Academic Computing Committee
Meeting Minutes
March 5, 2007
Members Present:
University Senate
Representative: J. Alvares, R. Wolfson
Faculty Representatives: C. Du [CSAM Faculty Rep], A. Pemberton [CART Faculty Rep.],
Administrative
Representatives (Academic Deans): M. Mallery [Library
Administrative Rep.], A.J. Kelton [CHSS
Administrative Rep. proxy], S. Poger [CEHS
Administrative Rep.], J. Youn [CSAM Administrative
Rep.], R. Salomon [SBUS Administrative Rep.],
E. Harris [CART Administrative Rep], J. Donadeu
[Graduate School Administrative Rep.], P. Kahn (proxy for Associate Vice
President for Information Technology)
Non-voting Members Present:
E. Chapel, OIT; T. Devlin (Academic Coordinator of Education Computing Network)
Guests: J. O’Brien
Absent:.
S. Sotillo [CHSS Faculty Rep.], S. Shapiro [Library
Faculty Rep.], R. Xing [SBUS Faculty Rep].,
D. Stevens [Undergraduate Student Rep], A. Mohiuddin [Graduate Student
Rep.], VACANT [Undergrad. Student Rep.], VACANT [CEHS Faculty
Rep.]
Presiding: J. Youn, Deputy Chair
Reporting: M. Mallery, Secretary
Distribution: ACC Web at http://frontpage.montclair.edu/acc/
Convened: 3:08 p.m.
[University Hall UH5013]
Adjourned:
4:52 p.m.
1. Call to Order: The
meeting was called to order at 3:08 p.m. when there was a quorum.
2. Minutes: Members approved
the ACC Minutes of the February 12th meeting unanimously. Chapel will share
with ACC members his February email to Kasner
referenced in the ACC February Minutes under the Chair's Report to clarify that
Chapel's suggestion was to use a chargeback recovery system to handle the
question of having one MSU purchasing agent for software and route all
purchases through a single account.
3. Announcements:
Salomon announced that this
is Business Week at SBUS, an event for MSU graduating seniors; alumni will be
visiting the campus and touring University Hall.
Mallery announced that the Middle States Visiting Committee
for MSU arrived yesterday and established their headquarters in the Library’s
Special Collections Room.
Chapel announced that the
MSU Information Technology Group has applied for the Archi-Tech
Award for their ground-breaking work in technology integration in University
Hall.
4. Reports
• Chair's Report: Youn reported that Kasner had not
received a response from the CEHS Dean on the ACC request for a faculty
representative. Poger
will follow up with the CEHS Dean to ask again for a CEHS faculty
representative to the ACC.
Youn reported that Kasner will
continue to collect feedback on the proposed MSU Responsible Computing
Policy. Please send any comments
directly to Kasner for compilation on Monday, March
19th. Alvares
also asked that faculty members should identify the committee they serve on
when commenting on the policy.
• OIT Report:
a)
Chapel reported on the new
MSU Bell Tower Initiative to replace the outdated SCTPlus
campus management system. The official kickoff of the Bell Tower Initiative
will be March 12th. Chapel presented an
overview of the Initiative, and noted that the RFP process will involve
everyone at MSU. There will be seven
functional project teams that align with each of the major modules of the
system:
1) Admissions and
Recruitment
2) Student Information
3)
4) Human Resources
5) Finance and Budget
6) Institutional Advancement
7) Third Party Applications
and Portal
Chapel noted that ACC
members will be called to serve on these project teams. Alvares
asked are we researching comparable institutions and their choices of campus
management systems?
Chapel answered that a comprehensive scan of other institutions had been
completed, and a large decision matrix is in place for each project team.
Chapel said that there will
be five phases to the project:
1) Planning and Preparation
2) RFP Development
3) Bid Analysis
4) Contract Award
5) Implementation
Chapel noted that the
timeline for the project goes out to January 2008 for the contract bid, and it
is estimated that the full system will take five years from launch to
completion. The cost is estimated to be
eight to eleven million dollars.
Alvares noted that there were previous committees charged in
past years to choose a campus management system, and Chapel said that some of
these committees will become part of the new project teams.
b) “Proposed Changes to
Anti-SPAM Service: Quarantining Messages Ranked 80% or Higher:”
After review of the ACC
February discussion on Anti-SPAM quarantining at 80%, Kahn said she will resend
to the ACC listserv her responses to the request for the revised OIT Equipment
Replacement Chart and answers to the Anti-SPAM Filtering questions which she
sent on February 21st when the MSU lyris listserv was
down.
