ITD Senior Staff Meeting September 5 2006 – News and Notes
Note: Brown Bag Lunch with Sam rescheduled for Sept. 18, noon-1, ITD Conf. Room.
Bill Padgett’s retirement reception planned for September 22
A date has been set for Bill’s retirement party:
2 to 4 p.m., Friday September 22, Caldwell Hall Lounge.
Friends and colleagues from across campus are being invited to come and help celebrate Bill’s many years of service to the university. Please be there if you can. To offer help, contact Stan North Martin.
Elevator replacement starts October 17
Dennis Norris reported that Facilities has given him October 17 as the start date for elevator replacement project and December 18 as the expected date of completion. Emergency parking behind the building will be unavailable during the project, and the water cooler in 219 will be moved to the first floor. Alternative plans are being worked on for people who are unable to use the stairs. If you have not done so already, talk with your manager if the elevator-free months will cause problems for you or your work responsibilities.
Campus budget tightened for coming year
Due to the effects of a bleak revenue picture and increased energy costs, the university is in process of tightening budget expenditures for this year. Sam reported that as an immediate impact on ITD, there will be no new Compact Plan funds coming in, and the Provost’s Office has informed him that ClassTech’s budget will be reduced by 15%. It has not been decided how this will be implemented, but the general consensus among senior staff is that it is better to fully support fewer classrooms than to lower the standard of service for more classrooms. Henry noted that some colleges are cutting back on staff, including some filled positions as well as vacant positions.
2nd floor renovation plans change
Stan reported that the estimates for the renovations of Room 208 have come back at almost twice the amount predicted. Given that there is a budget shortfall for the university this year, there is no chance that there will be additional money coming from the Provost’s office. So the 208 project is back to square 1. The current hope is to put in cubicles and assign staff as best possible. Stan said the need for an additional small conference room will also will be addressed if possible. He asks for constructive suggestions.
CIO/transition planning to be main topic at ITD Full Staff Meeting.
Reminder: Full staff meeting, October 4 at the Arboretum. Tentative plans are for the meeting to begin at 9 a.m. and for lunch to begin around 12 with a brief wrap-up to follow.
Susan Klein and Sarah Noell led the discussion of plans for the content of the meeting which will focus on the goal of an optimal CIO/ transition. Senior staff gave feedback on a draft revision of the ITD mission and values statements. Sam asked senioe staff to help make sure we have a full representation of the major activities/services/benefits offered to the campus community, and he asked them to work with their staff to list activities/services from their unit. The full staff meeting will likely involve working on the many links and interdependencies ITD currently has with the campus communities. Sarah Stein strongly encourages highlighting ITD’s relationships and collaboration with college staff as well as faculty.
The main goal is to sustain a positive approach to the university’s IT reorganization. This will involve working together to represent ITD staff and services in the best way possible while also working to assure that ITD’s values and the best of our “organizational culture” are preserved.
Other transition related activities in progress
To make it easier for outsiders to get a clear impression of the depth of staff talent and expertise, we will get started in the next couple weeks with the project of getting staff bios online.
The Provost’s office has requested updated factsheet-type information from each of the colleges and Provost’s units. This is a nice informal communication opportunity for ITD to remind folks of the range of services and resources we provide.
Campus is planning for pandemic
Greg Sparks is on the university’s ad hoc emergency planning committee. This group is currently working on pandemic planning motivated primarily by fears of a global bird flu epidemic. He gave a brief report on the committee's activities, which are part of a UNC-system planning effort. Pandemic and epidemic planning is related to disaster recovery planning, but different in that the plans call for the campus to close down for a month or more. There would probably be a thousand or so students remaining on campus, and only certain critical activities would be maintained. A limited number of IT services would need to be kept operating - which ones would be needed is not clear at this stage of planning. Greg will keep us posted.
Fall-startup went well
Calls to the Help Desk didn’t indicate any major problems with IT for students or faculty during the fall start-up, Susan reported (specific stats will be ready soon). Calls for ResNet help were down this year (285 calls compared to 450 last fall). Stan said that ResNet was not seeing the virus issues of past years; he also thanked Greg Sparks and Greg James for ComTech’s work. ClassTech equipment worked well, but they had a fair number of requests for hands-on help from faculty new to the rooms who did not attend the Open House/training sessions offered in advance. Greg Sparks reported that, including booth and outreach efforts, ComTech’s customer service staff talked with around 5200 people during August. Debbie Carraway reported that 1800 workstations on campus are running the default WolfPrep environment, not including several hundred College of Engineering seats being added as they extend the environment further. About 60% of these workstations were upgraded to the Fall 06 image before the first day of classes. MicroSys has these and other WolfPrep metrics online at http://microsys.unity.ncsu.edu/metrics. Harry Nicholos reported that fall start-up was uneventful for UnixSys; however, they are working with Bill Coker on better ways to distribute Unix/Linux software to campus. ITD had 15 new part-timers who went through training and worked during move-in, 10 of these students will remain on ITD's P-T staff. Welcome new part-timers!
WebMail to add "rolling ad" capability
Harry demonstrated the new “rolling ad” feature that will soon be part of the webmail.ncsu.edu login screen. An average of 20,000 unique users use this service every day, so it is a great place to highlight services, helpful hints, etc. Harry invited folks to share ideas on how this new feature can be used to enhance ITD's communication efforts.
Hope this is helpful,
Jude