FACULTY SENATE UNIVERSITY COMPUTER & ELECTRONIC 
COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF Sept. 25, 1997

Approved: Oct. 16, 1997
 
Present: E. Anderson, S. Brewer, D. Bromery, E. Cutting, 
D. Damery, J. Dubach, A. Gaylord, E. Hurn, T. Jackson, 
J. Kunkel, K. Lou, B. MacDougall (chairperson), R. Sailer,
M. Wingertsman.

Bruce MacDougall called the meeting to order at 2:35

1.  Approval of Minutes: 

   The Committee approved the minutes of the May 15, 1997 meeting.

2. Organizational matters

 A. Committee Reports from the three standing committees,
     1) Unmet Needs (Ed Cutting),
     2) Student Access (Joe Kunkel),
     3) Emergency Measures (Bruce MacDougall),
    will be received next meeting and discussion entertained
    as to their continued existence.

 B. The existence of a charge for the present committee will be
    brought before the next meeting with discussion of its
    current status.  Discussion of simplifying the name of the
    committee will be entertained if deemed appropriate.

 C. Future Meeting Times.  The committee confirmed our meeting 
    times will be once a month on Thursday at 2:30-4:00 (but not 
    to conflict with Faculty Senate).  The chairperson will devise
    the calendar.

 D. More agenda for next meeting:
     1) Instructional Technology motion of E. Anderson
     2) Report on ADA Plan for OIT (J. Dubach)

3. Announcements
 A. OIT Current Progress Report (J. Dubach and staff)
     1) Approximately 900 students were added as ethernet connections
        on campus bringing total students connected to approximately 1000. 
        The dormitories connected (or in process of connection) include 
        Washington, Patterson, Brown, Crabtree, Brooks and Webster.
     2) 24 of 30 projected departmental units have or are in progress of
        being connected to the backbone.
     3) For SIS two suitable vendors have been identified. A decision will
        be made by the end of October. Full operation is expected by
        January 2000.
     4) All the financed PC labs (but 1) are up and running.
        Each classroom contains approximately 20-25 PCs. (One has 50.)
        Each classroom has a projected life of 4 years with current equipment.
        Each PC is supplied with MS-Office suite of software plus
        specialty software at select sites.  New Software Management software
        has been purchased to allow managing the restricted site licenses so
        that users can access them from any suitable terminal on the system.
     5) Dial In service has not experienced saturation yet this academic year.
        It remains to be seen if all potential users are connected to the 
        degree they desire due to individual problems with their own equipment.
        The cross-over advantage of networked vs. modem access may be at hand.
     6) Help Desk reorganization may result in some initial delays before the
        advantages of reorganization kick in.  A FAQ list has been established
        to answer some questions.  Ticket-Checking-Software has been installed
        to allow help-seekers to track their request in the Help-Queue.
     7) Minimum requirements to get onto the Internet system may be putting 
        uneven pressure on individuals and Departments.  Some individuals may
        still be trying to gain access via 286 computers while minimum entry
        with acceptable results may require 486 or Pentium level machines.
        In this case progress may be leaving some people behind.
     8) Over the summer OIT has submitted an NSF proposal for Internet II
        connections ($350K/2yrs).  This would achieve high speed lines which
        could be partially shared by the current Internet with a boost in
        speed to Internet service.  Current speeds of transfer will approach
        6 Mb/sec this Fall.
     9) The Graduate Dorms (Prince and Crampton) are planned to be wired this
        Fall.

  Bruce MacDougall commented that this seemed to be substantial progress for
  "over the summer".

4. The next meeting will be scheduled by the chairperson and distributed to
the Email list.

The meeting adjourned early at 3:15 to allow members to attend the Faculty
Senate meeting.

Respectfully Submitted
Joseph G. Kunkel
joe@bio.umass.edu
last updated 9/25/97