Minutes of the ITICC Meeting,

Institute of Technology

October 20, 2005

3:35 p.m., Physics 166

Present: Bill Arnold (CE), Zain Asgar (ECE), John Baxter (Math), William Bear (Math), John Boggs (Geol), Evan Bollig (ITSB), Philip Bransford (BioMedE), Bryan Carlson (ADCS), Thomas Chase (ME), Rayna DeMaster (AEM), Robert Edman (Math), Peter Hudleston (IT Dean’s Office), Phil Kachelmyer (ADCS), Satish Kumar (CEMS), Larry LeMay (ADCS), Jim MacDonald (CSE, IT Labs), Dan MacEwan (Chem), Getiria Onsongo (CSciE), Roger Rusack (Phys), Noobtsaa Vang (ME), Lucas Veverka (ITSB), Richard Voyles (CSE)

1) Status reports from CSciE and ADCS

There were no reports of problems in lab operations. Hudleston said he had received an inquiry from a student about large-format printers. Are there printers in any of the IT labs that would allow printing of posters, for example, to display research results or a design project? He presumed that several departments have such printers because graduate students and others prepare posters for scientific meetings. Kachelmyer said that ADCS has such at least one such printer (there is one, for instance in the Coffman Union lab and another on the St. Paul campus), for which the charge is by the foot or by the inch [for the Coffman printer, with a print width of 42”, it is $10 per linear foot]. A printer in ME 308 can make black and white prints up to 11x17 in size. Some printers may not be set up to accept certain file formats, but this can always be changed. Hudleston said he assumed that there is no real need for a large-format printer in the IT labs, since alternatives appear to be available in several places. Most departments will allow others to use their printers if the printing cost is covered.

2) Lab Improvements Fall Round – Initial Presentations and Suggestions

MacDonald handed out a preliminary list of proposed purchases for lab improvements this fall. The list includes the planned replacement of chairs (50 of about 220 that should be replaced over the next year or so), an upgrade of the wireless network in the EE/CS building and an upgrade of 3 access points to go with it. Other items on the list are seven scanners to replace ones that are now 6 years old which, while still serviceable, are a long way from state of the art, and a new UPS for the server in the EE/CS machine room. These proposed purchases amount to $35,840.

There was some discussion about the wireless network. The proposed upgrade will support 802.11a/b/g protocols, while the current network only supports 802.11b. The upgrade will allow the use of the new Wireless Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) encryption/ authentification standards, which are much more secure than that currently used. The CSciE and EE departments also use this upgraded network and standard. In answer to a question, MacDonald said that ITICC is not being asked to cover the cost of the upgrade for the whole building. There are 25 access points for the departments and just 3 to serve the area used by students as study space. The old laptop network cards will work with the new network.

The wireless network for use in association with the public labs is separate from that used elsewhere on campus and maintained by OIT. This uses ‘Wirewall.’ MacDonald said the department and ITICC should use the strongest protection possible, and Wirewall does not provide this. He referred to a recent article in the Star Tribune about a breach of security in the Minnesota State University system. This is something we want to avoid.

There are other purchases that will be proposed, but MacDonald said the intent is to not provide specifics until the review committee (see agenda item #3 below) has made its report. Other things that need attention this year include an upgrading of the carrels (as has recently been done in EE/CS 3-170) in ME 308 and the replacement of 90 Dell computers. The latter are scheduled for retirement in Spring 2006, but it might make sense to purchase some of them now.

3) Appointment of Review Committee for the ITICC Labs

Hudleston said he had recently sent out an email to the ITICC committee providing information about an ad hoc committee he has appointed to review the operations and services provided by the IT public labs. Roger Rusack is chairing the committee. The membership of the committee and its charge are appended to these minutes.

The IT public labs have served students very well for more than 10 years. There are several reasons for carrying out a review now. First, the labs have been operating in basically the same manner for more than 10 years. Over that time, there have been many improvements in hardware and software and changes in the way students do their computing related to coursework. Are we still making the most efficient use of our resources? Many more applications run on Windows than in the past (ProE for example is now run mainly on Windows) and the UNIX machines are seeing less use than Windows. It seems likely that a lot of general computer use by students, which before had been done in the IT labs, is now being done by students on their own computers, especially with the wide use of laptops. A second reason for the review is related to space. The dean is under pressure to make the best utilization of space in the college. There are for example, significant demands for space in the EECS building. The computer labs should not occupy more space than necessary. It seems that demand for seats has lessened over the past few years and it may be that we do not need as many seats as we once did.

