UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
January 17, 2006
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: PHILIP TURNER, PAUL HONS (for JUDITH ADKISON), PATRICK PLUSCHT, JENNIFER LAFLEUR (for GUILLERMO OYARCE), TIM CHRISTIAN, CHUCK FULLER, JONEEL HARRIS, LOU ANN BRADLEY, JIM CURRY, TOBYE RAE NELSON
NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: MAURICE LEATHERBURY, JAMES STRAWN, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary)
MEMBERS ABSENT: JOE ADAMO, MARGARET AMBUEHL, RAMU MUTHIAH, ROBERT NIMOCKS, MAX KAZEMZADEH, UWE ROSSBACH, CENGIZ CAPAN, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, JOHN HOOPER, BRUCE HUNTER, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER, DON GROSE, RAY BANKS, JON NELSON, ABRAHAM JOHN, DOUG MAINS, BOBBY CARTER
Because there was not a quorum present, the minutes of the December 20, 2005 meeting were not approved.
The Chair reported that there has not been an IR Steering Committee meeting but one is scheduled for Friday, January 20th.
Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that the group has not met since the last IRC meeting, but plans to meet on Friday, January 20th.
Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that the group has not met; however, a group of CDL representatives met with the learning enhancement grant recipients in a retreat to orient them to the process, to CDL’s services, and to get their accounts set up.
Lou Ann Bradley reported for the Communications Planning Group that the group has not met.
Joneel Harris reported for the EIS Planning Group that at a meeting on Thursday, January 12, Robert Jones demonstrated a product that has been developed using the Cognos business intelligence tools to make the account balance reports more user friendly. The new reports will have drill-down capabilities. They will distribute the new reporting tool to the 20 people who were involved in the development and let them test it before rolling it out to the rest of the campus. Joneel also reported that Catherine Gonzalez has reported that she is successfully using WebCT to incorporate the existing online documentation to develop courses for EIS training. The courses are helpful not only for new users of EIS but as refresher courses for existing users. In addition, the Planning Group is proceeding with the initiative of talking with vendors, related to the CRM modules, to replace the advance recruitment functionality and initiate new advance recruitment functionality, particularly in the areas of graduate and international admissions to make better use of the electronic means of communicating with students through the internet and through email. We have obtained a revised list of the software upgrade and maintenance schedules and that will be very important when many of the group attend the Aliance Users Group meeting to be held in March. This is also important in planning upgrades to the PeopleSoft software in talking about what can be accomplished around those upgrades in the next several years.
Tim Christian reported for the Standards & Policy Planning Group that the group has not met and asked for input of any new issues they should consider at their February meeting.
Dr. Turner reported that this is the last semester for the use of the Campus Edition of WebCT; as of May 31st no courses will be on that version. During the break they installed the Vista Service Pack 5 and will now begin to test 6. There were problems in the upload of Campus edition courses for the spring but someone is working on that now.
Dr. Turner also reported on the QEP (Quality Enhancement Plan), which is the accreditation effort by UNT in the redesign of its large enrollment undergraduate classes. For the five classes that have been identified, Dr. LaBrecque is putting together a proposal from all of the different groups and the IRC will have a draft of that proposal by next month’s meeting.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:15 pm.