Location: 427A Waterman
Date: August 21, 1997
Time: 1-3PM
Recorder: Rebecca Martin
IT Plan Minutes 8/21/97
Attending:
Roger Lawson, Pat Russell, Lauck Parke, Joe Patlack, Martha Cafferky, David Punia, Rebecca Martin (recorder)
1. Consultation assignment
The agreement made at the last meeting for each committee member to contact 7 people (2 faculty, 2 staff, 2 students, 1 dean) was reviewed. The form of each discussion is left to the committee member, but the focus is to be drawn from the list of questions recorded by Carol Gilbert and the issues identified on our webpage. In order to be sure that we talk with all of the deans, the following assignments were made:
We need committee members not present at this meeting to volunteer to contact Pat Winstead-Fry, Chuck Hill, and Ed Twardy. Other key people identified, with the contact person, were Susan Wallace (Joe Patlak) and Dean Batt (Rebecca Martin). All committee members were asked to post lists of people they plan on contacting to the entire group.
2. President Ramaley
The meeting with President Ramaley has been set for 2:00pm on October 2. Dismay was expressed at the delay in scheduling this meeting. Several present relayed their perceptions of strong support from the president for our work, despite this delay. We agreed that we need to keep moving.
3. Open Forum
Plans for the open forum, tentatively scheduled for September 11, were discussed. Two options for this forum were identified: information gathering or information dissemination. Many felt that we are already gathering information from those who might be inclined to attend and that we need to have something to say. As we have made progress on identifying critical core issues (see last week's minutes), we have yet to reach consensus on proposed directions. A beneficial use of an open forum at this point might be for a trial balloon with our major ideas. Later in the meeting, it was decided to schedule this forum for October 9, at which time we will have developed our ideas through the committee retreat and tested them in our conversation with President Ramaley.
4. Retreat
Given our busy schedules and the feeling of fragmentation in some of our conversations (it is Thursday again and I haven't thought about this all week), we decided to bite the bullet and spend some focused time together working through the issues which have been raised. On Thursday, September 4 we plan to spend most of the day together working on the plan. Roger will send specific details out to the group. Note that there is an advance assignment (for your spare time).
5. Assessment assignments
The assessment assignments listed in our agenda were discussed briefly. Each team is expected to review the issues and prepare a short briefing paper for the larger group. This briefing should be drawn from existing information provide an overview on the status quo, identify major gaps/needs, and if possible estimate potential costs of addressing these.
6. Project Planning Assignments
These are all related and we should not compartmentalize them in our thinking. Like the assessment assignments, 2-3 committee members will review each project, update the larger group, and write a few paragraphs for the final report. These teams need to be identified.
7. Ongoing discussion
We continued to discuss the centrality of IT for the university. Is IT a central focus or a means to accomplish other ends. Is it the core or part of the core?
The CIO concept gained lots of support. One model discussed was a strong executive committee made up of campus IT stakeholders with the CIO emerging from this group. Another model would be such a committee with a CIO as a member. The goal of both the CIO and this executive committee would be to make IT work for the vision of the university. It was reiterated that this position should not be associated with a retreat to an academic appointment.
Rebecca Martin