II. Announcements

III. Old business

A. PeopleSoft Student Information System

1. What should faculty be told about it?
   1. Heidi Dollard will be sending out a document to the faculty.
   2. There will be no document until Registrar makes decisions - will probably come from Registrar
   3. Heidi would like to write a document covering all of changes etc.
   4. Training for all except instructors
   5. Printed & web instructions & documentation will be available.
2. What kind of policy decisions have been made and why?
   1. Heidi - Too late to change anything
      • Policy may be changed
      • Development cannot be changed
      • Go Live Sep 28, 2002
   2. Rosio - They are short of 7-8 FTEs
      • Will bring up a "vanilla" version for 9/28
      • Upgrade to next version of PeopleSoft will happen after that
      • No chance for faculty or Faculty Senate influence before 9/28 - possibly afterwards
   3. Heidi - The priority is to do bare bones functionality for the student version
3. Question on grading capability:
   1. PeopleSoft has Web based data entry. TA's can enter grades
   2. Tad Jackson - Hire consultant for week to help out those who entered grades in the past?
   3. Rosio - Registrar needs to make decisions about grade entry, etc.
   4. Heidi - get estimate of hours involved for the grade entry. Could TA do this?
      1) Grades - have TAs enter grades & faculty review it Then get Registrar involved
      Action item: Development workaround. Rosio will discuss with John Cunningham
      2) Deferred items that would impact faculty. Won't have degree audit at start-up in the fall. Old will be out of date May be available for University in the spring via web, not printed out as now.
      3) Will transcript be available online? Currently transcript is printed, & can be viewed online. For Fall, transcript will be printed, not sure when available online.
4. Class rosters:
   1. web self-service
   2. report distribution software MOBIUS will be available in current version
   3. HTML link of demographic information on student will not be available
5. Printed grade roster: two options to report grades, fill in bubble sheet or submit online.
   Action: Heidi will communicate this information to faculty
6. New capabilities & significant changes:
   1. - Submission of grades via web
   2. - Confirmed registration
   3. - Registration windows based on seniority with eligibility criteria
   4. Grade Book add-on module
   5. Rosio saw demo at conference through the President's office. They've purchased site license for system. When we convert to version 8, it will be available. This has not yet scheduled. Oct '03 is the earliest possible date to upgrade to version 8. Then Grade Book module will need to have definitive list of above to faculty, staff, students <-- in the Fall - right before they need to know about it. It may go out in email & paper & on web site. Who it's coming from - registrar, etc.
   6. Training will start in May.
   7. PeopleSoft essentials: Academic Structure part of training
   8. Career: Academic Plan - majors included here
   9. Training essentials include:
      • web - self service: Spire
      • primary client training - hard core training
      • many 1/2 days of training
   10. Just in time component to this training
7. Advisors need computers - what provisions have been made for that
8. What about the printed catalog? - They will continue both undergrad & grad now online. Future is a provost office decision.
9. Transfer students are being processed in the same way - paper - manual entry
10. Performance tuning - going into programs to make most efficient for the UMass environment.
11. Question on undeclared majors
    1. Can potential advisors view their transcripts, for example, if a student wants to become a Bio major? Is there an academic need to know? We need to adhere to FERPA.
    2. Overriding capability - software flexible with security
    3. Students can always sign themselves onto the system
12. A concern: what do the faculty need to know?
    1. Campus-wide meetings: another round will be coming this spring. Watch for announcements

B. Email: Use of Faculty Senate e-mail list. New draft is not yet ready, so this topic will be deferred to the April 23 meeting.

IV. New business

A. Impact of budget cuts and personnel losses on OIT services (Rosio Alvarez)

1. OIT is taking a 5% cut plus early retirements
2. Academic Computing: 6-12 staff cut is concentrated in Academic Computing, gaping holes
3. At least one retirement in each of the following units:
   • Hardware and Software
   • Computer Operations
   • Network Support Services
4. Rosio is dealing especially with the statistics unit within AC - had meeting with constituencies - admin support. More will be decided post-June 15. FY03 budget not good. Looking at where covering costs for rest of campus.
5. PC labs - 3 closed due to low use - one went back to Journalism Dept. (Norm Sims) -- another is in Goodell as a classroom teaching lab - third was closed & equipment brought back to OIT.
6. To keep 1 workstation up & running = $3400/yr.
7. Wireless labs: Opened up wireless labs in Du Bois Library, Physical Sciences Library and Cape Cod Room in Student Center. 91-92% of students have PCs. They want wireless labs. (with VPN)
   Action item: Try to find out how many students have laptops vs. PCs for classes.
8. Wireless network cards - OIT is selling them in Hardware Support < $100
9. Classrooms and wireless deployment possibly in SOM. Developing cost and implementation model. Will be out to campus in next month. Will include security concern issues.
10. Classrooms activations
11. Netreg process currently available in dorms
12. Rollout in September for faculty - will have information in advance.
13. What's eating up our resources?
    • Printing - toner and paper budgets increasing dramatically. Printing tracking software difficult to manage.
    • Licenses - heavily subsidize many licenses: SAS, SPSS, Mathematica. Trying to develop a model to recover costs. Plan is to implement July '02.