UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON FACULTY SENATE MINUTES – September 1, 2004

President Auchmuty called the September 1 Faculty Senate meeting to order in the Farish Hall Kiva at 12:15 p.m. 

MEMBERS PRESENT: [35]                                      
ARCH:     D. Kacmar
BUS:        S. Khumawala, M. Parks, D. Rude
CLASS:    B. Byrnes, S. Craig, P. Gingiss, W. Herendeen, J. Kotarba, R. Murray, D. Papell, J. Rushing, G. San Miguel, F. Schiff
EDU:        M. Connell, S. McNeil, A. Warner, C. White
ENGR:     S. Kleis, G. Paskusz
LAW       M. Duncan                        
LIB:         S. Ferimer, M. Thomson
HRM:      K. Titz
NSM:      G. Auchmuty, D. Blecher, P. Copeland, J. Eichberg, G. Etgen, E. Leiss, D. Wells
OPT:       R. Manny, S. Quintero               
TECH:     K. Greenwood
GSSW:    H. Karger       

MEMBERS ABSENT:  [16]                                                                                        
BUS:        W. Chin              
CLASS:    K. Brown, A. Jacobson, B. Lange, J. Middents, G. Trail, R. Weldon              
ENGR:      T. Cleveland, O. Ghazzaly, T. Helwig, D. Zimmerman
LAW:        S. Huber                                                                        
NSM:       A. Ignatiev, K. Kadish  
PHA:        C. Pedemonte
TECH:      C. Goodson

ON LEAVE:  [1]                                                                                                                      
CLASS:    V. Brady (w/E)

VISITORS:   
Jerry Strickland (Interim UHS Senior Vice Chancellor and UH Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs/ Provost), John Rudley (UHS Vice Chancellor and UH Vice President for Administration & Finance), Charles Shomper (UHS Vice Chancellor and UH Vice President for Information Technology), Dona Hamilton (UHS Vice Chancellor and UH Vice President for Legal Affairs and General Counsel), Elaine Charlson (UHS Executive Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and UH Associate Vice President for Academic and Faculty Affairs), Ed Hugetz (UHS Assistant Vice Chancellor and UH Assistant Vice President for Planning & University Outreach), David Bell (UHS Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs), Ed Apodaca (Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management and Admissions), Theresa Monaco (Professor of CUIN), Barrott Goldsmith (Reporter, Daily Cougar)

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES:  The May 12, 2004, minutes were approved.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Senators are asked to complete their Schedules for Fall 2004 and return them to the Senate staff as soon as possible.

The Fall Faculty Senate Retreat will be Friday, September 17, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Shamrock Ballroom A of the UH Hilton Hotel.  Senators are urged to make every effort to attend.

The campus is invited to celebrate the Inauguration of Dr. Jay Gogue as the University of Houston System Chancellor and University of Houston President on Friday, October 1, beginning at 12:15 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the UH Hilton Hotel.

On the handout table senators should pick up a copy of the UH Expression Policy, which outlines the process for exercising Free Speech that is not part of official University business, and UH at a Glance, a handy guide that provides some facts and figures about the University.

The 2004-2005 guidelines for the three internal research grants programs are available on-line at www.research.uh.edu.  These programs include: the New Faculty Research Program (deadline:  October 18, 2004), the Small Grants Program (deadline:  November 1, 2004) and the Grants to Enhance and Advance Research (deadline:  January 31, 2005).

There is also a Faculty Workshop on Research and Intellectual Property on Friday, September 24, from 9:00 to 11:30 a.m. in the Flamingo Room of the UH Hilton.  This program will cover how to locate funding sources, process a proposal, develop proposal budgets, coordinate human subjects and animal care needs, how to apply for internal grants and UH procedures regarding the intellectual property and technology.  For more information, contact Rosemary Grimmet at 39201.

To keep up-to-date with the Faculty Senate, check out its Web page at:  http://www.uh.edu/fs/

 KUDOS:

Kudos to Roland Glowinski, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Professor of Mathematics, on receiving the 2004 Theodore von Kármán Prize.  This international honor in the field of mathematics was established in 1968 and is only awarded every five years.  Presented for notable applications of math made to mechanics or the engineering sciences in the five to 10 years preceding each award.  Dr. Glowinski was recognized for his “sustained outstanding contributions to mechanics and applied and computational mathematics, especially in the area of complex problems in fluid mechanics.

Kudos to the School of Theatre and to Sidney Berger, Professor and Director, on the 30th anniversary of the Houston Shakespeare Festival.

Kudos to Anne Jaap Jacobson, Professor of Philosophy and Engineering, who has been named co-Chair of the program committee for the 2005 Society for Philosophy and Psychology Conference; this is the oldest of the interdisciplinary societies that represent cognitive neuroscience. 

Kudos to Sara McNeil, Senator from Education and Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction, on being elected co-chair of the University Commission on Women.

And in the category of Above and Beyond, the Faculty Senate would like to recognize the efforts of Sen. McNeil, Steve Mintz, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History, and Mary Gray, Teaching Fellow, for calling, individually, over 100 students registered in their Weekend College Class to make sure that each one knew to register for both the History and English courses that are part of the class.

And finally kudos go to Staff Council and Angie Shortt, Staff Council President during the past year, for another successful Cougar First Impressions event.  This year’s two-day CFI event featured 500 volunteers at 19 tented locations answering a record 20,523 questions from new and returning students.

