Instructional Infrastructure Advisory Committee Minutes

Minutes of Meeting October 30, 2003

Faculty Present: Dennis Henry (Chair & AOC), Jonathan Smith (Natural Science and Mathematics), David Koppenhaver (Education), Tim Peterson (Social Science)

Faculty Absent: Deborah Downs-Miers (Secretary & Humanities)

Ex-officio Present: John Mosbo (Dean of Faculty), Bruce Aarsvold (Information Technology), Pat Francek (Media Services), Sarah Daniels (Administrative Information Systems), Dan Mollner (Library)

Ex-Officio Absent: JoEllen Schulz (Telecommunications), Jennifer Ringler (Web Communications)

Visitors Present: Mark Braun (Associate Dean), Joyce Aarsvold (Information Technology), Chuck Niederriter (Physics)

The meeting was called to order at 4:35 PM. In the absence of the Secretary, approval of the minutes from the October 1 meeting was carried over to the next meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, November 26 at 4 PM. These minutes were assembled by the chair.

1. Chair's Report

a) Henry called attention to the oral report he presented at the faculty meeting on the previous afternoon, Oct. 29. A number of members indicated that they had been present. The minutes of that meeting will contain a summary.

b) The chair is on the agenda of the department chairs meeting of Nov. 4, at which time he plans to summarize the IIAC discussions on budget planning, maintaining good communication within the department on establishing priorities and specifics, and general communication with IIAC.

c) After hearing concerns from and having conversations with current and previous IIAC chairs and members, Henry reported a strong consensus that it was important for IIAC to be informed of the current and proposed budgets for technology equipment acquisitions and purchases of services (e.g. rentals, licenses, vendors) from Information Technology, Media Services, and perhaps Administrative Information Services. Henry noted that this information had been requested from I.T. in some previous years but such requests were declined by Dean Baer. Braun said that this kind of information was not intended to be shared with IIAC. Henry expressed the opinion that this kind of information was necessary for IIAC to make informed recommendations, to play the kind of advisory role expected by the faculty, and to conduct long-range planning. Francek suggested that classroom technology conversion costs should also be included, and Henry agreed, as did Mollner. Henry suggested that requests for new staff positions in the technology areas should also be shared with the committee. There was also a brief discussion of the appropriateness of allocation of AIS equipment money ($14,400 this year) to supplement a too-small IIAC equipment allocation. These issues will be on the agenda for the next meeting.

2. The committee reviewed the Fall Update of Academic Information Technology Requests as prepared and distributed by Bruce Aarsvold. Questions were raised by Francek and Henry about two laptops and two printers that had been charged to the IIAC equipment budget, but which had not been on the list approved by IIAC in late April. Bruce Aarsvold provided rationales for those allocations, as well as others, which were made from recycled stock. The committee discussed the appropriateness of using IIAC funds to provide a laptop for a new faculty member, as directed by Mark Braun. Henry asked whether new equipment was purchased in the previous fiscal year and then listed as charged to the 2003-04 academic year IIAC budget. Aarsvold explained that equipment was sometimes purchased for inventory, which could then be drawn upon to fill IIAC budget-approved items. Daniels and Francek expressed uncertainty about how laptop request criteria were being followed. The discussion included suggestions that department chairs needed to plan better for new and replacement hires, and that IIAC should perhaps set aside a contingency balance for review at the beginning of the academic year. The spreadsheet for 2003-04 showed a balance of $990 remaining. Daniels and Henry inquired of Aarsvold about the status of promised 386-level recycled machines for AIS. The committee was told that these were close to delivery.

3. Henry asked Aarsvold to explain current mechanisms for handling incoming e-mail that included file attachments. Aarsvold discussed the increasing problem of attachments that contain viruses and worms, and that e-mail with zip file attachments was being quarantined and manually scanned and forwarded. He distributed 21 pages of lists of recent security threats from the Symantec site, as well as an example of a fraudulent message that appeared to be from Microsoft, but which would, if acted on, result in the recipient downloading and executing malicious code. Braun expressed thanks that strong measures were being taken to protect campus users. The concerns that were communicated by several faculty to the IIAC chair were that the current quarantining, inspection, and forwarding process inevitably required that someone in I.T. not only look at the sender and recipient names on messages, but also open and scroll through those messages that had attachments of the forbidden type. It was not generally known within the committee that faculty and user mail messages were being opened. There was a strong consensus that, until an automated and non-invasive way of handling such messages was in place, the Director of Information Technology promptly inform all campus users what was being done in this regard. Dean Mosbo concurred and asked Bruce to follow up on this request for notification.

Koppenhaver, Moore, and Henry expressed concern that the delay in manually inspecting and forwarding messages with attachments was a potentially severe hindrance in their serving as reviewers for journals and the like. Aarsvold assured the group that there was no intention to read user e-mail, and he briefly described an automated system that was under consideration to work around some of the problems, although not without some potential inconveniences to users. There was a brief discussion of the uneven level of notification that users received to an I.T. e-mail message of August 23 alerting users to new threats and security measures.

4. The committee discussed the memo from Mark Braun "Campus Technology Plan Update" of October 20, sent to IIAC, the Administrative Technology Advisory Committee, Web Advisory Committee, and Student Senate. Each group was asked to provide four to six items by December 1 that should be part of the campus technology plan. The memo outlined a sequence of committee and open meetings covering November through March, culminating in a final draft to be submitted to the President and Administrative Council. The memo requested that each of the target committees select a representative who would meet with the tech directors on a regular basis for the drafting of the plan update.

Henry asked for volunteers to represent IIAC, saying that he would not take on this additional responsibility. Two other faculty expressed the same sentiment, and there were no volunteers. Henry suggested that the 100% ex-officio membership of the tech directors in IIAC, and the central role that instruction should play in any technology plan made it both feasible and worthwhile for the tech directors to bring drafts to regular IIAC meetings, and that IIAC faculty could work with the directors in this forum. The other groups could determine the ways in which they would be represented, but that their attendance at IIAC meetings for this specific task might make good sense. This item will be carried to the next meeting.

5. Chuck Niederriter asked the committee to explore making VPN (Virtual Private Networking) a supported service for at least some campus users. Daniels and Henry supported the goal, but the lateness of the hour and the unfamiliarity of many members with the technology and its uses made this an item for a future meeting. [The subject is not new to the committee from previous years, since it came up when off-campus connectivity (i.e. modem pool service) was curtailed. A follow-up e-mail message from Chuck was forwarded to committee members.]

The meeting adjourned at 5:45 PM

Respectfully submitted, Dennis C. Henry