SUFFOLK COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE
COLLEGE COMPUTING COUNCIL
MINUTES
May 18, 2012
10:30 a.m., Distance Education Rooms
Members Present: James Amoroso, Paul Basileo, Ed Hassildine, Thomas Law, Nina Leonhardt, Steve Rios, Gary Ris, Helen Wittmann
Members Absent: Steve Clark, Christopher Conzen, Pete DiGregorio, Joseph Gansrow, Stephen Green, Nick Hoffman, Allen Keener, Susan Lieberthal, Faye Lourenso, Steve McIntosh, Nathaniel Pugh, David Quinn, Drew Rabinowitz, Jane Shearer
Representatives
Present: Grzegorz Fabiszewski, Doug Kahn, Alicia O’Connor o/b/o Louis Petrizzo
I. Minutes
The minutes from the previous meeting held on March 2, 2012 were approved with corrections.
II. Campus Computing Council and Technology Deans Reports
a. East Campus – Helen Wittmann
a) The committee did meet but limited attendance made it difficult to cover very much.
b. Grant Campus – No Report
c. Ammerman Campus – No Report
d. Technology Dean’s Report - No Report
III. Subcommittee Reports
a. Academic Computing Subcommittee – Ed Hassildine
a) The committee did meet and the topic of Print Management was discussed. The general consensus is that we’re waiting for the NAC in order to find out what the framework is before looking at various packages in depth.
b) NAC Project
(1) GR reported that funding is in place and ordering has begun. The equipment is expected to be in house shortly thereafter.
c) Virtual Desktop Project with SUNY and ITEC
(1) GR reported that the existing AD structure doesn’t flow up to Buffalo so we’ll be taking a look at how to rearrange our AD’s structure so we can put two AD’s up in Buffalo.
b. Standards Subcommittee –No Report
c. Student Technology Fee Subcommittee – Paul Basileo
a) The committee met and discussed fund availability for the storage archive project and the possibility of boosting the ADA compliant software to ensure availability on all campuses.
(1) A discussion ensued regarding the availability of funds for the archive project and advance purchases. PB explained that they have been asked to see what can be advance purchased this year and how this advance purchase will enable them to obtain the items now with the understanding that the funds will not be available in next year’s budget. DK noted that the Office of Instructional Technology will contribute $7,500.00 toward the archive project for the Dell Equalogic purchase which is on state contract. The estimated total cost of the project is $56,000.00. PB emphasized that the purchase of storage units will enable the college to preserve vast historical resources, particularly images and videos, for future use and reference in a way that is reliable by IT standards.
d. Training Subcommittee – Nina Leonhardt – The committee did not meet.
a) Training Funding
(1) A discussion took place revisiting how training gets funded and the need for campuses to budget for training. The discussion concluded that there would be no training for the remainder of this academic year and if training were to take place in the next academic year there would have to be provisions made by the campuses to fund the training.
b) Needed Training
(1) NL informed that work will be done over the summer to determine what training is needed. GR mentioned that there is a need for Java training and would ask the Computer Center to contact NL to discuss further.
e. Networking and Services Subcommittee –No report.
f. Policy Subcommittee – No Report
a) GR inquired if AO had an opportunity to discuss reforming the Policy Subcommittee with the General Council and if they felt there was a need.
b) A discussion ensued regarding the iPad Pilot Project and clarification from a legal standpoint of people having the ability to download their own apps onto College equipment. GR noted that he would like the report back from the iPad Pilot Project. The conversation concluded that Gary would email the pilot project group to get specific feedback and then communicate with Denise Passero at Jefferson, and Mike Radomski at ITEC regarding their deployment of iPads.
g. Planning Subcommittee – No report.
a) Items to be discussed throughout the agenda.
h. Wireless Subcommittee –No Report
IV. Old Business
a. Virtual Computing Labs/Desktops – Gary Ris
a) Discussed earlier in section III. Subcommittee Reports, a. Academic Subcommittee, c) Virtual Desktop.
