ITCH Core Minutes for 8-13-08
Announcements
The spending freeze will not affect equipment purchases of less than $5,000; as long as it’s not a computer it can be purchased.
Advancement of Technology Funds
We started with $79,000 and have spent over $5,000 so far. Any money not spent should roll to next year; account has not been funded yet for 08-09. We have until July 2009 to figure out what we want to spend the rest of the money on.
Quick status of Advancement of Technology Projects:
- Internet Bandwidth Experiment – this was turned on April 1st and things have gotten more responsive; the funds for this have been transferred by Marshall.
- Google Mini – this is an on-campus search tool that will give us more search control and easier access. It has been purchased but not yet implemented. The newly hired Web employee will probably do the implementation.
- Jabber IM – this was approved, however, since the student that was implementing this left campus, the project has fallen apart. Meta Search / Open URL tool for Library – the P.O. for the subscription has gone out.
- One-Time Faculty Institute Enhancement – so far we have held one summer institute which was well received, and there are nine more scheduled.
Discussion of Academic ITCH
The Core received a proposal to merge the Academic ITCH with the Core in order to bring clearer focus. The proposal was amended to include adding the Admin ITCH thus having one ITCH. The Core would charge work groups to report back on issues. Interest in attending ITCH meetings picks up around funding and individual projects. Meeting once a month would facilitate all our issues – only time more frequent meetings might be needed would be around budgets. Individual purpose of the separate ITCH groups has gone away because we’ve evolved and not enough people in attendance. One benefit is that the Core could become a single place where people know to go around technology issues. Each meeting could have a theme and people can bring up other issues too. Would people feel out of place at the meetings? Lab management group may also be set up. Aaron will draft up an email regarding the proposed single ITCH group and request comments. Further discussion and a decision if there is consensus could happen at the next Core meeting.
Portal
At the 6/19/08 Admin ITCH meeting, Sharon Harrison spoke about the portal workgroup, which met on May 2. Consensus was reached that we have two basic goals – those that deal with college advancement and those that deal with active students. The group recommends that a new workgroup be charged by the Core ITCH to focus on the pre and post student online needs.
What’s happening currently? It’s on the Web Team’s to do list after major projects on my.evergreen.edu
The Advancement meeting on Blue Sky may push further discussion about the portal.
e-mail Review
Any revisit on email box size? Undeliverable mail is a problem, ISP blocking, forwarding, possibly require sole use of evergreen account; evergreen.edu is there as primary preferred account, but allow students to forward to personal email addresses. Or, just have a box dedicated to college email and some notification method for students to check it to help eliminate full mailboxes. Need a better way for students to move their mail back and forth. Form a group to come up with options – put on next Core ITCH agenda so people can provide input – how do we let people who are interested know? Identify group and scope of the task. Tech people do research and bring options to the table to discuss at our next meeting – Tasked are Fletcher, Erik (Rip will find someone from Academic Computing), James (will probably be Beth, not James), Admin Computing needs to be involved too. Erik will organize the meeting and they will report back at the next Core ITCH meeting. We need to leverage what we already have and know.
- Aaron will draft up an email regarding the proposed single ITCH group (with the formation of a lab coordinators group) and request comments. Further discussion and a decision if there is consensus could happen at the next Core meeting.
- Erik will assemble small group to develop plan for look at next step opportunities for e-mail communications for the college and report back a proposed framework for the group.
