FACULTY SENATE UNIVERSITY COMPUTER & ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
DRAFT MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF Nov. 19, 1998, 911 Campus Center
 
Approved: 

Present: S. Brewer, E. Cutting, D. Damery, A. Gaylord, C. Giloth, 
M. Hanley, G. Hough, T. Jackson, J. Kunkel, B. MacDougall (Chair), 
B. McCandless, B. Stewart, M. Wingertsman

Bruce MacDougall called the meeting to order at 2:33 AM

1. Approval of Minutes: 

   The Committee approved the minutes of the Oct. 28, 1998 Meeting

2. Announcements

 A. Copper Giloth reported on the University Web-Site Redesign Project.
 (1) There has been an opinion poll posted at the UMass Amhesrt Home
     Page for the past month.  It will be removed in the coming month.
     Anyone who wants to contribute their suggestions is requested to
     do so promptly.
 (2) The overwhelming majority of thoughtful reponses have been from
     our students.  Very few faculty have responded.
  
 B. Tad Jackson, University Information Systems delegate, was asked:

 (1) When will UIS discontinue Email Service using EMC2 on the IBM 
     Mainframe?

     Tad answered: Current policy was to give Email users one year to 
     obtain their alternative mail service.
  
 (2) Bruce McCandless suggested that one year was too much time and 
     thought the schedule could be accelerated say to April or May.

 C. Art Gaylord informed the committee as an aside to the discussion
    of relict systems, that VMS support will be discontinued at the 
    end of June.    

4. Old Business

  A. TLTR - The adhoc subcommittee on a compromise TLTR proposal
     met at noon today, Nov. 19, with the corresponding subcommittee 
     from the TLIT Council.  Bob Marx and Copper Giloth of the TLIT 
     Council met with Bruce MacDougall, Emily Hurn and Joe Kunkel of 
     the FSUC&ECC.
   (1) A common language motion was fashioned and adopted by the 
       subcommittees which eliminated the allusions to financing 
       and structural reorganization.
   (2) Copper volunteered to refresh the website information and
       check that the guidelines we would append to our motion
       were current.  She Emailed the updated information to Joe
       Kunkel who constructed the appended issue paper containing
       the motion to be offered for discussion.
   (3) It was moved, seconded, discussed and voted unanimously:

 Moved: Whereas the Faculty Senate University Computing and  
 Electronic Communications Committee (FSUC&ECC) and the Teaching, 
 Learning and Informational Technology (TLIT) Council perceive the 
 urgent need for a coordinated high level, long-term, campus-wide 
 planning effort, that would provide direction for all campus 
 instructional technologies; establish campus wide priorities; and 
 coordinate existing and future technologies in support of 
 teaching and learning; be it resolved that the FSUC&ECC  and TLIT 
 Council recommend the Faculty Senate urge the Administration to 
 create a Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable (TLTR) 
 according to the specifications of the American Association of 
 Higher Education (AAHE) in order to achieve the future orderly 
 development and functioning of the campus instructional 
 technology environment. 
  

  B. PeopleSoft/ MicroSoft product dependencies.
     A perception by the Graduate Student Senate that the PeopleSoft
     SIS package was dependent on MicroSoft Windows operating
     system was brought up by Ed Cutting.
  
  (1) Art Gaylord circulated an informative Email to the committee
      members explaining in detail what the minimal dependencies 
      of the PeopleSoft SIS product were on the Microsoft 
      Operating System.  He further explained at the meeting:

 
  (2) Ed Cutting introduced an informational handout of a late
      version of a Graduate Student Senate motion which was to
      be forwarded to the faculty senate.

  (3) Ed, while not in total agreement with the entire structure
      of the motion, defended the motions intent of trying to
      make sure that students were exposed to as wide a variety
      of software and operating systems.  The GSS saw the supposed 
      PeopleSoft dependency on Microsoft as an example of narowing
      the experiences of the students with other operating systems.

  (4) While sympathy was expressed for the underlying sentiment,
      reaction to the entire motion was quite negative from the
      committee in general.  The 4th whereas of the motion 
      suggested that there was "little or no support for graduate
      students in either the learning of technology or the
      acquisition of equipment and software."  No one on the
      committee but Ed Cutting could agree with this contention.
      Undergraduate as well as graduate student defficiencies in
      math, programming and computer literacy could be solved by
      taking the appropriate undergraduate courses.

  (5) The committee concured that if the motion did surface at
      a Faculty Senate meeting that the oppinion of the FSUC&ECC
      would be that the motion was without basis. 
 
5. New Business

  A. none

6. The meeting adjourned at 3:18 PM.

Respectfully Submitted
Joseph G. Kunkel
joe@bio.umass.edu
last updated 11/20/98