REPORT FROM AND DISCUSSION WITH FACULTY SENATE PRESIDENT:  Giles Auchmuty

(1) 2004 Faculty Senate Reapportionment – The Faculty Senate Constitution mandates that every four years this body reapportions itself.  In February of this year Dr. Rudley was asked for a list of all the faculty who were on the payroll as of February 1, 2004 to ensure the numbers were accurate.  The data shows 846 full-time, tenure-track faculty.  Part-time faculty adds another 40 or so with another 500 or so of non-tenure track faculty.  By reapportioning them in proportion to the numbers in various colleges three colleges (LAW, LIB, and NSM) gained one extra representative each and three colleges (CLASS, ENGR and TECH) lost one representative each.  The Faculty Senate Constitution is a bit out of date on the definition of faculty, so the Executive Committee looked at three different ways of counting.  Each method gave the same result, so the Executive Committee decided to use the traditional way of counting, which is based on 100 percent FTE faculty on the tenured/tenure-track.  The specific data is available in the Faculty Senate office.  Because the reapportionment was done a standardized basis faculty numbers could be compared from 1992 – 2004.  In that period, the number of full-time faculty members is 854 plus or minus 40 with the lowest number being 815 in 2000 and the highest number being 893 in 1996.  Essentially this university has had uniform numbers of faculty for the past 12 years with a flux ration of 5%.  The numbers of students has gone up tremendously in that period.  However, the number of graduate and professional students hasn’t grown very much.  Two weeks ago the Office of the Provost had a very successful new faculty orientation.  It seems that UH hired about 45 new tenure-track faculty for this year and about 65 other classes of faculty.  In the newly revised Faculty Handbook there is just one class of tenure-track faculty, but there are six categories on non-tenure track faculty:  adjunct, visiting, research, clinical, instructional and part-time.  During this 12 year period there has been a considerable increase in the number of non-tenure track faculty who are not represented in the Faculty Senate and not counted for these purposes.  This is something that this body should examine. 

(2) Faculty Advisory Committees – A lot of progress was made over the summer drafting charges for some new faculty advisory committees.  The groups approached about forming advisory committees were very enthusiastic and cooperative.  Three new system committees are being proposed, including committees for the Office of Advancement, the Office of Governmental Relations, and the Office of the General Counsel.  The UH System committees will include representatives from all the Faculty Senates in the UH System and so will need to be approved by the other universities.  There are also two UH committees:  Human Resources and Purchasing and Plant Operations.

(3) Resolution on Primary Caregiver Leave – It seems that many of the specific requests included in the Caregiver Policy are in conflict with current state legislation.  The Senate got a letter from Dr. Gogue this morning that states at least one regulation that is in conflict will expire on September 15 of next year.  The administration will look into ways to try to enact that resolution.  Dr. Gogue has asked Dr. Strickland and Dr. Rudley to meet with representatives of the Faculty Senate to see just what can and cannot be done. 

(4) Change in Senate Calendar  - The September 22 Faculty Senate meeting has been cancelled.  The next Faculty Senate meeting is paired with the Fall Faculty Assembly which will be October 13.  Dr. Gogue will give the “State of the University” Address.  The revised meeting schedule is available on the Faculty Senate Web page.

(5) Board of Regents – At its last meeting the Board of Regents approved the 2005 UH System Budget.  Overall expenditures are up 8%.  At that meeting, Dave Irvin said that currently there is $199 million worth of on-going construction projects on this campus alone.  The final budget for the Library expansion is just a fraction under $50 million.  The Board also approved a new parking garage which will be between the Hilton Hotel and the Recreation and Wellness Center in Lot 1A. Center.  Rather than housing a super market on the ground floor, it will have a Visitors Center and Student Services Center.  It is projected to cost just under $25.8 million and be completed by January 2006.  Information about the garage is available in the Faculty Senate office.  The Board approved the garage without final plans.  The Board also approved a pay raise of 2.25% for UH faculty to be distributed by deans and chairs.  This amounted to a total less than $1.9 million.  Only $250,000 of it was allocated to equity raises.  This is a number the Faculty Senate should keep in mind when discussing any other budgetary issues in the future that the total raise money for the 846 on-going faculty was less than $1.9 million or less than 1% of funding for construction.  Pres. Auchmuty said that it seems as though salary pay raises for faculty are definitely not a major component of the budget.  In fact salary compression and inversion are accelerating.  In the Spring, Al Warner and he got information that had been provided to the Higher Education Coordinating Board about faculty salaries in previous years.  The data that showed an overall tenure-track increment of 6-10% for last year, when the increment for faculty was 3%.  Dr. Warner and he thought that this was an error, but were convinced otherwise because new faculty were hired at a much higher salary.  For example, somebody is hired at $90,000 to replace a faculty member who was making $60,000.  From the University’s point of view this looks like a 50% raise.  There appear to be a lot of issues on the statistics about salaries at UH.  ""Salary compression and inversion is accelerating.  In the Spring, Al Warner and he got information that was given to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating.  They thought this was an error, but were convinced otherwise. There are a lot of issues involved with these statistics, so Dr. Warner and he plan to create a Faculty Senate Task Force on Compensation and Retention to help get useful data.  The faculty size has remained fairly constant.  Provosts and Deans in the past would talk about how many new faculty had been hired, but they never mentioned how many faculty had been lost.  Other factors affecting faculty compensation include parking, which has gone up 4% and insurance which has gone up considerably.  The Task Force will be composed mostly of senators.  Nominations and volunteers will be taken for the Task Force which would work to get good data.  The concern about faculty numbers did influence the UH System Principles and priorities, but when money is spent on buildings, there isn’t money for faculty retention."  Sen. Papell asked what is the point in having a Faculty Affairs Committee if every time an issue comes up that is pretty central to the interest of the faculty, the Faculty Senate responds by creating a task force rather than doing it within the committee structure.  Pres. Auchmuty said the idea of the task force is just to get the statistics; it is not to develop policy.  The Task Force is just to ensure the Senate asks the right questions to get good data.  It will work with Libby Barlow.  Pres. Auchmuty said if the whole FAC want to do it; fine. 

