Faculty Senate Resolution on BOR IT-001 and IT-002

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Thomas Burkholder

N.B. This passed the Senate on Monday, January 28, 2013

Whereas, in that Academic Freedom is a public good; and

Whereas, all members of the CCSU community (faculty members, members of the administration, and students) and the Board of Regents have a responsibility to defend Academic Freedom; and

Whereas, the Board of Regents also has a contractual responsibility to defend Academic Freedom; and

Whereas the CCSU Faculty Senate has determined that BOR Policy Number IT-001, “Acceptable and Responsible Use of Information Technology and Resources,” and BOR Policy Number IT-002,“Electronic Communication,” violate core principles of Academic Freedom as commonly understood and as agreed to by the Board of Regents in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the Senate calls on the President not to implement the above named policies and to refrain from changing any Information Technology policies or procedures until the Senate certifies that the proposed set of revised policies and procedures do not violate Academic Freedom.

 

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Office 365 Migration for Students

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Thomas Burkholder

Lynn Bonesio-Peterson provided the following update about Office 365 for Students

1) We have been scheduled with Microsoft to start our migration on June 4th. According to Microsoft, the total migration time will be about three days with downtime for each individual user lasting about an hour. We are looking to move this date to sometime closer to the end of the semester, so the migration should happen sometime between May 10th and the end of May. We will begin messaging the students at the beginning of March.

 By waiting until now, we do not have to worry about synchronizing passwords for our users; they will automatically be able to use their current Live@edu password to access Office 365.

2) The key benefits over the current Microsoft Live@edu offering are as follows:

a. Mailbox size will increase from 10GB to 25GB.
b. The student will gain access to a hosted SharePoint site through which they can share files and collaborate on documents.
c. Access to web-based versions of the Office applications (Word, Excel, etc).
d.The Microsoft “Lync” chat client supports advanced features like Video chat and desktop sharing.

We are using the A2 plan, if you are looking for specifics.

In response to my question about the ability for faculty to use SharePoint and collaborate on documents, Chad Albert replied to me:

1) With regards to SharePoint, initially, students will be able to share data publicly and with each other, but Faculty will not have their own SharePoint site. After the student migration is complete, we will be looking at getting Office 365 accounts for all faculty and staff (sans-email). Once everyone has an Office 365 account, then we will be able to collaborate using the hosted SharePoint solution.

2) I don’t have a laundry list of missing features for web-based office, but it is comparable with Google Docs. Here’s a good 3rd party write-up:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/office-2013-web-apps-a-step-forward-but-still-dependent-on-the-desktop/

 

 

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Summary of Meeting with CSU-AAUP and BOR CIO Chang

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Thomas Burkholder
From: Vijay Nair [XXXX@wcsu.edu]
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 13:49
To: Jones, Jason (English); Burkholder, Thomas (Chemistry); ‘Rosiene, Joel (Math & Computer Science)’; ‘Swaminathan, Sudha (Education)’; ‘Hyatt, James A. (Environmental Earth Science)’; ‘Lockwood, Heidi L.’; ‘Petroski, David J.’; Richard Montague; Marie Wright
Cc: ‘Elena’; ‘Shea, Michael H.’; Chang, Wendy (Board of Regents)
Subject: System-wide IT committeesDear all-

Please contact your respective Faculty Senate Presidents and request that the Senate Information Technology Committees of your universities select, asap, one member and one alternate to serve on the following two system wide committees:

1.      Faculty Technology Advisory Committee.  At present this committee has representatives from all seventeen institutions under the Board of Regents.  However, this committee will soon be split into two; one for the State Universities and one for the State Colleges.

The Faculty Technology Advisory Committee offers a forum for identifying system-wide needs, including administrative and academic, that can be enabled by technology solutions.   Members of the committees serve as the sounding board for constituents and bring concerns and issues to the attention of the Chief Information Officer of ConnSCU.    Members of the committees also make recommendations to the Information Technology Policy Committee on technology policies, procedures, and standards.     The committee is chaired by the Chief Information Officer of ConnSCU.

2.     Information Technology Policy Committee.
The Information Technology Policy Committee (ITPC) is the primary body to advise the Board of Regents on policy regarding computers, communication networks, security, and other aspects of Information Technology at Connecticut State Colleges and Universities.  The committee has the following responsibilities:
1.     Develop and maintain system-wide policies on information, including information security policies and information technology policies.

2.     Recommend procedures and best practices in support of the policy implementation.

3.     Act as ombudsman for disputes and requests for exceptions regarding policy, implementation, and related issues.

The committee has representatives from all seventeen institutions under the BOR:  students, faculty, administrators, library directors, etc.  It is chaired by the Chief Information Officer of ConnSCU.
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BOR Draft Information Security Policy (November, 2012)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

Information Security Draft Policy, November 2012.

Comments are due to Jeff Clark (clarkj@ct.edu), BOR Security Program Manager, by Friday, January 11, 2013.  Please feel free to leave comments here and I will make sure they get to the BOR before the deadline.

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Link to Cybersecurity Video

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

Here’s the link that James was talking about at the October meeting:

https://www.securingthehuman.org/resources/ncsam

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Our first meeting of 2012-2013

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

The first meeting will be Friday, September 7, 2012 at 1:15 in Burritt Library (3rd floor classroom).   Agenda posted soon.

 

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May 4th ITC Meeting

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

Our next meeting is May 4th at 1pm in the Burritt Library Classroom (3rd floor)

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2012-2013 Software Requests

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

Here is the list of software requested.  All of the maintenance and upgrade items were funded.  The new items, highlighted in yellow, were forwarded to the provost for consideration for end-of-the-year funding.

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March 2, 2012 Meeting

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

The meeting will be at 1pm in the Sprague Carlton room.

Here is the Agenda

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Bylaws Revision

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Thomas Burkholder

I appreciate the excellent discussion today on the bylaw revisions.  The current bylaws are here and the marked-up copy is here: Bylaws Marked for Revision.

Please comment below.  If you need an account on the blog, register here: http://you.ccsu.edu/

Tom

 

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