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Governance Minutes ArchiveFebruary 24, 1993
Minutes of the University Communications Resources Committee Meeting held: Wednesday, February 24, 1993 - 3:00-5:00 pm Location: Board Room, Newman Library Present: Marc Abrams (for Ed Fox), Fred Bailey, David Bevan, Erv Blythe, Tom Caceci, George Crofts (Chairman), Marcia Harrington, Mark Hunter, Judy Lilly, Buddy Litchfield, Tom McAnge, Arthur Snoke, Matthew Swift (for K. Johnston) Guests: Phil (Theta) Bowden, Tom Head 1. The January minutes were approved. 2. The committee accepted the suggestion by the Commission on University Support that the director of extension information systems be an ex-officio member of UCRC. It also accepted the suggestion that the representative of cooperative extension be chosen by the Virginia Extension Service Association. The committee reaffirmed that the word chosen was consciously selected to replace the word nominated in the method of appointment for members of UCRC. 3. Tom Head presented general plans for developing more use of computing in instruction. The three major components of the plan are faculty development, student access, and course development. Students who do not have personal computers configured to handle courses will have access to computers in university laboratories. All faculty members who wish training and retraining will have the opportunity every four years during a week-long training session. Each faculty member who completes the session will receive the type of computer on which s/he was trained. The computer will include an installed set of core software consisting of productivity programs. The sessions will go beyond training participants to use the software and hardware, they will include lectures and discussions on innovative instructional ap- proaches. It is expected that the sessions will lead faculty to re-examine course content for courses and to develop new approaches for delivering topics. Some pilot sessions will occur this summer for groups from English, humanities, and mathematics. (These areas were chosen because of the large numbers of students they serve.) The hardware for the pilot projects will be "Mac's." The software will accommodate word processing, and spreadsheet, database, e-mail, and multimedia capabi- lities. Packages on mathematical symbol manipulation, scientific data visualization, and graphic design will also be included. There was good discussion over the issue of dictating or not dictating the platform and software for the faculty. The state senate is urging more use of computers in instruction, but it may not appreciate the time and resources needed to implement ideas. Technical personnel would be needed for implementation of sophisticated use of computers in classes. Faculty evaluations must be adjusted to entice good efforts in this arena. (Note the Snizek article in the February 25 edition of Spectrum.) 4. Buddy Litchfield reported that the faculty access subcommittee is rethinking its objective in light of the work that Erv Blythe is doing on distributed computing. With costs low for access, with expectations rising that local processors will largely replace centralized processors, different questions seem to subsume the issue of access. If plans that Tom discussed become operational, all faculty who wish access will gain it. It is speculated that a more relevant issue than access is that of a package consisting of a workstation, a network program, and a network connection. The subcommittee requested that the computing committee be invited to form a subcommittee to meet with it for discussions. Arthur Snoke suggested that other universities that have moved to distributed computing be solicited to learn from their experiences. The responses could help us reduce expenses and unnecessary ground work. The mail regulation subcommittee continues to meet. It hopes to have a recommendation on regulations for campus mail and e-mail by the March meeting of UCRC. 5. The report from Tom covered recent "Phase II" activities. A concern was raised regarding the needs of faculty in technical disciplines who require large computing capacities. These concerns are part of the discussion agenda. 6. Judy Lilly distributed a summary of the search process for the vice president for information systems. As of February 15, 80 applications had been received. A first evaluation has reduced the viable candidates to about 25. The search committee remains open to opinions of qualifications that people feel the appointee should have. To minimize the chances of misleading applicants or revealing names of applicants, the search committee is not sharing detailed qualifications that are being applied in the screening. NEXT MEETING March 31, 1993 - 3:00-5:00 pm Conference Room (Graduate School), 206 Sandy Hall
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Last modified on: Tuesday, 25-Sep-2001 13:57:23 EDT