September 17, 2003
Noon, Faculty House

Attending: Martha Voyles, Ralph Savarese, David Ellison, Vince Eckhart, Bob Cadmus, Susan Ireland, Christopher McKee, Bill Francis, John Kalkbrenner, Helen Scott

The committee approved the minutes of 9/3/2003 with a slight revision: "Helen Scott agreed to send a link to committee, a link detailing the current status of ITS and directions for the future."

The committee approved two Faculty-Faculty Tutorial proposals. Guidelines indicate that each participant receives a $650 stipend plus a total of up to $75 for materials.

The committee approved a reading group proposal (the ongoing Political Economy Reading Group). The amount awarded was (up to) $702. Historically, the college has had up to four reading groups occurring simultaneously.

The committee learned the bottom-line (approximately $90,000) for its annual budget. The ISC's budget has increased slightly this year. The budget covers many areas: individual curricular development projects, faculty weekend seminars, reading groups, CFFLS, faculty-faculty tutorials, new faculty orientation, etc. Some funds are normally set aside to be allocated at the discretion of the Deans' office. The Associate Dean reports to ISC when funds are disbursed. Helen and Terri will put together a general budget for the next meeting, to give the committee a sense of how funds are normally distributed.

The committee considered its responsibilities for reviewing Academic Computer Use Policies (ACUP). After discussing complexities and uncertainties (e.g., who should deal with non-academic computing issues?), the following plan emerged.

(1) Have Bill Francis, John Kalkbrenner, and Helen Scott gather information on the kinds of activities the (now disbanded) Academic Computing Committee once carried out.
(2) Have that team (and others on the ISC) assemble a list of computing issues, and divide the issues into three categories: (a) instructional (and therefore deserving of faculty scrutiny); (2) non-instructional but deserving of faculty scrutiny; and (3) not deserving of faculty scrutiny.
(3) Use the above information and subsequent analysis to draft a note to the Faculty Organization Committee, a note that recommends action regarding the allocation of faculty (and other) resources to computing issues.

The committee briefly reviewed the outcome of last semester’s faculty survey of electronic resources. The survey will likely be redistributed in some fashion this semester, perhaps with appeals at the division level that highlight the survey’s importance. The committee agreed to discuss the results of the survey’s first distribution at the 1 October meeting. Christopher McKee, who will be absent that day, will ask Kevin Engel to attend that discussion in Christopher’s place.

Helen Scott will send a copy of Draft Guidelines for Requesting Support for Teachings & Curricular Development for review at the next meeting.

Terri Phipps will gather reports from people who received past awards from the ISC.

At the 15 October meeting, the committee will hear reports on the ACUP.