Faculty Senate University Computer and Electronic Communication Committee
    1997-98 Year End Report

Mission:  The Committee shall recommend policies designed to meet the 
educational and administrative computer and electronic communications 
needs of the campus [Dec. 13, 1994]

Table of Contents:
  I. Summary of activities
 II. Issues for 1998-99
III. Membership list for 1997-1998 Term.

Respectfully Submitted by:
Bruce MacDougal for the FSUC&ECC

I. Summary of 1997-98 activities

A. A WWW page containing the agendas, minutes and reports to the committee 
  was established at URL http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/fsucecc/

B. The Committee heard the monthly reports of the Director of OIT and his 
staff and directed questions to him as it was appropriate.  Among others, 
the subjects of the Directors monthly briefings included:
 Computer System Performance.
 Student Information System implementation.
 Software agreements.
 Internet II developments.
 draft OIT policy statements.

C. The committee received the oral report of the Subcommittee on Unmet Needs 
which concluded that the University needed to undertake long term critical 
planning in order to identify unmet needs before they became crises.
(URL http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/fsucecc/unmet_needs_97.txt)

D. The committee received the written and oral report of the Subcommittee on 
Student Access.  This Subcommittee argued for identification of IT needs for 
the students of each college so that we could adequately plan to fill them.
(URL http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/fsucecc/sar.html)

E. The committee received the oral report of the Subcommittee on Emergency 
Measures.
The reporting chairman indicated that the Emergency Measures subcommittee had 
carried out its duties successfully in the eyes of our 1996-97 Report to the 
Faculty Senate. But he commented further that he did not view these Emergency 
Measures as the proper role of the FSUC&ECC but, perhaps in conjunction with 
the prior two subcommittee reports, that some conclusion about critical 
planning was warranted.

F. Spurred by items C, D and E above, the Committee spent a good deal of 
discussion and efforts to explore the establishment of a Teaching, Learning, 
and Technology Roundtable (TLTR) according to American Association for Higher 
Education (AAHE) specifications.  The efforts to forward this concept are 
detailed in the years minutes.

G. The committee reviewed issues of OIT compliance with the Americans with
Disability Act (ADA).  The Associate Chancellor for OIT discussed the
then-current status of a civil rights complaint (filed with the Dept
of Education) which alleged that OIT's computer labs were not in compliance
with ADA requirements.

Numerous steps which OIT had taken (as of November, 1997) were discussed at
length, including mention of specific resources which OIT had dedicated to
this endeviour.  The committee was also advised of additional activities
OIT planned to take to resolve issues raised by the OCR complaint.

H. The committee received the Presentation of Margo Crist, the Director of 
  University Libraries in which she presented the Library's mission as she 
  viewed it (minutes Dec 11, 1997).

I. The committee reacted to the Faculty Senate requests for comment on four 
items.  Subcommittees were assigned to review the following papers:
  Item
  UIS- FY97 Annual Report and FY98 Tactical Plan - An oral report
       was presented.
  LIB 546 - A written report was provided and ia available at URL 
       http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/fsucecc/library_white.txt)
  LIB 547 - No report was provided.
  Carlin Proposals - No response was thought appropriate.

J. The committee discussed concerns regarding possible legal issues
incidental to a campus email "list-serve" that restricted membership on
the basis of gender.  The matter was referred to university counsel for
an advisory opinion, the committee was subsequently advised that OIT
would not permit a single-gender mailing list, that it was the sponsor's
responsiblity to ensure that mailing lists comply with all relevant laws
(including Title IX), and that OIT would suspend the specific list until 
such time that compliance with the law could be arranged.
(minutes Dec. 11, 1997; Feb. 17, 1998; Mar. 24, 1998)

K. The need for a virus alert policy was discussed.  Concerns were also
expressed about false alerts about non-existant virus scares, including
the so-called "good times" virus.  Mention was made of various virus web
pages, including that of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT),

(minutes Mar 24, 1998)

L. The telecommunication concerns of Family Housing residents were discussed
on numerous occasions.  This committee has discussed these issues in the
past and this item was reported in our annual report of last year as:

"1. Concerns of Family Housing residents.  The quality of the phone service
is one problem: delays in receiving voicemail, line congestion, misdialing,
and inability to connect to the modem pool occur frequently.  The system is
not functional for families.  One cannot add extensions, fax machines,
caller ID and other services that most families take for granted.  Finally,
the rates for long distance service are very high, but residents cannot
choose a lower cost service provider."

During this year, the committee heard concerns about perceived poor 
service, service which is inferior in quality to that provided to the
residence halls (eg. no computer network access), and policies which
may be in violation of the telecommunications act of 1997.

The committee also heard concerns expressed that there was not a clear
sense of which administrative agency was responsible for addressing the
concerns of the residents, and that it wasn't clear which issues were
the responsiblity of Housing Services' Telecommunications Office, and 
which were the responsiblity of OIT's Telecommunications Division.

The committee came to the conclusion that this issue of the Family
Housing telecommunications is an important one, but one which is beyond
the ability of the committee to resolve.  The committee thus suggests 
that other authorities address what the committee has consistently 
found, over time, to be an on-going concern of these residents.

 II. Issues for 1998-99
 A.  Furthering the TLTR initiative.
 B.  Making the FSUC&ECC membership list more functional.


 

III. Membership list for 1997-1998 Term.

UNIVERSITY COMPUTER AND ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
                           (Bylaw 6-8-2)
               Fifteen Faculty Members (At Large)
            Larry Ambs,              Mech Engr '98
            Bruce MacDougall, (Ch)   LARP '99
            Emily Hurn,              Library 2000
            Norman Sims,             Journalism '98
            Gene Fisher,             Sociology '98
            James Kurose,            Computer Science '98
            Robert Griffin,          HRTA '98
            Joseph Kunkel,           Biology '98
            Hossein Kazemi,          Management '98
            Michael Fast,            Spanish & Portugese '99
            Ernest Anderson,         Education '99
            Steven Brewer,           Biology '99
            David Damery,            Forestry & Wildlife '99
            Kenneth Lou,             HRTA '99


                               Members (ex-officio)
  VC Research/Dean of Grad School,                    Bruce McCandless
  Associate Chancellor for Information Technology,    John Dubach
  Chair/Research Council or des.                      ?
  Director of Libraries,                              Margo Crist
  Director of Telecommunications,                     Randy Sailer
  Director, Engineering Computing Services,           Mark Wingertsman
  Director, Computer Science Computing Facility,      Steve Cook
  Director, University Information Systems,           Peter Roberts
                                                  (designee: Tad Jackson)
  Director, Network Systems & Services,               Dan Blanchard
  Coordinating Director, OIT,                         Art Gaylord
  Graduate Student,                                   Ed Cutting
  Undergraduate Student,                              Ben Delong