(6) UH System Strategic Planning - One of the main things that has happened over the last nine months has been the development of the UH System set of strategic principles.   When Dr. Gogue came here a year ago he promised to hit the ground listening.  He did, talking to a lot of people, and he found that “people were not on the same page.”  He asked for a group to be chaired by Dr. Strickland to develop ten to twenty strategic principles for the UH System.  Hearings were held by a committee of 18 people from across the system, including students and staff.  Of those 18 people, 70% were administrators and 70% were from other universities in the system.  This is in no way a UH Strategic Plan and in no way is it a faculty plan.  There was a lot of input.  During an April retreat the Board of Regents was given a set of strategic plans to review.  The Board was concerned with how to provide higher education for people in the Houston area through 2015.  A lot of thinking was driven by demographic information.  The nice thing about universities is the five or ten year lead time on customers.  Anybody who is going to be in any university by 2015 is already born and in school.  Universities have a much better idea than many other businesses about who will likely want their services and how they will want services delivered.  The Board of Regents is charged with making sure that what is provided is done right.  The final version of the Strategic Plan has just eight principles but it has a number of specific initiatives.  The plan is of importance to the faculty because this is actually the job description of the administration.  This is what the Board would like to see us the UHS do over the next ten years.  There isn’t any statement about professional or graduate education in the document.  The specific initiatives in connection with UH are the ones that involve research and faculty retention.  One of the issues that came across in the strategic planning process was the fact that many of the university and many of the new teaching centers are going to work with community colleges.  There are a lot of community colleges around the Houston area and they have the benefit of raising funds from the tax payers.  Dr. Strickland has pointed out that community college transfers do succeed at a higher rate than many of the first time in college students.  Pres. Auchmuty outlined the eight principles that the Board of Regents adopted.  Sen. Leiss asked if the plan was available on the Web?  Pres. Auchmuty said yes.  There is a link on the Faculty Senate Homepage or the direct link for the UH System Strategic Plan is  http://www.uhsa.uh.edu/sysplanning/finalprinciples.doc.  Sen. Leiss asked who were the Faculty Senate members on the UH Strategic Planning Committee?  Pres. Auchmuty said they were the Senate Presidents in UHS, so he was on the committee for UH.  Sen. Herendeen asked if the 30 initiatives will be available at the Faculty Senate Retreat?  Pres. Auchmuty said yes.  Pres. Auchmuty said Ed Hugetz was in charge of the whole process.  Dr. Hugetz said Dr. Gogue asked for the Board to approve these principles and the initiatives with the understanding that they would be taken to the Faculty Senates for reaction and input.  Dr. Hugetz said this is still a draft document.  He requested feedback.  Many of the initiatives deal with system-wide issues.  They also drop down certain specific issues relating to UH.  There is a very specific initiative dealing with admission standards at UH.  A very definite sense that came from the hearing involves deans, faculty and Regents that there is a desire to up the admission standards at UH to increase the graduation rate at UH and move UH out of Tier 4 in US News and World Report rankings.  There are other initiatives regarding health science opportunities in the medical center.  All of these things relate to the discussion about the number of faculty: (1) what is the right size of faculty, especially tenure-track faculty and (2) exactly what should be the enrollment growth of the UH over the next eleven years.  Dr. Hugetz asked for input on anything missing.  In regards to graduate and professional education being left out, that is a primary goal for UH, not the system.  At the system level it was most important to emphasis issues like quality and excellence.  Assuming that in the plans for the campuses that if faculty feel that there is a need for that to be embedded, then that is something that should be discussed.  Sen. Warner said the language under which this strategic plan was proposed stated that this was a final draft and that it would come back to the Senate and other bodies to consider and give feedback.  Sen. Warner said this can be done at the Retreat but he would strongly urge his fellow senators to go into that Website and look at document before the Retreat and get a sense of it.  Pres. Auchmuty said it is a huge change from the way that people were viewing the system from before Dr. Gogue came here a year ago.  

(7) Faculty Senate Retreat -  Among topics to be discussed at the September 17 Retreat are the UH System Strategic Plan, possible Constitutional changes, forming new advisory committees, plans for the October 1 Inauguration and plans for forming a Task Force on Faculty Compensation and Retention.  The Senate will talk with Dr. Gogue and Dr. Freiberg will give an update on FS-CoUG activities.  Sen. Warner will say something about his plans for the twelfth Scholarship and Community Conference.  (8) There have been some changes in the administration.  The Office of Enrollment Services and IT have been moved under the Provost’s Office.

REPORT FROM AND DISCUSSION WITH THE INTERIM UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SYSTEM SENIOR VICE CHANCELLOR AND UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS AND PROVOST:  Jerald Strickland

            Dr. Strickland said Dr. Gogue is sorry that he could not be here.  He is attending a Greater Houston Partnership meeting at this time.  He sits on the board.  This would have been his anniversary date.  Dr. Strickland said he started to work eight days later. 

            The Search Committee for a Provost will be re-constituted very soon.   Dr. Gogue and Dr. Bell have been working on that.  There was a memorandum e-mailed last spring that as soon as the faculty returned to campus the process would start again.

            Dr. Strickland said the individual college commencements seemed to go well.  Some protocols may need additional standardization but there were Regents and administrators at all of the commencements, and it seems, at least from the students and his standpoint, that everything went quite well.

