Academic Computing Committee
Meeting Minutes

September 19, 2005



Members Present:
University Senate Representatives: J. Alvares, M. Heller

Faculty Representatives: A. Adarkar [CHSS Faculty Rep.], M. Davidson [CEHS Faculty Rep.], S. Shapiro [Library Faculty Rep.], R. Xing [SBUS Faculty Rep.]

Administrative Representatives (Academic Deans): A.J. Kelton [CHSS Administrative Rep.], M. Mallery [Library Administrative Rep.], H. Sanni [CEHS Administrative Rep.], R. Salomon [Proxy for Dean Alan Oppenheim], J. Youn [CSAM Administrative Rep.],  A. Rohman [Graduate School Administrative Rep.]

Non-voting Members Present: E. Chapel ( Associate Vice President for Information Technology), R. Wolfson, Local 1904 Observer, T. Devlin, Academic Coordinator of Education Computing Network

Absent: A. Koeller (CSAM), A. Pemberton [SART Faculty Rep.], R. Julian Robinson [SART Administrative Rep.],  D. Stevens [Undergraduate Student Rep], A. Mohiuddin [Graduate Student Rep.], D. Stevens [Undergrad. Student Rep.], V. Lilikas [Undergrad. Student Rep.],VACANT, Associate Director of Academic Technology.

Guests: P. Kahn, J. Minier

Presiding: J. Alvares, Chair
Reporting: M. Mallery, Secretary
Distribution: ACC Web at <http://frontpage.montclair.edu/acc>
Convened: 3:05 p.m. [Library Special Collections Room]
Adjourned: 4:55 p.m.

1. Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 3:05 p.m.

2. Minutes: Minutes for May 2 were approved.

3. Announcements: Salomon announced that registration is open for MSU EdTeXpo on Oct. 11th. Dr. Paul Hagner, Associate Director of the Educause Learning Initiative (see http://educause.edu/eli ), is the keynote, speaking on "Teaching in Turbulent Times: Challenges and Opportunities." Wolfson added that the luncheon speaker is from the County Prosecutor's Office and will present on Internet Crime and Prevention.

Heller announced that the NJEDge Annual Conference will held on November 2-4 at the Harrison Conference Center in Plainsboro. More information arout registration is online at http://www.njedge.net .

NJEDge is also hosting a videocast of a presentation by Luis Rodriguez on "Copyright, Congress and the Campus" on September 28th, which will be broadcast from MSU.

4. Reports
• Chair's Report: Alvares introduced and welcomed the two new ACC members, Hakeem Sanni, the Admin. Rep. for CEHS. and Afim Rohman, the Graduate School representative.

• OIT Report: Chapel reported that the Fall term is beinning with OIT projects that have gone well over the summer:

*Network Readiness Project - Students are registering for using the campus network in record numbers.  Las year, the process was flawed and slow, but this year 3,100 users are registered as of today.
*Cellular Telephone Project - The project is opening with a PR event on September 30th.  Every new student living in the residence halls must use the Campus Connect Program with value-added services such as interface with BlackBoard, tracking shuttle buses on campus, RSS feeds and Sodexho menus. 1400 cell phones were issued.  Campus Connect is enabled by Rave Wireless Inc.online at http://www.ravewireless.com/

*Campus-Wide ID (CWID) - OIT is in the final stages of preparations for implementation of the alternate ID project, where the CWID will be the number that is displayed on all reports and transactions that are visible to the public rather than the Social Security number. An email will go out to the campus listserv announcing what CWID means for all users.  Tech. coordinators should pay particular attention to integration of databases.
Heller asked for a timeframe.  Chapel said email to campus will go out at the end of this week and rollout is scheduled for the end of October.

*Technology Equipment Requests - OIT has received the technology requests from Deans and Tech. Coordinators.  The total amount of requests would cost $1.9 million, and available funds are a quarter of that, so the requests are  being reviewed and prioritized.  This should take another week or so; three-quarters of the requests were for desktop computers. Wolfson noted that the three-year replacement for faculty technology should be first priority for technology requests.

