Minutes of the first meeting

on Thursday, 18 October, 2001, 11:05 a.m.- 12:01 p.m.

Present: Donna Gibson, Nancy Bell, Susan Simmons, Michael Barrett, Frances Frame, Alix Darden, Hughes Hoyle, Peter Greim, Rod Welch; Debbie Fisher

1. Election of chair

Peter Greim was elected chair by acclamation.

2. Report from ITS

The multimedia room in Capers 107 (as planned last semester; used primarily by English faculty) is now in operation; it has an electronic whiteboard.

The BADM department has opted for and received two light-weight projectors with laptops in lieu of a multimedia room.

ITS has installed a new mailserver (dubbed dawg mail). It is much faster than the previously used webmail. It processes all Citadel e-mail and filters out viruses. At the beginning of the semester,

10 - 13,000 messages containing viruses were eliminated per day. Dawg mail does not keep an address book.

New labs have been installed in Thompson Hall, and the Writing Center was equipped with new PCs.

The air conditioning in the Bond Hall labs is now working

The web server is near the end of its capacity. It is going to be replaced with a new server running Linux, during the weekend after this meeting. [Note from ITS: This has been done. Web server is now much faster and completely reliable so far. Operating system is Linux and the web server software is Apache, both of which are free. More than half of the Web servers in the world use Apache.]

ITS has already bought 20 new PCs for faculty offices, together with all other PCs purchased during the summer. The large order size brought the price down enough to get flat panel monitors, which make the labs appear more transparent and allow better student-instructor contact.

ITS has no plans for major investments before the budget situation becomes clearer.

ITS will keep an eye on Sun Microsystems' Star Office suite. It is compatible with MS Office and free. In contrast, MS Office is expensive and often a hassle to deal with administratively.

Concerning databases, ITS wants to study MySQL. Oracle is very expensive, and Access does not handle voluminous jobs well.

ITS will dedicate two PCs in Bond Hall for exploration of statistical packages. (All hardware and software has been ordered.) SPSS for Windows will be installed on both. The statistical

packages on the Alphas will remain.

In response to questions from committee members: ITS will look into putting small tables for instructors’ materials into the Thompson Hall labs. The existing Bond Hall labs are filled with PCs up to capacity; however, labs for larger classes are possible if departments provide larger rooms.

The new scantron machine in Capers Hall is now in room CA 315.

3. Procedure for the distribution of new PCs (for faculty)

A subcommittee consisting of Hughes Hoyle (chair), Nancy Bell, Frances Frame, and Susan Simmons will write a call for proposals, establish selection criteria, evaluate all proposals, and make recommendations. All subcommittee recommendations are subject to approval by the full committee. In the interest of a speedy procedure, committee vote by e-mail is preferable.

4. Requiring PCs for cadets

ITS will gather demographic information about cadets who do not have their own personal computer on campus.

5. Committee charter

Postponed.

6. Miscellaneous

Michael Barrett pointed out the existence and described the workings of turnitin.com.