Minutes of the Information Resources Committee
for September 24, 2002

Present: Lester McCann, Wei Song, Dennis Kaufman, Mary Lenard, Tom Peischl (ex-officio), Kate Pietri (guest)

Meeting was convened at 8:07am by Dennis.

By acclamation, Lester was named chair for the 2002-03 academic year.

In deference to our guest, Tom began by introducing his points of business:

1. Classroom remodeling. The plans for the remodeling of D139, 211, 213, and 215 in Molinaro Hall are in need of faculty input. (On Sept. 11th, Lester, Wei, and Tom attended a meeting with Don Kolbe, Director of Facilities Management, and the architects for the remodeling. Some suggestions were made by Lester and Wei, but no firm decisions were made.)
   
   The IRC has been requested to supply the names of at least two of its faculty members to attend future planning meetings for the renovations. The Committee on Teaching and Learning has already nominated J. Logsdon and J. Olsen to attend.
   
   The chair will contact Don Kolbe, Director of Facilities Management, to see about getting copies of the current plans for future building projects that could benefit from the examination of the committee.
   
   
2. Tom distributed copies of the Library Self-Study for the members of the committee to review. The committee was asked to read it as quickly as possible and bring recommendations to Tom's attention.
   
   As an aside, Tom informed the committee of the anticipation that PeopleSoft will be chosen to replace SIS on campus, assuming that money is available. A 24-month planning and conversion process is anticipated.
   
   
3. The UWSA OLIT office is currently seeking proposals from the vendors of course management software (e.g., Blackboard and WebCT), apparently in hopes of standardizing on one vendor for the UW system, if possible. There will be a review period (currently set for Nov 4th - Nov 18th) during which selected vendors will be giving demonstration conferences over compressed video. Committee members were asked to attend these conferences so that the committee's input can be used to assist with
   the selection process.

Additional business:

The committee members had been copied on a Sept. 20th email from Tim Fossum (Chair, Computer Science) to Tom. In his email, Tim requested Tom's assistance in identifying a campus information security officer and in developing and documenting a security policy for the campus. These and other actions are necessary to aid UW-Parkside's participation in a Center of Excellence in Information Assurance Education application being organized by UW-Milwaukee. The chair will seek additional information from Tim on the status of the application process and on the expectations that UW-Milwaukee has of Parkside as a member of the application group of campuses. Tom will be in contact with his counterparts at other UW system schools to help him begin to develop an up-to-date campus security policy. Before the application deadline in December, it is hoped that Parkside can (at least) demonstrate that it is working toward the creation and adoption of a campus security policy.

The chair will distribute forms on which the committee members can indicate their availability for future meetings. Members are urged to return them promptly.

Meeting adjourned at 9:00am (approximately).

Notable Action Items:

(1) Identify volunteers to attend future classroom remodeling planning meetings.

(2) Read the Library Self-Study and bring recommendations to Tom's attention.

(3) Plan to attend as many of the course management system compressed video presentations as possible.