            With regard to strategic planning, yes, it is a Board of Regents strategic plan; yes every person, every public and elected official had an opportunity to come and speak; the superintendents, faculty, individual members, and deans and all the people who sat on the planning committee appreciated that.  Overall there was 30 to 35 hours of testimony at the four universities.  Dr. Strickland said it was a learning experience for him and for a lot of the committee who had not heard all of the issues.  Once people have looked at the final document and sharpened the initiatives with their input, it will be a reasonably good path to follow as long corrections can be made along the line.  This document is intended to be a path along which the system can move for opportunity reasons, for quality or access reasons or for cost reasons.  There is a lot in the plan for this faculty to be doing.

            With regard to the faculty, UH did add 47 new tenure-track faculty members and lost 26 faculty members as of today.  There will be more clinical faculty added, maybe some lecturers.  As of today that’s the kind of balance that the University has – not a lot of gain but not a lot lost either. 

            For the next years the administration has planned not only for faculty raises, small amount that it is, but it has also planned for faculty hires for next year.  That again is nearly 50 tenure-track faculty members and another 30 or so non-tenure track faculty.  UH is searching for these faculty members right now.  There is a constant search however for another 30-40.  These positions were approved more than a year ago, but the search is on-going.  UH is looking for a lot of fine quality faculty.

            The enrollment, as of today, is up a little from a year ago but that will change.  It changes everyday as the students pay their fees.  Ed Apodaca, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management, is watching that very carefully.  Enrollment Services, including Admissions, Financial Aid, Records, etc., are now realigned with the Office of the Academic Affairs.  Mr. Apodaca will report to Dr. Elaine Charlson and that has been going on since June 1.  Dr. Charlson’s position has been changed as of today to Executive Associate UHS Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and UH Executive Associate Vice President for Academic and Faculty Affairs.  Effective as of today, the Division of Information Technology will be realigned within Academic Affairs.  We are quite pleased about that.  The academic side of the house will partner with Information Technology to promote the priorities of the academy.  This is a good step.  IT started in the Provost Office.  Dr. Charlson will be greatly involved in that.  She has a good team and she can always complain to the Provost.

            There has been substantial change in some of the classrooms.   Five auditoriums, including the Kiva are undergoing renovations.  Dr. Strickland thanked Mary Lou McGregor and Brian McKinney for working on this.  He also thanked Dr. Rudley and his team for getting these things done in a timely manner and making sure that the classrooms were mostly finished by August 23.  A few rooms, like the Kiva, are not quite finished yet. 

            Dr. Strickland said the resolution about the primary caregiver leave was covered but he wanted to let the Senate know that the administration will try its best to find a way to satisfy more of the request than it has so far.  There will be an opportunity after September 15, 2005, to address part of a legislative mandate to look at all the kinds of leaves and make recommendations to the Board of Regents and to the Coordinating Board.  The resolution was an appropriate one.  It keeps the administration’s feet to the fire and the administration wants to do what it can as long as it is legal. 

            There is not an easy solution to compression and inversion.  As UH hires new folks, additional problems are created as pointed out by Pres. Auchmuty.  It is one that is going to require not only the Task Force and the Faculty Affairs Committee, but also the administration to be on the same page.  UH needs to be able to make the case to the people who fund it; to be able to make the case to the legislature, etc.  There is a strategic principle and a strategic initiative that says let’s compare faculty salaries, let’s do those things that are necessary to retain the best people.  The Board of Regents says that is what they want to do so there is a window of opportunity.

            Dr. Strickland thanked Sen. Murray for helping the Board of Regents  understand the demographic changes that are expected and give them the picture of the potential of role that this University might have to serve some of the growing population.  Dr. Strickland said that community colleges are going to have to step up and are stepping up to the plate. They have seen enrollment go up nearly 25% for this fall.  After a couple of years some of those students will be potential UH students.  Somewhere in this system the universities are going to absorb and find a place for lots more students.  That is the responsibility for the Coordinating Board in “Closing the Gaps.”

            Sen. Rude asked what is the enrollment and among the new tenure-track hires what is the ethnic and gender breakdown?  Dr. Strickland said he didn’t have the ethnic breakdown but the gender breakdown is 36% women and 64% men.  Dr. Apodaca said as of today UH has registered 36,100 students, but expects to have about 35,050; it will be about 100 more students this year than last year.  Dr. Strickland said that is nearly what was predicted last fall; it is about .3 of 1% not quite a .5 %.  Actually, UH’s budget is based upon a .5 % increase. 

            Sen. Craig asked what is happening to hours per student?  Dr. Strickland said he hadn’t seen that.  UH was down this summer.  Mr. Apodaca said the last time he checked UH was slightly up at 4.1 - 4.2 courses.

            Sen. Leiss said so UH went up in numbers and in hours per student.  Dr. Strickland that is good if that holds; that is really good.  Sen. Leiss said good for administrators but not necessarily very good for faculty.  Dr. Strickland said much of UH’s funds are driven by student credit hours and so it really is indirectly good for faculty and certainly good for everyone.

            Sen. Warner said this is a base period that started this past summer, so the enrollments for this summer, this fall and this coming spring will be used as the base for funding followed by any growth.  Is UH continuing to be relatively flat for graduate and professional enrollment with the growth being at the undergraduate level?  Dr. Strickland said the doctoral level compared to last year at this very same day is 104%, so UH is about 4% up.  Professional schools are right at 100% or 101%; post baccalaureate enrollment is the only one that is down.  Dr. Hugetz said PBs are driven by jobs and also a lot of the colleges and departments have moved away from accepting the PB, so it is due to a combination.  Dr. Bell said the other thing affecting PB numbers is the extent of those post baccalaureates converting to masters or doctoral students.  Sen. Warner said the one other part of that is if a PB student enrolls in a course that generates masters level credit, it will generate masters level funding.  Dr. Strickland said right now UH is down about 250 PBs out of the total of 1,500 or 1,600 so it is down a little. 

