Office of Information Technology

Technology Appropriations Board
Minutes of Meeting of July 15, 1998

Location: AHT 4th Floor Conference Room
Time: 2:00 - 3:00PM

In attendance:

The SWAT Team, represented by Robin McNeil and Matt Disney, presented a status review of individual projects in each college or unit. Orders are being placed for equipment necessary for installation before the beginning of fall semester. To avoid storage of equipment and to ensure that the best and least costly equipment will be acquired, equipment orders will be deferred if the designated location is not ready. As previously stated, awards are not for a specific amount of money, and thus the SWAT teams are finding some projects that can be completed for a lesser cost, and some for which additional funding is necessary. Adjustments are made within the overall budgetary restrictions.

The Innovative Technologies Center (ITC) has made an initial review of requests for classroom projection equipment, and has awarded 5 new projectors and reallocated 9 other projectors, so that it has been possible to fill 14 requests thus far.

The policy guidelines for the award of funding for the FY 98-99 fiscal year were reviewed. There was a broad discussion of the appropriate policies for the future. In general, there was agreement that the guidelines will be revised each year depending on current campus needs.

In particular, the issue of funding network port installation was discussed. It was noted that a balance must be achieved between computing hardware and network connectivity, however this balance varies depending on the function of the workstation. Workstations primarily utilized for computation have less need of a high bandwidth connection to the network, whereas workstations utilized for access to the network are highly dependent on the bandwidth of the network connection. This issue was referred for further discussion to the Infrastructure Subcommittee.

The current policy regarding fee waiver for the Technology Fee is to follow guidelines established for the Program and Services Fee. Based on this policy, registered students that are out of the Knoxville area engaged in an internship, field experience, or for other educational purpose are not required to pay the Technology Fee. However, the question has been raised as to whether this is appropriate, as the UTK computing and networking resources are available to students remote from campus. This issue will be discussed at a future meeting.

As the discussion of Bylaws for the Technology Appropriations Board was deferred, it was moved, seconded, and passed that this issue be placed first on the agenda at the August meeting.

The next meeting of the Technology Appropriations Board is scheduled for August 19, 1998