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Technology Advisory Board (TAB)
Minutes of Meeting of July 21, 2004
Location: 4th Floor Conference Room,
Andy Holt Tower
Time: 1:30PM
Attendance:
Members: Bill Britten, Bill Dockery, Steve Dolgner, Jim Gehlhar, Anne Mayhew,
Mike McNeil, Camellia Meehan, Chaz Molder, Faye Muly, Stan Pinkleton, James
Price, and Rita Smith.
Others: Mark Alexander, Brice Bible, Michael Burke, Nancy Gnilka, Bob Hillhouse,
Judy Huddleston, Robin McNeil, Erik Parsons, Robert Ridenour, Lisa Rodgers,
Rhonda Spearman, Mike Stanley, Gretchen Whitney and Judy Travis.
Ms. Faye Muly welcomed everyone to the summer meeting. She noted that normally
the July meeting is a technology fee review session, however there are three
significant IT projects being implemented that affect students, and this meeting
is the opportunity to review the status: (1) VolPrint, (2) Campus Calendar,
and (3) Napster/Sony contract. Ms. Muly then turned the meeting over to the
new Co-Chair, Mr. Steve Dolgner.
VolPrint
Mr. Dolgner introduced Mr. Erik Parsons of the OIT Business Office
who gave a presentation on the Volprint cost model. Vol Print is the name
given to
the new system which will process nominal charges for printed output in
public, library and selected departmental labs. This project will be implemented
during Fall semester. All charges for printing will be billed to the VolCard.
The cost will be $.02 per image for students, faculty or staff in the OIT
Labs and the Library. The charge for color printing will be $.50 per image.
There will be no charge for printing Library card catalog information on library-owned
printers. There will be no quota. Technology Fee funding will provide a fixed
subsidy to maintain low cost per image. Refunds will be granted only in the
event of poor print quality due to toner problems, paper jams, or other system
failures. Users may go to the lab manager to file a request for credit to their
VolCard if they encounter printer problems causing unusable prints. At the
end of this first year, an evaluation will be made to determine if changes
need to be made in the process.
The cost model figures are based on consumables (toner, paper, maintenance
supplies), fixed annual cost (hardware, software license, administration),
sales tax, and the VolCard fee. If, at the end of five years there are any
excess funds, they will be returned to the Technology Fee account. In a comparison
of seven other institutions who are charging, these charges are comparable
or in many cases lower.
In the future, OIT Lab Services will assist other departments who wish to
participate in this process for charging for printing in their labs. Assistance
will be available for standard configuration setup and to acquire a software
license for each lab printer to be used, with special emphasis on reducing
the amount of printing.
Mr. Stan Pinkleton thanked all the students who participated on the committee
in the formulation of this project, especially SGA. Ms. Muly mentioned the
Library and ITC are going to be very active in providing information on VolPrint
to the campus community.
Napster
Mr. Dolgner announced that Mr. Brice Bible and others are working with
Napster and Sony Music on a pilot program to provide a music downloading
service to the residence halls this Fall semester. Mr. Bible noted UTK is among
several
other large colleges participating in this pilot project with Napster/Sony.
At this time a sole source contract is being negotiated for this pilot
program.
Ms. Rita Smith, Dr. Gretchen Whitney and others relayed some concerns from
other faculty members:
- Concern: Non-academic application of the technology fee.
- Response: The technology fee will not be used to fund
this project. Support funds will come from other student fees such as
monies from the student program
and services fee. During the pilot program students will not be directly
paying for this service. Also Sony will be donating funding for the
first year of this program.
- Concern: Only a portion of the students will be able to take advantage
of it since it will just be available in the dorms and not available across
platforms as well as only PC windows users can use it.
- Response: Since this is a pilot project, the group had
to be limited. If it does work out and we decide to continue, it will be available
to a larger
student population. Napster currently is available only in a PC windows
environment.
- Concern: Faculty feel we should concentrate on educating students on the
copyright & license issues of illegal filesharing.
- Response: We shall
continue to stress the importance of legal computing.
- Concern: What about evaluation?
- Response: Mr. Bible reiterated this is a
pilot project and will be thoroughly evaluated. Formats, statistics,
impact on students and campus, etc. will
be covered in early spring. Hopefully, this will help reduce the number
of virus infected machines on campus due to the illegal filesharing.
Online Campus Calendar
Mr. Dolgner introduced Mr. Bob Hillhouse, Director of
Web Services for OIT. Mr. Hillhouse has been working this summer with a group
of students who developed
and presented a proposal for an online campus calendar. Though this calendar
is focused on students initially, it will eventually be a resource for
the entire campus community. Mr. Dolgner and others have been working with
Mr.
Hillhouse and Web Services staff, in conjunction with the Dean of Student’s
Office. Mr. Hillhouse previewed the various pages of the campus calendar,
which is being tested by a focus group. He is also working with the UT Public
Relations Office to decide how the calendar will be represented on The University
of Tennessee home page. Policies and procedures on posting events are now being written by the Dean
of Students Office. They will determine what constitutes an event that is viewable
by the general public and how it is approved for viewing. There will be a process
for the student to enter a public event. If students post a private event,
they will log into "My UT" and their calendar would show their organization’s
calendar of events.
Mr. Hillhouse explained that this will not synchronize with a PDA and also
will not be a reservation system. Student organizations or others scheduling
events on the calendar must go through their customary process to reserve space,
etc., for their meetings.
Next Meeting
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned. The next
meeting of the Technology Advisory Board will be Wednesday, September 15,
2004, at 2:30PM
in the 4th Floor Conference Room, Andy Holt Tower.
Minutes by: Judy Travis
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