 BUDGET & FACILITIES COMMITTEE, CHAIR – Saleha Khumawala

            The committee is working on a faculty rebuilding plan.  After the last Executive Committee meeting and based on what Sen. Warner said Sen. Khumawala has already written to Libby Barlow about the data that is needed.  Ms. Barlow is collecting data and will soon forward it.  The committee will be meeting shortly and will report on its plans at the next Senate meeting.

 COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES, CHAIR -  Anne Jacobson

            Sen. Paskusz said the committee has met several times and is in the process of getting committee appointments together.

 EDUCATIONAL POLICIES & STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, CHAIR – Dan Wells

            The committee has not met this fall semester.  The committee met one time over the summer.  It is  continuing to work on the textbook policy and admission standards issues.  The committee also has been asked to take up a new issue to determine with regard to course grading whether faculty have the sole responsibility to post grading or whether other units can possibly impose certain standards on the faculty member.  It will be another controversial issue The committee plans to meet in a couple of weeks and will have a full report at the next meeting. 

            Pres. Auchmuty said at their last meeting the Board of Regents approved a new distribution formula for income from contracts and copyrights.  The University does have a policy about copyrights that hasn’t been very fully discussed.  What is understood by most faculty members, they don’t like, and the Intellectual Property Committee, which advises the Vice President for Research, is mostly interested in patents, so this is something that the Educational Policies and Student Affairs Committee has agreed to review.

            Sen. Paskusz said one of the things that the Committee on Committees is discussing is the issue of system committees.  It seems to be a nebulous area as to who really should be appointing people to the system committees.  Pres. Auchmuty said there are already a couple of system committees.

            Sen. Eichberg said the Intellectual Property committee did meet during the summer in June at which time it changed the policy for allocation of income potential contracts.  Another portion of that has to do with the wording of what constitute the type of project from which UH would expect money. 

            Sen. Eichberg asked if there was a change in the wording of the policy?  Sen. Wells said as of now there is no change in the wording.  Sen. Wells said he received no comment about it; the intent was to try to use the Senate to gather comments, to try to explain things and to have faculty make comments to FSComms@uh.edu, but there have been no comments made..  Sen. Eichberg said he would bring this up at the next Faculty Senate meeting.  Sen. Wells said the Executive Committee is discussing how to deal with that and it probably will come up at the next Faculty Senate meeting.

            Sen. Leiss said he was under the impression that a number of years ago Dr. Vailas announced that the University had no intention of getting any monies out of books that were published by University authors.  Has there been a change in that?  Pres. Auchmuty said the change is in the way that books are written these days. Basically the current one say that if a faculty member uses UH computers, university students, etc. to write a book, then depending on the amount to which the university provides resources, it might fall into the category.  This is what has to be discussed.  There is a lot of different a lot more technology that is involved in writing books and preparing text book materials for classes and there is a real question about who owns and who gets what.  Technology has changed the nature of writing and producing books, so that copywriting is different now than it was several years ago.

            Sen. Copeland said that is not true for most books.  Most books are just so many characters thrown together on a typewriter.  Even though it is done on a more sophisticated computer, most books are still typed out.

            Sen. Leiss said he would go one step in the other direction.  It used to be that faculty had a technical typist to type their books, now they get to do it themselves.

            Pres. Auchmuty said there are a lots of questions about this and it is different for different people.  He added that he didn’t believe If a faculty member is developing Web courses, the university would copy write every Web course developed.

            Dr. Hugetz said he thought the policy about books hadn’t changed. The issue on web courses is that because there is production value the committee felt that those things should be considered.  Though the practice has been that the university never exercises its right to get anything out of those courses because the practice has shown that most web courses are recommended closer to what the class courses are.  A few years ago when web courses started there was the sense that because technology was involved people could make a lot of money producing web courses.  The experience has not turned out to be that way.

            Sen. Schiff said what if a book comes out of a federal grant?  He said that he was under the understanding from the NSF that he could pick up his grant and move it to any other university.  Does the fact that the university houses him during the time he receives the grant money, give it some claim on any products that might come out of it?  Pres. Auchmuty said as Dr. Hugetz said up to the present the university hasn’t.

            Sen. Wells said if one makes the analogy of an invention, it does.  If a faculty member starts the invention here and finishes it somewhere else, UH still has partial claim to that.

            Sen. Schiff said the NSF has indicated to him that they can move the grant but he didn’t think that UH has to sign off on it.

            Sen. Eichberg said there is an intellectual Property workshop that is going to take place September 24.  He urged faculty go and voice their opinion and learn about it.        

 FACULTY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, CHAIR – Howard Karger

            Sen. Karger said there was no formal report.

            Pres. Auchmuty said Sen. Papell wants Faculty Affairs to look after faculty salary but the Budget and Facilities Committee Sen. Papell is equally involved.

            Sen. Papell said his point is that in the seven years he has sat on the Senate that people always say the Committee on Committees feels the business of the Faculty Senate should be more directed towards committees and less directed towards the Executive Committee, but the Senate always brings university administrators on to task forces every time something interesting comes up.  His point is not particular about whether Faculty Affairs Committee or Budget Committee is used but that the Senate has a committee structure and it should use it.

