Attendance: Bazewicz, Candiotti (chair), Clarke, Huber, Pollock, Riemann, Yardley

The meeting came to order at 12:10 pm in the President’s Dining Room.  Alan Candiotti
reported that he had spoken to the Director of the Library about the timetable for migrating
library services from Forest.  She did not think a plan would be in place by January 1, 1999, and
therefore favored an alternate plan of keeping Forest running for an additional year and
identifying its cost as a one year item, and planning to migrate by June 30, 2000.  There has not
been sufficient technical consultation to identify alternatives and choose the best solution to this
problem yet.

 The committee discussed the planning for a new e-mail system.  Several options will be
available for the community to evaluate by November, with a plan to make the selection and
begin its implementation by early February.  Faculty, staff and continuing students will then be
retrained in the spring so that the old system can be discontinued by July 1.  The new e-mail
system is likely to require Windows 95, which means older Windows 3.1 systems will have to be
replaced.  Students continuing after July 1, 1999 will need to be on the network to use the new
system on campus.

 The committee returned to discussion of strategic priorities and quickly agreed that
faculty development, cited as a major priority in the 1994 plan, was still a major priority.  Staff
training is also a major priority, especially in view of the many changes coming in campus
technology during the next years.  In recent years, several large faculty development grants have
been received by the College, and one from the Theological School is now in the hands of a
foundation.  The committee encouraged continuing to seek grants, for project development as
well as faculty development, but also recognized the University’s responsibility for continued
staffing and support in this area.

 The committee then discussed academic facilities, including the Academic Computer
Center, mediated classrooms, and laboratories of different kinds.  The committee noted the
continuing need to provide specialized and/or high end computing facilities to supplement the
student computers, but only modest needs for general purpose computing facilities because that
need is generally covered by the student computer program.  Maintenance and replacement
cycles for the specialized and high end public computing facilities are a significant budgetary
issue, especially since many of them were purchased through grants, with the University’s
commitment for their upkeep.

 The committee noted that the need for mediated classrooms was growing and
recommended a strategic goal of mediating all classrooms used for teaching as soon as possible.

 The next topic of discussion was the student computer program.  Faculty members from
both the College and the Theological School noted the recent strong endorsements by the
faculties for continuing the program because it is an effective academic tool.  The committee
noted that life cycles of computers were getting shorter and that it was difficult to use the same
computer for four years.  The committee discussed possible ways of introducing a two year
refresh option into the program while still maintaining the University’s current level of spending
of allocated tuition funds.

 Anne Yardley gave a brief report about the progress of discussions in the Theological
School.  The Theological School shares the goal of mediating all teaching classrooms.  In
addition, the Theological School expresses a goal that its courses should each have an
appropriate Internet component.  Finally, the Theological School shares the goal of faculty
development and student training in technology.

 The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 pm, with the next meeting scheduled for Monday,
October 19 at 11:30 a.m.