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Technology Advisory Council Meeting Minutes - March 5 , 2004

Attendees: Steve Cuddigan, Ian Jacobs, Michael Ross, Joe Scarcella, Kurt Collins, Tony Coulson, Jason Reimer, Dick Botting, Owen Owens, Jim Monaghan

Minutes from the February 20, 2004 meeting were reviewed and approved.

Committee reports Tech Training – Mike Ross came back with new budgets for training 20 techs instead of 15. There are two vendors, Unitek and HOTT, and there might be a third. The total amount for either vendor is just under $40,000. Discussion on whether this should be a two year plan or a one year plan because BATS lost the majority of its budget.
A request was made to find out exactly what is left in BATS’ budget

A motion was made to earmark $39,267 for the Tech Training proposal and that the actual btraining classes will be worked out. The motion was seconded. Passed unanimously. A motion was made to appropriate $100,000 towards the creation of 10 more smart classrooms. The motion was seconded. The motion passed unanimously.

Ian Jacobs did an informal inventory of all labs and the tally came to 1467 pc’s and does not include Macs or Linux machines. Estimates put the number of machines on campus around 5000 to 6000 machines of all kinds.

Desire2Learn Pilot – Jim Monaghan handed out a list of participants in the Spring pilot and its anticipated enrollment. Tony Coulson passed out his proposal for a comparison study between Desire2Learn and Blackboard. He is also willing to combine a study on whether laptops would improve productivity with this comparison study. His angle would be: does this serve the students better? The counter argument was that wherever the teacher leads then the students would follow. This issue has many political ramifications. The financial aspect is important so a return on investment analysis is necessary.

Discussion then shifted towards the idea of what really is a BATS funding responsibility? There are also the questions of where other financial responsibilities end up if BATS has no funding. I.e. Help Desk. Institutionalizing the funding for things like Blackboard and other items is needed.

A motion was made to support funding for Tony’s project in the amount of $3600. The motion was seconded. The votes were recorded as: 6 in favor, 2 opposed, 2 abstentions. The motion was passed.

Ghost Software Purchase – A motion was made to approve the purchase of Ghost. The motion was seconded and was passed unanimously.

Virus Scan software - Via email: The Technology Advisory Council approved the purchase of a 3 year license of the Computer Associates’ eTrust software for $27,732.65 by Data Center Services.

Formal note: A big thank you to Ramiro DiazGranados for his efforts in getting the best price on the Antivirus software

The Committee has agreed to not meet during the week of finals. So the next meeting will be Friday, April 2, 2004 in the ACM conference room, PL-002d.

The meeting adjourned at 3:00 pm.

Minutes compiled by Michelle Behne

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