Minutes of the ITICC Meeting,

Institute of Technology

December 9, 2004

3:35 p.m., Physics 170

Present: Graham Allen (Phys), Mark Anderson (Chem), John Baxter (Math), Christopher Bingham (Stat), Bryan Carlson (ADCS), Tom Chase (ME), Monique Dierckman (AEM), Matt Dushek (ECE), Ahmed Habashy (ME), Peter Hudleston (IT Dean’s Office), Phil Kachelmyer (ADCS), Kent Kirkby (Geol), Jerry Larson (ADCS), Larry LeMay (ADCS), Jim MacDonald (CSE, IT Labs), Dan MacEwan (Chem), Sean O’Neill (Astro), Roger Rusack (Phys), Farzad Sadjadi (Phys), Lucas Veverka (ITSB)

1) Introductions

The meeting began with a round of introductions.

2) Status reports from CSciE and ADCS

The only incident of note was reported by LeMay. It concerned a flood in the EECS building that had started on the 6th floor and affected all floors below. There is damage to the walls in ITICC labs EECS 3-170, EECS 2-170 and EECS 2-172, but no damage to the machines. The repairs will be done over winter break.

3) Final Presentation of Proposal for Fall Round of Improvements for the Public Labs

MacDonald went down the revised list of items the IT Instructional Computing Technical Committee has proposed for purchase in the fall round of public lab improvements [See also the web at www.itlabs.umn.edu]. A number of items have been added since the list was first presented (in October). All items fall under the heading of regular replacements, needed replacements or general improvements.

Major items include replacing the Cisco switches, which are all over 5 years old. The replacements will be the same as those NTS is using in its campus-wide network upgrade; they will give 1-gigabyte connectivity.

Another item is the replacement of the servers wally and ratbert, which are both over 5 years old and beyond the point at which service contracts can be purchased from Dell. In addition to their replacements, lower end servers will be purchased for use as domain controllers.

The back-up system for Windows is running at capacity and it is proposed that this be replaced with a LTO Ultrium 3 system, which will back up 400 GB to one tape. Although this is much more than needed for IT labs, it is no more expensive than the LTO-1 system currently used for the UNIX backup. The proposal is to share the cost of hardware and software for this with Computer Science and Engineering.

More access points are proposed in EECS 3-166, 3-170 and CE 230 to accommodate the increased demand for wireless connections.

It is proposed to replace at this time 25 of the 63 Suns that have reached their 4-year retirement age.

The total cost of the proposed improvements is slightly more than the balance of funds projected for FY05. Hudleston said that this is fine and will help reduce the carry forward balance going into the next fiscal year. He said that he would now bring the proposal to email vote by ITICC.

4) Modified Allocation of Lower Division Funds

Hudleston reviewed again the discussions that followed submission last spring of proposals for use of lower division instructional computing funds. The proposals included 3-year maintenance proposals of existing facilities submitted by Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology and Physics and 3-year “new initiative” proposals submitted by Chemistry, Geology and Physics. The committee approved a collective 3-year maintenance proposal for all four departments and new initiative proposals in Geology and Physics, but for one year only rather than three. Following the last ITICC meeting in October, Hudleston had met with a small group to address the issues raised in the spring. One key issue is: to what extent can personnel costs related to management of departmental lower division computer labs be supported by ITICC funds? Personnel costs had not been allowed, other than for software development, prior to this spring. Hudleston had sent the recommendations of this group with the agenda for this meeting. [It is appended to these minutes, also].

It was generally accepted that some portion of the cost of managing and maintaining lower division computer facilities could be charged against ITICC funds. There was discussion about how limitations on allowable costs for personnel should be expressed. The idea is that for large infrastructure costs, such as is the case for Chemistry or Physics, there should be a limit that is proportional to the total cost. The group proposed that this be 33%, which recognizes the significant effort required for maintenance, but also places some shared responsibility on the department to provide it. For departments with small hardware expenses, such as Astronomy, this proportionality is not appropriate. Most of the need is for software development; generally represented by some fractional cost of a graduate assistant or technical staff person. To accommodate this, an alternative limit of $50,000 per year is proposed. Although this doesn’t allow for inflation in future years, it was pointed out that the amount could be changed as appropriate by approval of ITICC.

In the case of new initiatives, it was felt that it would be better to restrict these to periods of one year rather than three. This provides more flexibility in use of these funds and reduces the likelihood that additional infrastructures will be built that may be hard to sustain. Hudleston had expressed concern in the spring that ongoing maintenance costs for facilities established in the previous six years not exceed the cost to establish the facilities. He said that he thought much of the cost of new initiatives might be in personnel for software development. He noted that so far the ITICC lower division funds have been used in innovative ways by the science departments, and other schools are making use of what we have developed. He thought it likely that there are developments elsewhere that might be adapted for use here. He hoped that departments would identity creative and effective ways to make use of “new initiative” funds.

Hudleston said he would send the proposal for modified use of lower division funds to ITICC for email vote, with some minor changes to the wording.

5) Other Business

Kirkby raised the issue of whether it was appropriate for departmental faculty to vote on proposals submitted by their own departments. He thought there was a conflict of interest, and suggested that faculty withhold from voting in such circumstances, both on their own proposals and on those of others being submitted at the same time. Hudleston said he did not think this was really necessary; the proposals being voted on are for the benefit of students collectively, not the individual departments or the faculty in those departments. At no time in the past would abstentions from voting have made any difference in the outcome of the votes. He did think that faculty and students from a given department, who are involved collectively in developing proposals, should have the same voting rights, so that if faculty were to abstain from voting, then so too should the students. It was pointed out that the situation is rather like submission of legislative bills, in which proposers of bills do not abstain from voting. Hudleston said he would give the issue further thought.

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Proposed Modification to the lower Division “General Guidelines for the Distribution of Funds for IT Courses”

A. One-time adjustment in support of Chemistry

Recognizing the significant maintenance demands of the instructional computing facilities established by Chemistry, not reflected in the 2004-2007 maintenance proposal submitted spring 2004, we recommend that Chemistry be allocated an additional $100,000 over three years to help meet that demand. This in effect brings the fraction of total 2004-2007 budget devoted to personnel in Chemistry to 29%.

Note: Chemistry did not receive any funds for 2004-05 under the "new initiative" category.

B. Modifications to Guidelines

Addendum to Part II: General Guidelines for the distribution of funds for IT courses:

Concerning Article 1.

Expenses in support of personnel may not exceed $50,000 per year or 33% of the total annual budget, whichever is higher.

Concerning Article 2.

Proposals for new initiatives shall be for a period of one year only. This allows for greater flexibility for meeting opportunities that may arise from year to year and reduces the likelihood that new long term commitments become established that exceed the revenue provided by lower division fees.