            Sen. Karger said he agrees.  He added that he is personally very interested in this issue.  Retention and promotion are really crucial issues that the Senate needs to address, so he suggested that the group look at ways to coordinate the task force together with a committee and perhaps merge them.  Often the committee gets dumped with a whole bunch of issues.  What he would like to see is for the committee to take one or two important issues and really invest the time in those important issues rather than be inundated and work with a lot of small issues which consume its time.  He would like to walk away from this group at the end of the academic year saying it dealt with and made recommendations on these important issues.

            Sen. Craig said the information that the university provides is so different from the way that faculty would like it be made available that part of the charge should be to get the university to organize the information it provides.  What he hears is that the Senate wants a task force just to get information out of the university and the whole point is the university doesn’t have it.  One would think that the university would have all this stuff ready to go and it doesn’t.

            Pres. Auchmuty said administrators ask different questions than faculty.  The Senate is looking at different perspectives.  The administration, Dr. Rudley, and everybody have been very cooperative.  Libby Barlow has given the Senate information but the faculty have to ask the right questions.  The main thing this task force has to do is ask the right questions.  Now if some other group of the Faculty Senate wants to ask the same questions that would be great.

            Sen. Warner said Pres. Auchmuty and he talked about the idea of a task force and very carefully choose that term.  It is a task force.  It is not a committee.  It is not something that is on-going.  The plan is to identify some questions to get facts, then figure out how to interface that data with the Faculty Affairs Committee and also with the Budget and Facilities Committee.  It is those two groups that will work together on this to produce recommendations.  Last year the Senate was very successful in working on a recommendation with the Commission on Women and the Faculty Affairs Committee to produce a primary caregiver policy which was a major proposal made last year.  There is no intention of coming up with a task force and by-passing everybody else.  All senators are volunteers with the exception maybe of the president.  Senators do this on top of other duties as faculty so the question is how to parse out that time and try to work together on some initiatives while not killing everybody and still get things done.

            Pres. Auchmuty said that Dr. Strickland is very supportive. 

SCHOLARSHIP & COMMUNITY COMMITTEE, CHAIR - Joseph Kotarba

            The Scholarship and Community Committee has not yet met this semester.  Members did staff the Faculty Senate information table at the New Faculty Orientation on August 19 at the Hilton Hotel.  Dr. Sara McNeil constructed a beautiful banner for the table display.  The Senate staff provided updated brochures on Faculty Senate activities, current senators, and contact information.

            Numerous new faculty members stopped at the table to chat.  They seemed most interested to learn that they could talk to their senator(s) about any problems incurred while at UH, including those problems which they may not feel comfortable discussing with departmental colleagues.  The suggestion is made for senators to briefly describe the Faculty Senate at Fall college meetings held for new (and returning) faculty.

            Senate President-elect Warner has been invited to come to the next committee meeting and start discussion about his very exciting plans for next year’s Scholarship and Community Conference.     

Second Reading

Proposed Faculty Senate Bylaws Amendment and SCC Charge

    FOUR--All members of standing committees shall be appointed from the membership of the Faculty Senate.  The Senate standing committees are:  the Budget and Facilities Committee, which shall conduct a continuing review of the university's financial resources, including the ways in which such resources are actually spent; the Educational Policies and Student Affairs Committee, which shall review and recommend policy concerning the substance and presentation of undergraduate and graduate education, shall review the operations of the appropriate administrative offices with respect to the implementation of existing policy and the promulgation of policy changes, and which shall create and maintain more effective coordination and cooperation with student organizations at the University of Houston, shall be concerned with the improvement of campus life, and shall review the operations of the administrative offices responsible for the promulgation of policies concerning student and campus life; the Faculty Affairs Committee, which shall review and recommend policy concerning the conditions of faculty employment, and shall review the operations of the appropriate administrative officials with respect to the implementation of existing policy and the promulgation of policy changes; the Legislative Scholarship & Community Relations Committee, which shall conduct continuing reviews of the university's legislative relations policies, including the formulation of strategy, and of serve as liaison between the Faculty Senate and both the internal university's community relations, including outreach programs and the interaction with internal and various external-local and regional—communities that the University serves. constituencies to improve the standing of the university in both the political and business arenas.   The committee shall assist faculty in three areas:  promoting  scholarly activities; conducting scholarly activities; and communicating scholarly activites.

The amendment passed unanimously.

PRESENTATION ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:  Charles Shomper

            Pres. Auchmuty introduced Mr. Shomper.  Mr. Shomper said Dr. Strickland mentioned Information Technology is now in Academic Affairs area.  Mr. Shomper made a power point presentation available on FS Website.  Link is:

http://www.uh.edu/infotech/about_us/downloads/fac_senate_090104.ppt.

            Mr. Shomper stated that he wanted to give a brief update of some of the things they are working on and talk a little bit about the IT organization. 

            There are four major units:  (1) Computing and Telecommunication Services.  This is the infra structure group.  (2) Technology Support Services. This covers desk tops, Web CT and things like that.  (3) Enterprise Systems. This supports corporate systems dealing with the legacy student student system and also deals with PeopleSoft.  (4) Security and Disaster Recovery that deals with worms and viruses and other IT security issues.

            The support model that IT uses to provide support on campus is a very distributed with support staff in the colleges and the departments.  There is also central staff that IT uses to provide support.  Then there are a lot of college and library cooperation and collaboration that is developing.

            Some of the services being provided in IT are phones, data, video, servers; WebCT, help desk, software licenses, desktop, classroom media support, training; legacy student system, PeopleSoft operation/upgrades, university advancement support; and security, viruses, disaster recovery plan, and intrusion detection.