b. Options for Storing and Distributing Videos SAN/iTunes– Doug Kahn
a) iTunes
(1) Dr. Mazzarelli requested a one page position paper for her and Counsel to review. We’re putting that together for her because they have the contract but they wanted to understand Suffolk’s business case so that’s going to be presented by SMc.
b) SAN
(1) DK reported that discussions took place regarding the equipment. A quote is in for four 18 terabyte units. A discussion with the people who are doing the media work on the campuses, the ETU, as well as SC, is needed to determine where it would be located on each campus.
c. Software contract, Adobe
a) A discussion took place regarding whether the new offering from Adobe is worthwhile or not. It was decided that the campus ETU’s would have a discussion and consult with Paul Matus and Continuing Ed and report back.
d. Technology Survey - Campus Computing Councils – no report
e. iPad Pilot/iTunes Account – no report
f. Student Computing Webpage –Doug Kahn
a) The Student Computing Webpage is ready to be published sometime next week and will live under Current Students.
b) HW inquired if the students would be surveyed to find out if the Student Computing Webpage is what they want or need. DK replied yes but a discussion would be necessary to determine how to do that, whether through Student Activities or Freshman Seminar. HW agreed to help with that.
g. Technology Assessment
a) GR reported that a discussion took place at the last Planning Committee Meeting that we would try to collapse the SWOT analysis from the individual Campus ETU’s and the Media Services into one. It was also suggested to condense the assessment of Computer Information Systems because it was multiple pages. We did shorten our assessment to two pages while keeping a lot of worthwhile detail. GR asked if the ETU’s and the group looked at their SWOT analysis to see what commonality exists. HW replied that the ETU’s have been working on a document that, once completed, will be shared with each of their groups. Feedback will be obtained and then forwarded to you for the next meeting.
b) GR acknowledged that that would be helpful for the next phase or when we start looking at the campus technology survey. HW informed that the Eastern Campus Computing Council and the Eastern Campus ETU were looking at the Focus Group questions and could see where we could glean questions for a survey. We’re working on bringing something together. GR noted that he would follow up with Chris Shults to verify if there are other comments from the Focus groups. HW suggested for future focus groups that he ask for clarification of the groups comments as they seemed vague.
c) GR inquired if any input was received from the other two campuses, to which HW replied she had not received anything yet. GR will follow up with both the Ammerman and Grant Campus.
V. New Business
a. Questions on streaming video to the classroom. – Gary Ris/ Steve Clark/Technology Deans
a) GR raised the question to the group if there were concerns about not being able to stream to the classroom. There was very little response and it was concluded that this seems to no longer be an issue.
b. Student Email - Transition from Live@edu to Office 365 – GR
a) There are services being changed on the Microsoft Live side and in some cases they are better features becoming available. They’re transitioning out of Windows Live to Office 365. On the positive side, it really provides access to Office products in the Cloud and provides opportunities for things like Sharepoint in the Cloud and other new technologies. The downside is, it takes away the Skydrive as it’s known now by diminishing the amount of memory we have available in the Skydrive for students. Currently they have 25G. Hardly anybody is even using a fraction of that so they’re dropping it down to 7G. The problem that we have with this is that there isn’t an owner of Student E-mail. So how do we make this decision or how do we deal with this decision? I don’t have an answer. Does anybody have any ideas? Who should own Student E-mail? In other institutions there’s an Academic Computing Dept that owns student email. We don’t have an Academic Computing Dept, we’ve got individual academic computing areas but there really is no central academic computing department so we’re kind of at a loss.
b) The Eastern Campus Computing Council has discussed the topic of student e-mail and the frustration of it being so different from administrative email. Since most of the faculty doesn’t see what students see, it is difficult to teach it in classes. A suggestion was made for Faculty to have student login accounts created. TL suggested that the survey include a question to the students asking what their experiences and frustrations are that they have with the e-mail. GR replied that there are a lot of features of the system that nobody knows anything about and again without an owner who’s promoting this students have to find it themselves.
c) GR asked if the ETU’s see themselves as supporting student email. HW replied that the ETU’s would discuss the issue and report back.
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