FACULTY SENATE UNIVERSITY COMPUTER & ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF December 18, 1996

Approved:  

 
Present: D. Blanchard, S. Brewer, D. Chesley, S. Cook, E. Cutting, D.
Damery, B. DeLong, J. Dubach, G. Fisher (Chair), G. Fretwell, T. Jackson,
J. Kunkel, K. Lou, B. McCandless, N. Sims, M. Wingertsman.
 

1. We approved the minutes of the November 21, 1996 meeting.

2.  We Introduced the new members of the Committee, S. Brewer, D Damery,
and K. Lou.

3.  We scheduled the meetings for the rest of the semester as follows:

Thur. February 13  2:30-4:00 PM
Thur. March 13  2:30-$:00 PM
Thur. April 10  2:30-4:00 PM
Thur. May 15  2:30-4:00 PM

G.  Fisher will schedule an extra meeting with Randy Bell to discuss
Administrative Redesign.

Locations will be announced.

4.  T. Jackson announced that there is a UMass Instructional Technology
Conference '97 with a WWW URL of:  www.umassp.edu/itc97

5.  E-mail Delivery

D.  Blanchard reported that the recent problems with e-mail delivery would
be somewhat alleviated by replacement of OIT's obsolete e-mail servers with
two new, redundant alpha servers.

A discussion about the problems of handling very large e-mail messages and
the bottlenecks produced followed.  Blanchard will bring statistics on
e-mail message sizes to the next meeting.

6.  Problems Phoning into OIT

E. Cutting reported that clients were having trouble with busy signals,
dead lines, and line noise when connecting to OIT.  D. Blanchard reported
that OIT runs a test dial routine to help with the known dead line problem.
 He suggested that dial-up trouble should be reported to
modem-admin@nic.umass.edu.

G. Fisher suggested that we should discuss the 6-hour time limit at the
next Committee meeting.

7. D. Chesley reported, in response to comments at a previous meeting, that
OIT and PC Hardware Support are aware of the access difficulties inherent
in the Lederle location, and explained some measures being taken to
alleviate them, including exploration of improved pick-up and delivery of
student machines.

8.  G. Fretwell reported that Margo Crist would soon assume her duties as
Directory of the Libraries.  She comes from the University of Michigan
where she was involved in leading edge electronic information services.

9.  T. Jackson reported that Martin Smith, Director of UIS, would be
leaving the University.  He will be replaced by Peter Roberts as Interim
Director.

10. J. Kunkel reported that the Access Subcommittee would like to include a
member from the Library.  His suggestion that the Committee discuss the
change in the OIT fee to be payable by all students will be taken up at the
next Committee meeting.


Respectfully submitted
Duncan Chesley, Secretary