            Spam.  It has been impacting everybody, but IT has made some significant progress on it this past year especially during the summer.  IT implemented Spam flagging about a year ago.  It has been pretty effective and it left the decision about what to do with the spam at the desktop.  That was a decision based on a recommendation made by the Information Technology Computing Committee (ITCC), the faculty advisory committee for IT.  The concern was to avoid losing a valid document because when it was scanned it appeared to look like spam.  So it was flagged and sent to the desktop for the individual to decide whether to read it, put it in a separate folder or delete it.  About 50% of computer users are using the rules to do something with the flagged spam.  The other 50% look at each item and make a decision. 

            In June IT started blocking known spammers.  This was based on a recommendation from the ITCC and a new change review group.  This group is made up of faculty, staff, students, and college administrators, etc.; a cross-section of the campus.  UH subscribes to a block list. This blocks email at the entry to the university and rejects it from the university so that it does not get to any of the servers.  Enhanced logic was added to detect spam.  It made a little bit of improvement.  There are things called dictionary attacks where basically spammers will try to get to everyone’s e-mail accounts at any domain.  If IT sees one of those coming towards the university, it blocks those now.  All these efforts have decreased spam by 80%.  Individuals may not see that at the desktop if spam is automatically put in a folder.  If one never looks at that folder the desktop may appear about the same, maybe a bit less. 

            Sen. Craig asked if something isn’t spam is there a way that faculty can tell IT about it?   Mr. Shomper said yes, because basically IT has a white list and a block list and if it is on the okay list, or white list, IT will let it through.  Mr. Shomper said if it is something faculty know is spam call extension 31411 and have it put on the block list.  Sen. Craig said email from his daughter’s school has been flagged as spam.  Mr. Shomper said by putting it on the white list; it will come through.  Mr. Shomper said send an e-mail to the people at the help desk or call 31411.  If that fails, then send Mr. Shomper an e-mail at: shomper@uh.edu and it will be handled.

            Spam in the future.  Spam is going to continue to impact UH.  It is going to grow out there. 80% of e-mail that hits the university in one form or another is spam at this point and time.   A few years ago it was less than 50%, but now it is up over 80%.  Hacked systems, which occur when a system is broken into by a virus, can control an individual’s system and generate spam without the individual’s knowledge.  The person may notice that his/her system is running a little bit slower.  IT notices it because it sees spam (large volumes of traffic) coming out of the machines.  IT monitors those kinds of things.  IT is looking at blocking messages with viruses.  Today, because of the recommendation from the ITCC, whenever a message comes through that has a virus in the attachment IT forwards the message but deactivates the virus.  The suggestion has been made to just block that message.  If the ITCC and the Change Review Group agree, IT will just send a message back to folks sending the e-mail saying there is a virus in this and UH is not accepting it. 

            IT is talking about a new spam detection system that has been reviewed by ITCC and Change Review Group.  At least a few of senators in this room have sat through some of these discussions.  The group has recommended Sophos PureMessage which will be implemented on a per individual basis.  IT will do it in such a way that it will not impact what someone is current doing.  It won’t be a massive change like the phone-mail.  It will be up to the individual to select to do this.  IT wants to make sure there are no other problems with this before it is installed.  

            What IT does from the user education standpoint is offer a course on reducing junk e-mail.  Some of that is going to be available in the handout packets (available in the Senate office).  There is also a lot of information in there about different services offered by IT.

            Viruses – are another problem with which IT is dealing.  The environment is different than last year.

            Sen. Gingiss said some of his spam comes addressed to his Bayou account.  He didn’t know it was still alive.  He added that he no longer remembers his password to stop forwarding mail or how to forward it.  Sen. Gingiss ask is there a way to delete Bayou?  Mr. Shomper said he will check into deleting the Bayou account.

            Sen. Karger asked why his college is forcing everybody into the Exchange Account which is much less friendly to access from home.  He asked why he could forward everything from his Mail Account to the Exchange Account but couldn’t forward everything through the Exchange Account to the Mail@uh.edu account.  Mr. Shomper said that is a good question.  Sen. Karger said according to IT support it will not work the other way but his college in its infinite wisdom has decided that everybody ought to be on the Exchange Account.  A little knowledge is dangerous and so everybody is being forced on the Exchange Account and they are eliminating the mail.uh.edu, so some faculty, including himself, are in a quandary.  Mr. Shomper said the way the system is set up a user can go to a Web page and then point uh.edu alias to the desired e-mail address.  The uh.edu alias now will re-point to some other place so he didn’t know why the user couldn’t re-point it back to wherever he/she wanted it.  Mr. Shomper said he would check to see if there is a problem with that.  Mr. Shomper asked if Sen. Karger had used the Web interface to Outlook at all.  Sen. Karger said yes, but he didn’t particularly like it.  Mr. Shomper said it is a little different than the regular interface. 

            Mr. Shomper said because of deleting viruses UH is going to see fewer messages that are going to have viruses as attachments.  There has been an increase in awareness, too.  IT has a lot of information going out; maybe too much information but there may a need to over-communicate.  If there comes a point when people say this has been done too many times IT will stop doing it.  People are looking more at automatic updates of Windows and anti-virus software.  There are two different packages.  There is a package called SMS that will allow IT to send messages and updates out to the people who are using Windows.  There is another one called ePO that allows McAfee to both check what the update level is on the individual’s machine and also push what is the most recent updates to the user at that point in time.  IT is looking at both of those and moving on ePO right now. IT is testing that one out.  Again both of those will be used at the user’s discretion.  It is not going to be mandated that everybody has to use it.