Chapel asked if there were
objections to moving the SPAM-blocking threshold to 80%. The consensus was that
the ACC does not object to the 80% threshold, but Kelton
recommended that OIT notify faculty of the threshold change before implementing
it. Salomon asked how can users recover
email that is missed?
Kahn said that users can read from email responses if they choose the
Digest mode. Youn
noted that OIT should recommend that users leave the default on so they can
choose the Digest mode.
c) Alvares
asked for an update on the Rave wireless project on campus. Chapel responded
that he and Kathleen Ragan of MSU presented on the Rave wirless
project at EDUCAUSE 2006 in Dallas under the title, "Montclair State
University Unplugged: Replacing Landlines with a Cellular Information
Device." The next step for the MSU
Rave wireless proejct will be integration of academic
use applications, and Chapel said he would be happy to speak about this at a
future ACC meeting if we place it on the agenda.
• Ad Hoc Committee Reports:
a) Learning Management
Subcommittee (LMS): Kahn reported that the February meeting of the LMS
Committee was postponed until March. Mallery will
remind Shapiro, the ACC Webmaster, to post LMS meeting summaries from Kahn on
the Action Issues page at: http://frontpage.montclair.edu/acc/action_issues.htm
b) Campus-Wide User
Satisfaction Survey Subcommittee: Kelton thanked the
ACC members for moving the Survey forward so effectively in February. After Steve Johnson modifies the survey text
to reflect ACC members' revisions and comments, Kelton
will pass the revised Campus-Wide User Satisfaction Survey on to the Senate for
their approval.
5. Old Business
a) Adobe Licensing Pilot
Program:
Youn reported that he has not had time to work on this
program, but he will send out an email requesting responses from any MSU
faculty or staff who have current plans for upgrading
their Adobe software. Youn requested that ACC members send him names of any Adobe
software users that they know of to help him get started. Youn
will work on the Adobe pilot project for presentation at the April ACC meeting.
b) MSU Policy on Responsible
Use of University Computing Resources:
Youn reported that Kasner
continues to solicit comments on the proposed policy from OIT. Alvares reported
that, after discussion of the ACC motion to form a Senate subcommittee on the
policy, the Senate requested that the ACC draft a policy for their approval. Wolfson moved that:
***
A subcommittee of the ACC
will be formed to revise and update the MSU Guidelines for Responsible
Computing into a policy that serves the current needs of the institution.
***
After discussion, the motion
passed with 6 votes. Alvares
nominated Wolfson as Chair. Wolfson will send
an email to the ACC listserv to solicit members for the new subcommittee. Wolfson will
convene the subcommittee before the April ACC meeting. Chapel noted that OIT is willing to work with
this subcommittee on modifying the policy.
6. New Business:
a) Statistics Packages – Kelton reported that a faculty member who uses SPSS statistical
software constantly in classes has found that the student version of SPSS does
not allow students to do their work and hinders their learning experience. He asked if MSU could get a license for the
full version of SPSS for the students.
Salomon noted that some SBUS students use SPSS and some use SAS for
statistical research. Alvares noted that students have access to SPSS in computer
labs on campus. Kelton
said that students had trouble working in computer labs, and the question was
brought forward as a problem in teaching and learning, not computer labs. Wolfson noted that
b) EndNote
– Kelton reported that many faculty in CHSS buy
individual licenses for EndNote citation and
bibliography building software, and asked if it might be more cost-effective
for MSU to purchase a campus license to EndNote. Poger noted that
many faculty in CEHS also have this problem with
buying individual licenses to Adobe products. Pemberton said that he had been
told to buy software from the Bookstore, which opened up problems because students
wanted CART to buy the software for them.
Chapel asked whether these
software packages (SPSS, EndNote and Adobe) were
needed for class use in computer labs or available to the entire campus
population. Alvares
answered that the software was used in many different places and emphasized
that the survey will give us more information about software purchasing on
campus.
Chapel felt that the notion
of a clearing-house account works better for purchasing software. If the ACC
keeps researching pricing options, we will only end up with different answers
from different vendors. MSU needs to
filter these options into a single accounting mechanism. Kelton asked where will the clearing-house be housed at MSU. Chapel volunteered OIT because they buy the
site licenses for MSU now.
After discussion, Chapel
recommended that the ACC apply the principle of setting up a single account for
software purchase to the Adobe software purchases first and then consider the
uses and licensing options for the other software packages, such as SPSS, EndNote, etc. Youn said he will gather the information about the Adobe
software products on campus and find out possible group and/or campus licensing
options and report at the April ACC meeting.
c) Next Meeting:
The next ACC meeting is
scheduled for Monday, April 9th, in the Library's Special Collections Room
starting at 3PM.
7. Adjournment: The meeting
was adjourned at 4:52 PM.