Correspondence with Chancellor Crabtree regarding email concerns - January 2007 - Lou Gross --------------------------------------------------------------------- lcrabtr1@utk.edu Email problems rholub@utk.edu,bbible@utk.edu,mbreinig@utk.edu,dpatter2@utk.edu,traci.leonard@utk.edu Loren, As you are no doubt aware, problems with email have become so pervasive that this is definitely affecting productivity and has reached a stage that something needs to change. I had discussed this matter with Brice earlier today and it was a topic of discussion with President Petersen at the University Faculty Council meeting today. The President noted that he has transfered responsibility for this to the campus (and indeed responsibility for email matters now rests in the various UT campuses), and that with the transfer of OIT personnel to campus, we should have the people to deal with the problems without needing to devote additional resources. I was far from convinced about this latter point. Given the level of problems, I suggest that it is important to communicate what the campus is doing to deal with the problems, what processes will be implemented to ensure the current problems are ameliorated quickly, and how decisions will be made about next steps for further transition to the new email system. In particular, I encourage you to involve the Faculty Senate Information Technology Committee in the process (I am ccing Marianne Breinig on this in her role as Chair of this Committee), as they can recommend a number of faculty with technical expertise who might be able to assist in the planning. With the number of complaints I have received, I would like to transmit a message to the faculty list-serve as soon as possible (assuming emails from it actually will reach faculty) about your plans on this matter. However a message from you to the entire UTK list including faculty, staff and students might be preferable. I'm truly sorry that it has fallen to the campus to deal with this problem, though in the long-term having IT reporting to the campus for these matters is certainly appropriate. Cheers, Lou 1/8/07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Email problems Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 19:38:21 -0500 From: "lcrabtr1" To: Lou, We discussed the e-mail problems this morning and share your concern. We are bringing in consultants this month to evaluate our IT systems. In addition we intend to ask some of our faculty to assist us in evaluating our situation. We are somewhat uncertain about our authority over IT right now and will seek clarification this week. More later. Loren ---------------------------------------------------------------------