Institute of Technology
Minutes of the ITICC Meeting,
March 24, 2005
3:35 p.m., Physics 133
Present: Graham Allen (Phys), Bill Arnold (CE), Tom Chase (ME), Ahmed Habashy (ME), Peter Hudleston (IT Dean’s Office), Michelle Jacobs (CEMS), Phil Kachelmyer (ADCS), Satish Kumar (CEMS), Larry LeMay (ADCS), James Maatman (ITSB), Jim MacDonald (CSE, IT Labs), Dan MacEwan (Chem), Sean O’Neill (Astro), Jonathan Rogness (Math), Farzad Sadjadi (Phys), Tom Shield (Aero)
1) Status reports from CSciE and ADCS
LeMay reported that there has been continued delay in installing the security cameras in the labs in both ME and EECS. In the case of EE/CS 2-170, 2-172, and 3-166, installation has to wait until work on mold abatement is completed. MacDonald noted that significant usage of the UNIX machines goes ‘unrecorded’ by our monitoring system, when students log in to a UNIX workstation while sitting at a Windows machine in another lab. This way they can do their coursework using UNIX, but also have at their fingertips the convenience of Windows for email, web access, etc. Hudleston and MacDonald would like to find a way to monitor this usage, which is an important part of the picture of lab usage.
3) Initial Presentation of the Tech Committee’s Proposal for Public Lab Improvements for 2005-06
MacDonald described the items on the provisional list of improvements for 2005-06. The first is an HP Ipaq pocket PC for programming the locks on the lab doors, a system that the CS department has shown to be effective. There is a need to replace worn chairs with better-designed ones, with 50 planned for replacement at this time. Additional web cameras are needed to provide lab consultants with real-time monitoring in Lind 24 and CE 230. Computers reaching their 4-year retirement age include 38 in CE 230 to be replaced by Dell machines and a lab consultant machine for EE/CS 4-250. It is proposed to replace the UNIX workstations in the “high-end graphics and parallel computing” lab (ME 302) with Windows machines. This switch of platform is because the support available for ProEngineer and ANSYS on UNIX is diminishing. The replacement computers include 18 Dell Precision 370s and, in order to handle the parallel computing needs of CSci classes, 8 dual CPU rack mount computers. An access point is proposed to give wireless service to the IT study room in Lind 150. This will link to the university wireless system, rather than the IT labs. The carrels in the older IT labs are not well suited to the current set-up of computers. The proposal is to begin to replace the carrels in EE/CS 3-160/3-166 and 4-250/4-204 with tables like those in Lind 24 and other labs that are better suited for the work environment and protecting cables. The rooms should be painted while the rooms are empty at the time the carrels are replaced. Finally it makes sense to add 1 GB of RAM to the 9 Sun Blade 1500 computers in EE/CS 4-250 that were purchased a year ago. The CS department has found that adding the RAM in this case leads to a dramatic improvement in performance. The total cost of these items is estimated at about $238,000.
Hudleston said that another item to be added to the proposal is the cost of a site license cost for the software (eRecuiting) used by IT Career Services. This would then cover usage of the software by all IT students. Funding would be shared between lower and upper division revenue sources. Currently students pay a one-time fee of $27.50 to gain access to the system, and many students do not sign up and may not know about this arrangement until late in their undergraduate career. It would benefit all students if getting registered with this service were done proactively and automatically. It would avoid the situation that sometimes occurs when a student makes initial contact with a company other than through Career Services and, because they are not registered in eRecruiting, they will not be on the list when the company comes to campus for interviews. The total cost to the college of supporting eRecruiting for all students would be $15,000 a year, including support for Career Services. In a few years, we will move to an in-house software system which will involve no direct licensing cost to the college, although there will still be associated costs for using the system.
4) Other Business
None
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Attachment: FY06
ITICC Summer proposal (see www.itlabs.umn.edu/iticc/budget.php)