a cutover date in Spring 2005. Patrick stated that a considerable effort will have to be put into the conversion of current versions of courses into Vista. The new version is supported by the same Oracle database software as the EIS project software, will do load-balancing, and has other capabilities as well. Patrick reported that the streaming media server has been upgraded and plans are to have a redundant system up and running by the end of the summer. Also, Patrick has been consulted about putting some new video conference rooms at Research Park when funding becomes available.
Patrick announced that Don Foshee, Founding President of the Texas Distance Learning Association, passed away May 13th of natural causes. He had been the keynote speaker at many conferences including the TxDLA annual conference hosted in Ft. Worth last year. Patrick stated that he was key to the formation of the Texas Distance Learning Association, and was a member of the Hall of Fame of the United States Distance Learning Association.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:30 p.m.