23-OCT-2007 Meeting Summary ** DRAFT **
Attendance: Art Acton, Jerry Belloit, Paul Bylaska, Steve Johnson, Terry Latour, Julie London, Bob Nulph, Mike Phillips, Sam Puleio, Edna Reid, Steve Selker, Debbie Sobina
Approval of Prior Minutes
The 24-APR-2007 Meeting Summary was approved
Membership Updates
The committee welcomed the new members appointed by Faculty Senate (Jerry Belloit, Steve Johnson, Julie London, Edna Reid). Bob Nulph was elected as the new UTAC co-chair. Subcommittee assignments will be reviewed and updated prior to the next UTAC meeting. Membership information is summarized at the UTAC website.
Tech Fee Updates
- 2006-07 Project Notes: The committee reviewed the status of the 2006-07 Tech Fee projects. New projects completed for the fall 2007 semester included student laptops for Gemmel, a Financial Trading Floor in Still Hall, an Advanced CIS lab in Becker, and NCLEX software, PCs/Electronic Stethoscopes, and PDA's for Clinical Use at Venango. Numerous renewals of past projects were also completed over the summer. The refreshment projects included new equipment for the Media labs (Art, Theatre, Publications, Digital Video, Music), the Adaptive Technology Lab for SPED, laptop carts for Montgomery and Gemmell, and maintenance extensions for ITV services in Becker and Stevens, and the Radio transmitter.
- 2007-08 Project Notes: For the Tech Fee projects that were just renewed, a call for requests for the reallocation of the old equipment has been issued to the Deans and Vice Presidents. Proposals are due 19-NOV-2007, after which time the proposals will be reviewed by UTAC with reallocation recommendations routed to PEC in December. The call for 2007-08 Tech Fee renewals for eligible past Tech Fee projects was released to project contacts in September. Twenty-one projects are being assessed this year for possible renewal in Summer 2008. Renewal requests will be processed under the past UTAC protocols with subcommittee and committee reviews in early 2008 and UTAC renewal recommendations routed to the President's Executive Council (PEC) in March. Finally, feedback from PASSHE for the 2007-08 proposals is still pending; updates are expected within the next few weeks.
Smart Classroom Subcommittee
The committee reviewed a report from the UTAC Smart Classroom Subcommittee. Phase One of the Tech Fee Smart Classroom Initiative resulted in upgrades to the following rooms during this past summer: Peirce Auditorium, Becker G-72, Peirce 161, Still 201, Still 202, Tippin 203, Keeling 116, Library BI, Frame 208, and Montgomery 307. Fifteen projectors were also replaced as they reached their life cycle replacement stage. Seventeen computers were also installed in smart classrooms as part of the 06-07 tech fee equipment reallocations. Phase two of the smart classroom initiative will advance pending approval of the Tech Fee proposals. 07-08 upgrades will be completed per the priorities defined by the Deans of each area. The subcommittee also provided an update on the evaluation of Classroom Response Systems (aka "CRS", "SRS", or "clickers"). Per UTAC discussions in April, several vendors were invited to campus and open sessions were held to review the products. Demo products were available and the subcommittee tested various components of the systems including ease of use, integration features with PowerPoint and Blackboard, testing functionality, and receiver capacity. Some compatibility issues were noted with Office 2007 and some vendors stated plans for "clicker" and software upgrades for ~October. The subcommittee will review the upgrades and route a final recommendation to UTAC for review.
Wireless Project Update
Phase One of the UTAC/Tech Fee wireless network initiative is in progress. New access points have been installed in Becker and Montgomery and the configuration of the network management tools is in process. The next step with the Phase One deployment will be a meeting and the creation of a pilot group with department contacts in Becker and Montgomery. The new wireless network initiative includes the deployment of a new enterprise wireless network model to address security and capacity issues. For Phase Two, site surveys have been completed for Stevens and Special Ed, Frame, Davis, Founder, Hart, and Keeling. Access point installation will move forward pending Tech Fee approval. Phase two will also include the "retrofit" of legacy wireless installs in Carlson and other areas to use the new model being finalized with Becker and Montgomery.
Office 2007 Status
Based on UTAC discussions last spring, the Office2007 compatibility pack was installed this summer across Clarion, Venango, and West Penn locations to older Windows version of MS-Office. To date, Office 2007 has been installed on some 1000 machines with labs, laptop carts, smart classrooms, and early adopters. Feedback from the Office 2007 subcommittee and early adopters has been generally positive. Areas of note questioned with upgrades to date include the availability of Excel add-ins, PDF options, operation of PowerPoint with some rear projection smart board software, spell checker, and junk mail settings. Some performance issues with Outlook have also been noted, particularly with machines with limited memory. The next step with the project is to begin the deployment of Office 2007 to departments. The deployments will be planned on a voluntary basis with departments or groups of departments. The first call for upgrades will begin with early adopter areas, with ultimate confirmation through the Deans and Vice Presidents. As Office 2007 is deployed to employee machines, a number of other upgrades will also be applied including IE 7 and upgrade patches to other components of the core software model including adobe reader and the various media players. A training program, which will be provided through a collaborative effort of Computing Services and Continuing Education, is also planned for early 2008. Courses will include 'level 1' and 'level 2' courses for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The training guides will also be provided on the web to authenticated Clarion users. With the training, a request was made to record the sessions on the Sonic Foundry streaming media server so that particular sessions could be viewed on demand. Computing Services will research this option. On the Mac front, it was noted that Microsoft is currently listing January 2008 as the release date for Office 2008. As the final ship date is realized, the UTAC subcommittee will be re-convened to define the desired implementation timelines for Office 2008 and the associated Mac compatibility pack.
Web Survey Tool
The UTAC survey software subcommittee suggested an approach of administering a survey package through the Institutional Research (IR) Office and making the software available as an IR service to departments. Several packages were evaluated over the summer and a product has been selected for use at Clarion. The product is called Snap Survey Software and it includes a wide range of feature for e-mail and web-based surveys. At this time, the software has been procured and the initial installation on a Clarion server has been completed. The IR office will work with the Student One Stop Committee as the initial pilot of the service.
Student E-mail Pilot
A group of students identified via UTAC last spring have been piloting the e-mail service from Google Apps for Education. The next planned step is to configure the WindowsLive student e-mail offering from Microsoft and ask this same group of students to utilize the service.
