Present: Mary Ellen Birkett, Eric Brewer, John Davis, Megan Gallo, Chris Gole, Nicholas Howe, Sam Intrator, Thomas Laughner, Eric Loehr, Katwiwa Mule, Herb Nickles
Student Representative: Gray Lehring
Minutes of October 31, 2007
The minutes of the October 31st meeting were approved as written. The committee agreed to the following schedule for spring CET meetings:
2/1/08
3/14/08
4/11/08
5/9/08
These meetings will be from 2:00-3:30 PM in Stoddard Hall G4 unless notified of a change.
Grant initiative proposals
Thomas Ciufo: This proposal is a request for equipment, tools, parts, and computers to expand the resources Smith currently has in the area of basic electronics, physical computing, and human-computer interface design. Eric Brewer said that his department would support this lab equipment going forward. The committee agreed to support the request for $5,885.00 but later found that several lines were missing from the proposal and that the full request was for $7,685.00. The members communicated about this via email and agreed to fully fund this request.
Dan Rist: This proposal for equipment upgrades to the Theater’s digital design lab was not approved by the committee. Tom Laughner said that with joint funds from the Provost’s Office and ITS, the Theater has just received some new equipment and Eric Brewer felt that this summer when the Science Center does yearly upgrades, they could pass along some more desktop equipment. The committee did agree to fund the request for Adobe Production Premium Suite in the amount of $600.00
ePortfolio discussion
Tom said that many areas of the college are interested in a system that could be a repository for writing samples over a student’s full four years at Smith - Dean’s Office, Engineering, and the CDO advising task force to name a few. This group will meet and discuss what the needs are and which products most closely meet our needs. Tom also suggested that at some point we may have to write a new policy regarding ePortfolios.
The committee would like to have a representative on the task force discussing ePortfolio and Sam said that he would talk with his department colleagues to get representation from them. This could be a good topic for discussion by both the Moodle and the faculty development sub-committees.
Tom said that any decision and implementation is probably a year away but this is something that Smith needs to move forward with. Wesleyan and Carlton have required portfolios for several years.
Request to change JobX approval period defaults on Bannerweb
Students are hired in JobX, but once they are hired and submit their time sheets, they are in Bannerweb. The current system in Bannerweb displays the current pay period only during that specific timeframe; if an approver goes in the system early in the week following the pay period, the system defaults back to the beginning of the fiscal year. Herb said that he would check with Yvonne Ting to see if it was possible to change the default settings.
Report of ITCC meeting – Nick Howe
ITCC was reviewing revisions to the acceptable use policy. Herb said that he could share the draft changes with CET in January via email. Mary Ellen suggested that this policy should be circulated on a yearly basis, much the same as the alcohol and discrimination policies are handled.
Sub-committee Reports
1) Learning spaces: currently there are renovations being done on the 24 hour labs.
2) Moodle: the sub-committee is looking for a representative from Division II (Don Geraliman in Anthropology was suggested) and also a student representative.
3) Faculty development: this sub-committee has identified digital imaging and bibliographic software as areas of interest. They are talking with Thomas Ciufo and Eliza Lanzi and looking at session on Moodle such as Gray Book.
Other Matters
1) Email archive storage: The committee asked if there was information regarding email archiving available on TARA, if there is a new Novell client for Mac users, and what most people do to access archives.
2) Code-free DVD players: The committee wondered where these DVD players are and Tom said that he would follow-up on this because the new players were specified as code-free.
3) Ref Works: The committee asked how to get information about bibliographic software to students early in their Smith career. Tom said that there is an information literacy program which can be accessed by contacting the library representative.
The next meeting will be February 1st at 2:00 PM in Stoddard Hall G4 conference room.
Respectfully submitted,
Constance McGinn, recorder