*New Academic Building (NAB) Transfer - The move of OIT servers to the NAB over the summer went extremely well and was executed according to plan.  An electrical engineering design flaw caused a generator transformer failure in July and August.  It will be tested once more in the FallAlvares asked about the status of the E-Classrooms in the NAB.  Chapel said that the user interface specs by Vistacom have not been finalized, but the equipment configurations are finalized, and two will be installed in CO 123 and Joe Youn's are for people to try them out.

*Director of Academic Computing Search - 80 candidates have applied for the position.  OIT currently is seeking a Chair for the Search Committee.  The Search will take place this Fall.

• Ad Hoc Committee Reports:

a) Learning Management Subcommittee (LMS) - . Alvares asked for a new Chair.  Davidson volunteered.  Current members are Devlin, Alvares, Davidson, and Susan Hussein.  Kahn said that she created a summary report of past LMS activities and will forward it to Davidson.  Davidson will report in October on current issues that LMS will address.

b) EDUCAUSE Membership: Kelton (Chair) reported that the Committee met over the summer. This year's FTE increase for MSU should be reflected in EDUCAUSE representation, and the Committee will report on filling more seats to give for representation from each of the Schools.

c) Mandatory MSU NetID Registration and Use: Heller (Co-Chair) reported that policies and capabilities of MSU LDAP system underlying MSU netID is used for authentication by Language Labs to get information on users.  Youn (Co-Chair) added that CSAM has username/password authentication is outside MSU netID, and leveraging LDAP data would allow them to realize a single name and password. Salomon noted that SBUS tried to attach to LDAP to create their own directory to leverage LDAP information.  When they were not give access, they created their own directory. Youn requested that MSU have multiple custodians of LDAP.  Chapel asked that the Co-Chairs discuss this question with Jeff Giacobbe in OIT to address the security implications.  Alvares asked for volunteers to follow up.  Heller and Salomon will speak to OIT, and Kelton said he would consult with Milos Topic on leveraging LDAP, and all will report back to the ACC on their findings.

d) Restructuring Committee for ACC: Kelton reported that the Committee has not met yet and ACC should wait until Faculty Senate moves on this issue.  Alvares said he would take it off the ACC agenda for now..

5. Ongoing Business:
• Internet Access Control in Classrooms: Kelton clarified that the ACC Motion for Internet Access Control in Classrooms was not directed toward blocking the Internet in the classroom but about controlling the lab environment. Chapel noted that the Motion does not make clear if the goal is to deploy this software in all computer labs or only in particular ones. Kelton said that software is only for labs with fixed assets, and not movable. Chapel said that there needs to be a technology request for software. Kelton noted that ACC advised the Faculty Senate.  Chapel said that OIT will provide information and prices on the Internet Access Control in Classrooms software to the ACC, then the ACC can recommend to the Faculty Senate that MSU make this purchase as a university-wide application.

• Anti-Spyware Applications: Chapel noted in response to the ACC Motion on Spyware that MSU does not have a license for anti-spyware at this time.  Youn noted that many anti-spyware program are okay for personal use but not campus-wide.  Chapel said that Sophos has an anti-spyware application, and there are open source anti-spyware applications available as well. Youn will follow up with OIT on this question and report back to the ACC.

• New MSU Procurement System: Chapel reported that OIT has worked hard on the new interface for Siquest, the new MSU e-Procurement system.  In six weeks, staff should be able to use the system.  You asked for tech. requirements, and Chapel said it is Web-based, browser-independent and there is no client installed.

• Mandatory MSU Email Use: Heller noted that the current size-limit of MSU email attachments of 9.5MB is not large enough.  Yahoo allows 20MB.  Chapel asked that he make a recommendation to OIT.  Heller said he would recommend that OIT look at the 5 benchmark institutions from the MSU Strategic Plan to find out maximum message size and report back to the ACC. Youn said that OIT should look at the mailserver logs to see the frequency of these attempts being denied.  Chapel said that OIT will look at the metrics and frequency of denials.

6. New Business:
• ACC Meetings Calendar: Alvares announced this year's ACC meeting dates in the Library's Special Collections Room from 3PM-5PM:

 Monday, Sept. 19th
 Monday,  Oct 10th
 Monday Nov. 14th
 Monday, Dec. 12th
 Monday, Jan 23rd.
 Monday Feb. 13
 Monday March 20th
 Monday April 10th
 Monday, May 8th.
 
7. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 4:55 PM.