Membership: Ed Cutting, Ben DeLong, Michael Fast , Emily Hurn, Joe Kunkel (Chairperson).

Charge: Evaluate the access of University of Massachusetts students to information technology (IT) on the Amherst campus.

1. The committee met on four occasions in 1996-'97.

1. Time was spent defining the scope of our subcommittee's objectives.

1. We decided our efforts should continuously be addressed in three directions:
   1. What is our current state of knowledge on student access to IT?
   2. Are the departmental plans and solutions for student access to IT adequate?
   3. What can we do in the future to monitor and improve student access to IT?

1. What is our current state of knowledge of student access?
   1. A SARIS survey (S96-A) on student use of computers had been done and was accessible as a WWW link. The link has since evaporated. While interesting and informative about the undergraduate experience and use of computers, the survey was not designed to cover all the topics nor all the clients that need to be included for answering our questions of relative access of students to IT.
   2. Interviews with the directors of the branch libraries Biological Sciences Library and Physical Sciences and Engineering Library revealed that patrons of these branches were at a disadvantage with respect to access to searching the online databases when compared to the Dubois Library. It was not clear whether this was a temporary or a chronic condition. Over the past summer much of the differences in access have been alleviated between central and branch libraries however there remains a distinct advantage to search literature databases from a terminal outside the Library. The result of this is more importance placed on student access to the internet.
   3. Graduate Student committee member Ed Cutting was a vociferous advocate for improved computer and telephone access of graduate student housing. The lack of a plan to wire the Graduate Student Apartments was seen as putting them at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the student community on campus. The phone service, which was designed for dormitory and office use, does not adequately serve some of the families
   4. The committee felt that a representative from OIT might be useful in ascertaining our state of knowledge. "Current state of knowledge" was seen to rapidly become obsolete and some measures of access need to be established which can be followed in order to gauge progress.
   5. A search of the internet on the topic of student access to IT resulted in a variety of situations and solutions. These links were added to a subcommittee web site for access by subcommittee and other interested FSUC&ECC members, URL http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/student_access/
   6. Departmental and University computer facilities are being improved and developed de novo. Are they serving all of our students? A $20 per semester fee for university computer/lab access allows students to access the internet and any University utilities available over the internet. This creates a potential two cultures situation in which our Library facilities (for instance) are unevenly available to segments of our student population. Should the fee be made universal which would assure more even access to IT for all students?

1. Are the departmental plans and solutions for student access to IT adequate?
   1. In order for us to more correctly gauge what our students need in terms of IT for the future, we need to determine how the different departments of our University view the future needs of their students. Without a commitment of the departments to using and teaching IT we have little basis for forcing improved IT on the University community. On the other hand, if we could determine what the departmental hopes and aspirations are for their students, with respect to IT, we would be in a better position to recommend solutions.
   2. Subcommittee members were charged to explore the IT aspirations of the departments in their division or college in an attempt to identify the distribution of attitudes to IT of departments on campus. This aspect of our investigation has not been discussed to this date.
   3. From this subcommittee chairman's perspective the departmental planning to include IT access for students is uneven and follows roughly the importance that IT has played in each discipline in the past. In that sense we need to address to what extent the University is committed to and is capable of providing uniform access to every student who desires it.

1. What can we do in the future to monitor and improve student access to IT?
   1. Maintain a committee devoted to following the phenomenon.
   2. Develop some type of survey or quantitative measure of student access to IT.
   3. Enlist a panel of IT experts from each college and unit to predict what the IT needs of their students will be.

Addendum: Much of what the committee dealt with at the outset and over the year were issues that concerned the FSUC&ECC committee as a whole and it is questionable whether these issues should be a regular agenda item for the entire committee rather than dealt with from a standing subcommittee perspective.

Respectfully submitted

Joseph G. Kunkel (Chairperson)