Notes and announcements
from ITD Senior Staff Meetings
July 18, August 1, 2006

Hi All

FYI, here are some announcements and brief notes from the last two senior staff meetings.

Announcements:

Full staff meeting and luncheon scheduled
October 4, J.C. Raulston Arboretum, time T.B.A.

Party to celebrate ITD’s Student Orientation activities
Tuesday, August. 8, 3-5 p.m.
Honors Village Commons multi-purpose room. (Next door to newest Unity lab.)

Pay raises
SPA got theirs in July; EPA get theirs in September.

Sharon Pitt takes job at GMU
Sharon Pitt, who has attended ITD senior staff meetings as the DELTA liaison, accepted a position at George Mason University and resigned her position at NC State in July. Before she left, Sharon thanked ITD for the collegiality she has experienced with staff and  praised ITD for the quality of work the we do.

Sarah Stein update
Many ITD staff know and have worked with Dr. Sarah Stein, associate professor in Communications, facilitator of the TLTR, and one of the authors of the Layer 8 white paper. Sam announced that Sarah will be working more with ITD in the coming year, mostly on VCL and SAS Initiatives. . She will also start attending the ITD senior staff meetings.  Welcome Sarah!

Meeting notes:

Getting ITD ready for the CIO transition
At the July 18 meeting, Sam reviewed the memo from Provost Nielsen and Vice Chancellor Leffler which announced that we will experience “a major transition in thinking and IT operation” over the next two years at NC State. They intend to create “a combined IT organization” with a new CIO position reporting to the chancellor.  The plan is to

1. Form a small group, headed up by an outside IT professional (not a “consultant”). This group’s task will be to study and broadly define the portfolio, scope of  responsibilities and resources for the new CIO (Sam said he thought this would likely be “all of central IT”)
2. Conduct national search for new CIO and hire by July 1, 2007. (Sam said he thought it likely they will be looking for an executive with political and corporate credibility and connections to help create opportunities for the university.)
3. Complete transition to new organizational model by July 1, 2008

Sam said he thought this was a good plan, and that part of ITD’s job is to help ensure it (the plan) gets executed well. He said that his first and foremost goal is to position ITD staff and functions to be successful in the new structure. He encouraged senior staff to look now for where the problems are, so staff and activities are in a strong position for evaluation. We will also be working on ways to present the work of ITD effectively so that the new CIO can make changes without major disruptions of service. This will involve looking ITD not in of the terms that are existing organizational units. Sam wants to “break down” the work into modular activity profiles and make clear the relationships and interdependencies among them. In addition to activity profiles, Sam would also like us to get started on staff profiles and to see this as an opportunity to take pride in the work we do. [I'll be sending out info about this soon- Jude]

Sam reported that the Provost has given him 3 priorities for the next year: 1. Leveraging VCL; 2. Working on the restructuring of MCNC (Sam is chair of the MCNC advisory committee); 3. Helping university deal with RENCI. 

Sam also reported that IT expenditures are one of four focus areas of President Erskine Bowles’ PACE committee. The committee is scheduled to make their recommendations by October 1, and they are likely to have an impact on all campuses. Sam and Henry reported that at the recent UNC CIO meeting, Bowles was very clear that he expected the CIO group to come up with proposals on how to do things better. (For more on this, see VCL update, below.)

VCL Update
At the August meeting, Sam announced that the VCL will be a high-profile major project of ITD in the next year. He feels the VCL presents a unique “window of opportunity” to help the university advance its goals in teaching and research while also bringing attention to the important contributions of ITD in general.  Leaders on campus are interested in the the VCL, as are leaders in the UNC and state community college systems. The project positions the university and ITD once again as innovative technology leaders, coming up with practical and workable solutions to real problems – including finding the kinds of efficiencies being asked for by President Bowles.

Over the past weeks Sam and members of the VCL team have been giving presentations to various audiences, including the UNC CIO meeting where it generated considerable interest. Much of the August senior staff meeting was spent discussing how to more effectively present the VCL to a broader audience on and off campus. Sam said he is also asking for more funds and staff positions to roll-out access to all VCL environments to all students on campus. (It is now available to all CoE and students in specific classes in other colleges.) Since the VCL uses established systems and services within ITD, Sam alerted senior staff to his expectation that more staff time will be spent on the VCL in the next year.

The VCL was launched as a joint  CoE/ITECS and ITD/HPC pilot project in 2004. However, given  the success and growth of the VCL in the past year, the HPC team now considers the HPC service environment as one of the many(over 50) environments available by means of the VCL.  The key idea of the VCL remains to “to address the increasing needs of both local and distance students and faculty for 24x7 access to advanced computing laboratory facilities”  Sam reassured the group that the intention is not to do away with student computing labs on campus. He did point out that student needs and resources have changed a lot since the computing labs were first provided on campus in the early 90’s. He said he expected that the rationale for keeping the labs and perhaps lab design and equipment would continue to change over time.

SAS updates
Sam thanked everyone involved over the past year in helping bring the joint SAS/NC State Analytics Initiative to fruition. ITD will continue to support the project in various ways. Henry Schaffer and Laura Grady are now working on curriculum development and training for the new MA program to be launched in 2007, pending NC State and UNC System approval. Sam said that ITD’s contributions to the new SAS initiative have bee noticed and appreciated by university leaders in Holladay Hall.

Student email update
Susan Klein reported that a proposal to establish students’ Unity email account as their official university email address has been presented to the Provost and staff. This is a business process decision, not a technical one she pointed out. The proposal is in compliance with the new Student Information System which is scheduled for completion in Fall 2007.

New Student Orientation activities
At the July meeting, Stan North Martin reported that ITD’s New Student Orientation efforts were were more informative and entertaining than ever this year, and he invited senior staff to attend at least one event. In celebration of these efforts, a party is planned for August 8. Stan said he hoped the Provost could attend. There are plans to submit the News Cast to SIGUCCS this year.

ClassTech update
Stan reported that ClassTech has been working on the renovation and technology upgrade of about 20 conference rooms, laboratories and other learning/meeting spaces over the summer. Two classrooms, Leazar 316 and  Burlington 1202, will be added to ClassTech roster for the fall. 

Data Backup & Archival Assessment Project
Barry Eriksen reported that the Distributed Data Backup & Archival Assessment compliance team has begun gathering compliance requirements and objectives to assess demand for data storage services among departmental and research units across campus.

Accessibility news
Saroj was happy to report that Mike Grace is the first person (anywhere that we know of) who has successfully developed software that enables remote access to a Linux/Unix environment by people using assistive technologies (including screen readers) on their computers (Windows, Linux/Unix or Mac). Saroj, Mike and Sina Bahram solved the  Windows remote access problems last year. These accessibility solutions have all been deployed on the VCL, which now provides people with a disability access to high-end applications and computing from anywhere, anytime, using any standard assistive technology. 

Cheers,
Jude