One issue that came up in connection with the review, but also independently, is that of printing. A number of departments at the university allow their students a certain number of free pages of printing per semester. Is this something we should consider for the public labs? It would likely be popular among users. Chase said that he would rather see a reduction in the fee rather than allowing free printing. MacDonald said that the cost to ITICC of allowing a limited number of free pages would not be great. One issue that would have to be addressed is how to charge for printing after the free allocation had been used up. We would need a mechanism to keep tabs of the total number of pages printed (which is easy to do) and then have a way to impose a charge when the limit is reached.

Another issue raised when discussing the changing pattern of computer use by students was the use of lab software on personal computers. For licensing reasons, most of the specialized software used in the IT labs cannot be loaded onto or accessed from personal computers. Apart from restraints imposed by the law and ethics, there is very strict enforcement of licensing restrictions by some vendors, such as Cadence. The question was raised as to whether it might be possible to get student editions of the most popular software, such as Mathematica and Matlab?

Bollig asked about the use of Linux and whether or not allowing the user in a lab to choose between booting up in Linux or Windows made sense. MacDonald said that, because of the frequent need to upgrade, and because this had to be done on all machines in given lab at a given time, we couldn’t allow machines to be run on different systems in the same lab at the same time, because this would mess up the upgrade, leaving some machines without the upgrade. Lab management does switch all the machines in a lab from Linux to Windows or vice versa for special use, but it can’t be done on the whim of the user.

Hudleston asked ITICC committee members to send any questions or comments about the labs to Roger Rusack or any other member of the committee. He said he hoped to have a report from the committee in a few weeks.

4) Other Business

Baxter raised the question of whether there might be some lessening of service as the security cameras replace consultants in some of the labs. Hudleston said the idea is that consultants would be readily reached by phone and could arrive in any given lab quickly, if not present all the time.

Attachment: Copy of letter to review committee members

September 30, 2005

To: Roger Rusack (chair), Physics

Thomas Chase, Mechanical Engineering

Joseph Konstan, Computer Science and Engineering

Lucas Veverka, Undergraduate Student

Robert Edman, Graduate Student

From: Peter Hudleston, Associate Dean

Chair, IT Instructional Computing Committee

Re: Review of Instructional Computing Facilities in the Institute of Technology

Thank you for agreeing to serve on a committee to review instructional computing in the college. The public instructional computing facilities have served the college and its students well for over ten years, during which time there have been significant improvements in hardware and software, changes in the way computers are used in instruction, and changes in the personal use of computers by students. It is time to assess these changes, to make sure that our facilities and resources are aligned with the needs of the curriculum and that we provide the right tools and environment for our students to carry out their course assignments.

It is the functioning of the IT public labs and classrooms on which I ask you to focus your attention. Currently, 75% of the fee revenue from IT upper division undergraduates and graduate students and 25% of the fee revenue from IT lower division undergraduates goes to support the public lab and classroom facilities. I attach a copy of the guidelines used in allocating funds to support the public labs.

Questions to address include:

· How has the use of computers by IT students taking IT classes changed with time? What changes do we expect in the next few years?

· Do we have the right mix of computer platforms in the public labs?

· Do we have the right software? Are we subscribing to software packages that we no longer need?

· Computer use, as measured by lab occupancy, has declined in recent years, although the number of students in IT has remained relatively constant. Does this decline reflect a decrease in the amount of coursework involving use of computers, decreased reliance on licensed software that can only be run on computers in the IT labs, or students using their own computers for general purpose computing that formerly they would have done in the public labs?

· Do we have more seats in public labs than we need, given the declining numbers of computers in use at any time?

· Are our computer classrooms appropriately used? Are they properly equipped to meet the needs of instructors and students?

· Virtually all IT students arrive on campus with their own computers, many of them laptops. How has the increased ability to make wireless connections on campus affected computer use by IT students?

· Are there needs/opportunities that we do not currently meet or take advantage of?

· Is the level of technical support appropriate to the scale of the operations?

· Are the lab consultants used effectively, and their jobs clearly defined and understood by lab users?

· We have reduced the numbers of lab consultants while maintaining security by installing security cameras. Is this providing adequate service without reducing service?

· Students have periodically complained that they must pay for printing on top of paying the computer fee. Should we allow students free printing or a limited number of free copies?

There may be other issues the committee considers importnant. The Office of Student Affairs will provide help and assistance to the committee in gathering data to help with the review. I would like a report, if possible, by the end of October.