INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL
Minutes
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Voting members present: Judith Adkison, Joel Arredondo, Lou Ann Bradley, Warren Burggren (Chair), Jim Byford, Cengiz Capan, Tim Christian, Katy Gallahan, Noreen Goggin, Jane Himmel, Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner, Lynn McCreary for Troy Johnson, Frances May, William Moen, Ramu Muthiah, Patrick Pluscht, Joey Saxon, and Zheng Xiang
Non-voting members present: Philip Baczewski, John Hooper, Maurice Leatherbury, Susan Richroath, Charlotte Russell, and Jackie Thames
Members absent: Joe Adamo, Jim Curry, Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Renee Drabier, Yunfei Du, Kevin Eades, Don Grose, Bruce Hunter, Melissa Jackson Abraham John, Jon Nelson, John Price, Will Senn, and Phillip Turner
Guest: Rich Anderson, CITC Information Security
The minutes of the previous ITC meeting, January 20, 2009, were approved with no recommended corrections.
Warren Burggren introduced Katy Gallahan, Computer Systems and Network Manager from the President’s Office, as the newest member to the Council.
Warren Burggren proposed a bi-monthly meeting schedule for the ITC. The delay of two months in voting situations was discussed. Electronic voting is an option. The Council will try a bi-monthly schedule with the next meeting set for June 16, 2009. The FY10 schedule will begin in September to avoid a meeting in late December.
Cengiz Capan informed the Council on a product development project that students in Engineering, Communication Design and Journalism were creating called UNT Centralink. The project involves programming and testing iphones to access UNT computer systems. The students were not informed in a timely fashion to attend this meeting but will be invited to a future meeting to provide a presentation of their product.
William Moen discussed an initial proposal submitted by Cathy Hartman and William Moen to Provost Wilkins titled "Managing and Preserving Digital Information at UNT: Planning a Digital Repository Infrastructure to Support Scholarly Work and Scholarly Communication." The repository emphasis will be to collect and preserve scholarly work such as papers and research data. The next step is finalizing the proposal for review. A related issue to the repository is open access. The Provost has been encouraged to join a consortium to promote open access. Warren Burggren addressed issues of concern which the engineering, technology, and science fields have expressed in regard to the open access format. In the near future, Del McDaniel, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences, will be leading discussions on open access, the value of material available, and any other concerns.
Philip Baczewski reported on the high performance computing project. Vish Prasad, VP for Research and Economic Development, established a committee of faculty and staff to recommend details for a $1.3 million upgrade and expansion of centralized high performance computing capabilities to meet the research needs of current and future faculty at UNT. The composed configuration recommended by the committee will meet the requirements for inclusion on the list of top 500 supercomputer sites and will be a major step in publicizing UNT’s research and an important aid in recruiting world-class researchers.
John Hooper reported that the EIS Portal System "myUNT" is being upgraded to an enhanced version of software April 25-27. The upgrade provides major improvements that make portal navigation easier and more intuitive.
John Hooper reported that the EIS student system, which also contains some HR and payroll features, will be upgraded to version 9.0 in November 2009.
John Hooper distributed an outline of the status of the UNT Dallas EIS implementation which was reviewed and discussed.
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner provided an update on the student EagleConnect migration. With the assistance of UCRM, a market campaign was established to entice students to participate in advance. A basket of promotional items was available for viewing. Face to face events such as University Day and Earth Week have helped reach 5,000 students so far.
The next meeting of the ITC is scheduled for June 16, 2009.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:15 pm.
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