University of Minnesota

Institute of Technology

DRAFT

Minutes of the ITICC Meeting,

September 18, 2003

3:35 p.m., 3-230 EE/CS

Present: Bill Arnold (CivE, faculty), John Baxter (Math, faculty), Christopher Bingham (Stat, faculty), Bryan Carlson (ADCS, staff), Tom Chase (ME, faculty), Matt Dushel (ECE, student), Peter Hudleston (IT Dean’s Office), Phil Kachelmyer (ADCS, staff), Satish Kumar (ChemEMatS, faculty), Larry LeMay (ADCS, staff), Jim MacDonald (CSE, ITLabs, staff), Krishnan Mahesh (AEM, faculty), Kent Mann (Chem, faculty), Mark Nicosia (BME, faculty), David Nordsletten (BME, student), Jonathan Rogness (Math), Dana Ruggiero (Chem, student), Roger Rusack (Physics, faculty), Hitoshi Sakamoto (ME, student), Karen Swanberg (Geology, staff), Dale Swanson (ECE, staff), Anand Tripathi (CSciE, faculty), Lucas Veverka (ITSB, student), Doug Victoria (CCE, faculty)

1) Introductions

2) Status reports from CSciE and ADCS

MacDonald reported that the start of the semester had gone smoothly. LeMay said that he had eliminated double coverage of lab consultants with the introduction of fiber optic security cables and video cameras in the labs.

Kachelmyer informed the committee that we had in the first week of the semester run out of Matlab licenses for some tool boxes on several occasions. This was unexpected because we had increased the number of licenses from 150 to 175 just last year. One concern and possible cause of the problem is that some workstations may be configured to latch on to a Matlab license when the license server is restarted. Whatever the cause, the effect of running out of licenses is most serious for classes such as Math, which uses Matlab as part of classroom instruction. Kachelmyer said he was in the process of getting 25 (and perhaps 50) more licenses. It is expected they will be available next week. [Note added later: they did become available.]

Chase said it seems to him people are migrating to Matlab from C++, and this may be a factor in the increase in demand for licenses. Bingham wondered if the open source Matlab clones, such as Octave, would provide a solution to the problem. Rogness said it wouldn’t work as a quick solution for Math, as course material would have to be rewritten.

Currently IT lab management becomes aware of problems like this when users send messages to <operator@itlabs.umn.edu>. Might there be a way of automatically setting an alert when all licenses are in use? One way now would be to check at set intervals how many licenses are in use. Baxter wondered if we might consider increasing the number of licenses if usage consistently came within 10 of the limit.

Hudleston thought that the current system actually worked quite well. We have become aware of the current problem fairly quickly and steps are being taken to deal with it.

3) Use of Classroom/Labs – Reservations, Special use

Hudleston said that recent events indicated that we needed some improvement in the way labs are reserved for classroom use and how information about reservations is shared. He explained that IT now has 4 computer classroom/labs that are reservable by IT instructors for classes. They are: ME 302; Lind 24; EE/CS 2-170 and ; EE/CS 2-172. Priority of reservation in Lind 24 is given to Mathematics and in the EE/CS rooms to Computer Science. Other than this, it is first come first served. Hudleston said he occasionally allows individual instructors to reserve for one-time use part or all of these or the non-classroom labs, provided that access to similar operating systems is available to other IT users in another lab. Special use is rarely authorized during the academic year.

Hudleston described the recent events that indicated we needed a better system. Each semester, Math reserves Lind 24 all day on Tuesday and Thursday for IT calculus. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday it is available as an open lab for any IT user (or for reservation by other classes). A request was received to reserve a lab for 2 hours on the second Monday of the semester to allow an instructor to demonstrate use of software in an ME class. Hudleston approved using Lind 24 for this purpose, unaware of any conflict. It turns out that Math has tutoring in Lind 24 on Mondays and, although this doesn’t utilize all the lab, the tutoring in Math and demonstration in the ME class couldn’t go on at the same time. It did not help that Math had no advance warning that the other class and been given permission to use the lab on that Monday, or that the lab had to be set up temporarily to run Windows for the demonstration (the lab is otherwise set to run Linux for Math). None of this would have been a problem had Math known well ahead of time that the lab would be unavailable for tutoring on this day and time, so that it could have warned the students in calculus.

Several people indicated they were not aware of the process to be followed for reserving a classroom for a regular class (it is done through the ITICC faculty member of the department making the request). MacDonald said there is a web page where the reservation schedule of the classrooms is recorded, but this is not currently linked to other pages. It was agreed that having the procedures for reserving rooms made generally available on the web – indicating departmental priorities where they exist, and showing the status of reservations would be helpful to faculty and departments. We might have “hard” reservations for class meetings and “soft” reservations for tutoring; the latter can be worked around other classroom use if necessary. Math would like to have a week’s notice if another class were allowed to reserve Lind 24 again on a Monday. This seems reasonable, and might be generally applied for requests for one-time use of space in the classrooms. Rusack said, however, that sometimes instructors needed to make use of facilities at short notice.

Hudleston said that we would clarify and make more public the procedures for reserving labs or parts of labs as classrooms for regular classes or special purposes. He said, however, that he would continue to limit allowing instructors to reserve general purpose labs, especially during the semester.

4) Communication.

This follows directly from the previous item. A number of committee members said that faculty in their departments did not know what facilities, hardware or software, were available in the labs, or what the philosophy for lab use was. Swanberg asked if there was a mission statement? There is, but it is hidden in the “Operating Procedures” document, which can be found on the ITICC web page. Hudleston said the mission part of the document should be available in a self-standing format, separate from the details of how ITICC operates.

Kumar described how some chemical engineering students appear to be unaware of the existence of the IT labs until they get to upper division. They discover them only when they take upper division classes that require their use. They are not happy about finding out they have been paying for a resource they were not aware of. Could the labs be better advertised to new students? Hudleston said we already do tell students about the labs, such as in the Undergraduate Catalog and the IT Survival Guide, but students may not connect the labs described with the technology fee/computer fee they are paying. Dushel said that when you open an account, it tells you will be charged the IT fee, and some students may think that if they open an account they will be charged an additional fee, beyond any fee they were charged at registration. MacDonald reminded the committee that information about who is charged the fee is given to those opening the account. Some suggestions were made for making it clearer that there is only one fee charged per student per semester and that all IT students have access to the labs starting as freshmen. The statement that students see when they open an account could make it explicit that they pay only once a semester, and we could inform students about the labs and the fact that they are for all IT students at freshman orientation/registration, and/or by sending an e-mail to students at the beginning of the year.

It was agreed that, at a minimum, we would change the language that appears when students open an account and the language in the IT Survival Guide to make it clear that there is only one IT fee and that most students pay it automatically when they register, not when they open an account in IT labs. One suggestion is to have a link from the account-opening page to the student’s fee statement (which needs X.500 authentication) so that a student when opening their account can check on the spot to see if they have already been charged the fee.

5) Schedule and Plans for 2002-03

Hudleston had distributed earlier by e-mail the schedule of fall meetings. A principal order of business for the fall is a second round of proposals for public lab improvements, completing the process that is begun in the spring. The reason for doing things this way is so that the improvements can be carried out in two manageable chunks rather than in one big chunk over the summer. The ITICC Tech Committee will be asked to bring their initial proposal for fall improvements to the next meeting, and final consideration will be given to this proposal in November.

6) Other Business

None.