Attendance:
Mary Duffy, Library, Brian Giza, Chair, Education, Manau Manciu, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eng, Maria Ivette Barrata, Paulo Pinheiro da Silva, CS, Helen Foster, English, Holly Denney, Registrars, Ken Pierce, IT

Guests: Carlos Salinas

1.  Minutes: Minutes were approved with amendments.

2. Strategic Plan. 
It was requested that IT do a presentation on the strategic plan. Ken Pierce is willing share the plan with the committee but it is important to maintain confidentiality of the plan as it hasn’t been vetted yet by the VPs or President Natalicio. According to Ken there is a lot of overlap between the plan and the IT concerns that Frank Poblano collected.  It was pointed out that all we need is an understanding of the issues, that we might be able to help him get input. It is important get the dean’s input before the plan is more broadly disseminated. The board approved a motion that the members would abide by the need for confidentiality.  It is likely that the plan will be sent out in .pdf format. It may be that the plan will raise more questions [within the committee] but we may not have the background to argue intelligently about it. 

3.  Campus IT committee.  
Brian attends this committee’s meetings. Membership is limited to the President, the VP’s, 1 student and one faculty.  

4.  Faculty survey. 
Brian has received 15 responses. He removed the no comment answers.  We need to advertise the survey more, 15 is not a representative sample. It was asked if the answers could be ordered by average.  Cut the individual responses and show only the average. But that will work only if we get more responses. It was suggested that the survey be sent out via broadcast message. It was also suggested that the survey be used as a sample to encourage greater participation. Brian will send the committee members the survey for input first. If the survey is sent out via broadcast it must be approved by a VP. It was suggested that the 0’s be changed to 1’s in order to show the true relevance. It was pointed out that we want to avoid manipulating the data.  This was countered by suggesting that the survey with the 0’s doesn’t show the relative importance within a discipline.

5.  IT Concerns.  
Many of these issues are already being addressed by IT.  It was suggested that there should be faculty input because IT might not have the best solution to the problems. Ken agreed that it would help if IT publicized their methods / progress. It would preserve the structure of the categories. It would also prevent the appearance of IT doing something to the faculty or vice versa.  

6.  Faculty Senate presentation. 
During the faculty senate report there was a proposal for the University to adopt a database developed at UT Arlington that would provide a way to provide opportunities for collaboration across institutions. It would be used for tenure and tenure review purposes. The system uses PHP.  The database is searchable by area of expertise. It captures information on faculty research.  The data was entered by student employees without the faculty’s knowledge. UTEP already replicates some of this information through digital commons, DNN and so on.  In addition there is already a faculty database initiative on campus, but it isn’t ready for prime time. It was suggested that a database of this sort should be done for the knowledge not for individuals.  Otherwise it will be obsolete within only a few years. It was pointed out that the big players in the software world are all ready working on this sort of thing, only they are using metadata. This product is nothing special, it doesn’t involve the right focus, i.e. involve the faculty. We need our own strategy and to do it right. Since this product has been suggested perhaps we should be questioning the costs (funding, maintenance, etc) and ask the full senate to address its possible adoption. We need people to examine the product. It was pointed out that Scholar.com already exists and does this same function. In addition consideration should be given to security, how the tool will be used and should it involve experts like Paulo. The problem is that IT can duplicate the functionality of the database and they can do it for free. UTEP doesn’t have the money to throw at something of such marginal value. That doesn’t address the need for a tool to use for tenure and tenure reviews. We should try to do this “smart” not incrementally.

7.  Action Items:
The board approved a motion to update the status column on the categories spreadsheet (Frank Poblano and Ken Pierce).

8. Next Meeting.  
The next meeting will be March 20, 2007, from 12:30-1:30 PM.  Location will be announced. We will alternate the times so that other members have a change to attend. 

9.  Adjourned: The meeting was adjourned at 2:00 PM.