Joint Meeting with IT Directors Committee

Tracy Heeman
Bob Henshaw
Vicki Kolowitz
Wallace McClendon
Steve Melamut
Iola Peed-Neal

Call to Order
Welcome and Introductions

Chair's Update

Item 1: Discussion: Jim Porto, Future of FITAC. Committee Appointments.

Porto mentioned FITAC's desire to ensure that faculty are in a position to contribute effectively to IT-related policy and initiatives. Judith Wegner will be naming representatives from each school for FITAC. Would like to develop smaller school-based FITACs to serve as conduits between IT/FITAC and faculty/staff. Some schools already have committees. Would like to have in place by fall. Once structure is in place, how will it function? Don't want to impede decision-making process. FITAC looking at convocation-like event for how today's students learn, but just one example of possible topics FITAC may take up. (Di Oblinger's book?) May need additional committee representation on research-related issues.

Item 2: Update:Committee Meetings. Guest faculty: Dave Potenziani.

Committee: Faculty Representatives

CIO Advisory Committee: Jim Porto
Report: None
User Support and Communications: Steve Melamut, Tim McMillian
Report: Beginning with identifying staff concerns, will approach student and faculty next.
Telecommunications: Bill Marzluff, Dave Potenziani
Report: Dave Potenziani. Still very much in infancy. Focus on networks, their availability, performance, support for new applications, etc. Voice over IP is an example of a project that is already getting attention. Will also help inform strategic planning process for IT and University. This committee is in part a response to concerns raised by ITD Committee last year about network reliability, off-campus access to network-based services on campus.
Research Computing: Lee Pedersen (Chem), Donna Gilleskie (Econ), Jennifer Conrad (Kenan-Flagler), Harvey Seim (Marine Sciences), Kirk Wilhelmsen (Neurology & Genetics), and Sarav Arunachalam.
Report:
Security and Institutional Compliance: Jim Porto
Report: None
Teaching, Learning and Academic Computing: Abigail Panter (Psychology), Daniel Anderson (English), Vick Kowlowitz (School of Nursing)
Report: Has not met since last FITAC meeting.
Financial Planning and HR: Wallace Mclendon
Report: HANDOUT. Committee will be considering fee structures, may impact faculty and services.
Report: Has not met since last FITAC meeting.
Enterprise Applications and Data Management: Jim Porto
Report: Trying to get members up to speed on understanding major issues in this area.
ITD Committee: Jim Porto
Report: None

Item 3: Demo. Kathy Thomas will lead a discussion on Corporate Time Calendar Function and its use among faculty and to schedule classrooms.

ITS has put together list of frequently asked questions for faculty, available now through help.unc.edu. Would like feedback from ITD and FITAC on additional questions. More departments are interesting in including rooms and other resources in calendar. SPH is using it now.

Discussion: To what degree can we encourage calendar use among faculty/staff?

Concerns:

• Lack of room utlilization statistics. Joel Dunn will check on options for making this data available.
  
• Some resistance among faculty about making schedules public.
  
• There are no calendar exchange standards, so variety of calendars on campus is a problem.

ITS/ITD would welcome input from FITAC on how to move campus toward common standard:

• Wegner suggests focusing on new faculty/staff orientation, or focus group among different faculty members.
• Bigger issue of overall room tracking options. Registrar is working on a solution, but departments would like to be able to tap into that resource as well.
  

Item 4: Announcements. Open.

Item 5: (Continuing Item) Possible Projects

Faculty outreach efforts:
· Survey of faculty to determine the level of IT use currently
· Increase faculty knowledge of IT through programs to introduce faculty to new technologies
Identify technological and pedagogical trends
· Work with TAP on instruction technology trends
· Assess what we know now on how people learn
· Forecast the pedagogy and IT infrastructure needs for the next 20 years
· Possible Project. Skunk Work
Review Continuity of Operations Plans
· Work with IDT and ATN to make sure that the University has adequate resources to continue educational and research operations in the face of disasters or major events
IT Budget Support
· Propose a Competitive Grant process to disseminate new technology.
· Advocate for a faculty input into determining IT resource needs.
Other

Item 6: Project Status Updates
· Role of FITAC in TAP mission
· How to engage more faculty and how to judge faculty sentiment on IT issues.
· Faculty IT resource page

Item 7: Future Agenda Items.

1. Student Centered Large Scale Classes
2. Technology use from the departmental chair perspective.
3. Faculty Technology Tours
4. Status of IT COOP plans

II. 9:30 - 10:30 John Oberlin, Information Technology Directors (ITD) Chair

Oberlin thanked Judith Wegner and Jim Porto for leadership and interest in building bridges between IT and faculty.

A. Joel Dunn: Onyen e-mail policy (10 minutes)

Policy has been revised since draft that was circulated among FITAC (GET DIGITAL COPY). New policy is about establishing trust relationship with email service providers across campus. ITS will work with these folks to work on establishing appropriate forwarding.

Questions:

• What about exceptions for units with their own services? Designed to be complimentary with these services, will only be reflected in central campus directory.
• When will policy be implemented? Policy almost worked out, but will need to spend more time on rollout issues among different populations.

B. Jeanne Smythe: Brief virus outbreak report (5 minutes)

Last week UNC experienced new worm that impacted over 400 machines on campus. IT Directors and staff were helpful in resolving these issues. Vendors were not prepared to help rebuild systems. May be in future situations where we don't have ready repair plan. Opening email messages, visiting infected websites, and guessed passwords were violated. This is all user behavior.

C. Presentations of emerging technologies:

1. Blogs - Fred Stutzman, ibiblio (10 minutes)
2. Wikis - John Reuning, ibiblio (10 minutes)
3. VoIP - Tyler Johnson, ITS (10 minutes)
4. Tablet PCs - William Schulz, TAP group (10 minutes) Oberlin says we may be able to put a limited number of IBM tablets PCs into the hands of interested practitioners.

Link to the above presentations: http://its.unc.edu/teap/presentations

Item 8: Announcements. Open.

Item 9:Project Status Updates

• Role of FITAC in TAP mission
• How to engage more faculty and how to judge faculty sentiment on IT issues.
• Faculty IT resource page

Item 10:Future Agenda Items.

1. Calendar Function
2. Faculty Technology Tours
3. Status of IT COOP plans

Agenda: TBA