            Sen. Schiff said he gets e-mail and he is never sure if it comes from IT.  He gets messages from Microsoft saying apply this patch immediately but he never does anything; Microsoft is a virus, is it not?  Mr. Shomper said don’t respond to it.  Mr. Shomper said people should use one of the automatic update prompts that come that little icon on the screen’s task bar.  When it says updates are ready to apply; then that is ok to do it, but if it comes in an e-mail it is probably a spoof because that isn’t how Microsoft and most of the other vendors will deal with it.   Mr. Shomper said spoofers are getting real creative in some of the things they will say right now, including UH help desk or something like that and they just change UH to something else. Mr. Shomper said IT doesn’t normally send things out that way; IT will use the list-serv, the newspaper, student newspaper, and so on.  It will be a trusted source.

            Sen. Copeland said he gets a message every week that the help desk at UH has noticed a lot of spam coming out of his computer and here is what he should do to do about it.  Mr. Shomper said that can happen.  Mr. Shomper said he had a message the other week where he was asked to check his credit card, the CitiBank credit card.  It has a little CitiBank logo on there saying he had a problem with his account, and it asked for information. Never trust a request for information if it comes through an e-mail unless you trust the source.

            Sen. Karger said he was also going to say there was spam coming from CitiBank as he got this stuff from CitiBank about his credit card and he doesn’t have a credit card through them.  Mr. Shomper said don’t ever respond to those kinds of things because what they are going to get critical information.

            Sen. Karger said UH uses McAfee.   Sen. Karger said he uses Norton and finds that Norton is a more robust program.  It has been able to catch viruses that McAfee cannot catch.  Sen. Karger said he won’t use McAfee; they put it on his office machine so he has no choice.  Sen. Karger asked why UH uses McAfee as opposed to Norton?  Mr. Shomper said IT went through an evaluation a few years ago and it ended up McAfee at that point in time was the better one; although the two companies tends to leap frog each other over time.  Mr. Shomper said UH has a site license for McAfee and it is better to go with one as oppose to two packages than try to manage both; it is a support issue but both packages are about the same. 

            Mr. Shomper said UH has added some switches and done subnetting of the network.  Before the UH network was a flat network and that meant that if someone was passing anything around, it went by all of the machines on campus.  With a subnet in buildings it means a problem will be isolated to the building.  That is now done in all the buildings on campus so that is helping a little bit with the viruses.

            Mr. Shomper said IT has a more aggressive threat response position.  IT sees some of these things coming into the university because IT monitors the network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  If IT sees something suspicious people are dispatched to look at it right away.  In many cases if a virus is suspected, IT will shut down that machine.  The IP address is shut off, then people will go and talk to the user and maybe put it back on if there was no problem with it.

            Mr. Shomper said increased intrusion detection software allows IT to go through the network and scan for certain things.  It is called ISS and it has been in place for two years.  It is made available to all the IT folks in the colleges and departments so they can scan their networks.

            Mr. Shomper said he will keep emphasizing that people should apply Windows updates as quickly as possible as well as applying antiviral (McAfee) updates as quickly as possible because that is the key to protecting computers.

            Mr. Shomper said IT is starting to send out notifications when there is a medium threat virus.  They don’t wait until it is a high threat.  Hopefully, the last warning came out from IT before the vendors had sent it.  This may be a little too much communication but it is better to err on the side of over-communicating as opposed to under-communicating on these things.

            What is IT going to do in the future?  One question is can IT look at a machine before it gets on the network and check on the software it already has on it?  Does the computer have the appropriate Windows updates and antiviral updates?  If not, don’t let it on the network.  If it does, let it on the network.  There are some packages out there that do this but the ones that IT has seen so far won’t scale to an institution this size.  So IT is checking out a couple of the new program that it hopes will work for UH. 

            There is a new update called Windows XP.SP2 or service pack two.  IT recommended and sent out a notice indicating that UH users shouldn’t install it yet.  It is about to the point that IT will start recommending that people install it.  People in the colleges and departments were notified that if they felt comfortable with the product to go ahead and use it.  IT is still testing it to see if it is going to impact anything else people have running at this time.

            Voice-mail.   IT heard a lot about this back in the spring.  The change had an impact on many people.  One thing that was pointed out was to make future changes when school is not in session.  This last change was made in between the last summer term and the beginning of the fall term.  Two things were changed:  1)  A person no longer has to hit the 9 button to confirm a deletion; it is only the 7 button to delete a message.  2)  The old system has been eliminated as an option.  These changes were scheduled with advice from the Faculty Senate.

            There is a new change review process that not only includes the ITCC but also the Change Review Group.  At the first meeting Mr. Shomper told them IT will not make any more changes unless the vast majority of people on the Change Review Group are saying it is OK.  If IT doesn’t get that kind of buy in, the change won’t be made.  It may be just a timing issue.  It may be that some change is the wrong thing to do but everyone may be better off by taking a more conservative approach. 

            As for communication, the information in the handout packet will generally include topics covered today.  There is a FAQs sheet and usage tips about voicemail included in the packet and there is a section on the IT Web site.  There are short courses that are available at any time and IT will be happy to come and work with people on specialized delivery. 

            UH’s unified messaging capability is something that is available in the new system. It is a voice-mail system but IT was able to negotiate with the vendor and get unified messaging at no charge.  Faculty may not like some of these features but some of them are going to be desirable.  For instance, people can get voice-mail on their e-mail or e-mail on their voice-mail.  People can listen to their e-mails while driving.  These things will be done on an individual basis and will not impact everyone on the system.  It will be an added service probably in the spring.  IT wants to make sure all the other bugs are out of voice-mail before adding this feature.  IT doesn’t know of any other problems with voice-mail at this time, but if there are some, please let Mr. Shomper know.

            Sen. Wells said when dialing into the voice-mail messaging system from off-campus a person can’t just dial in his/her number, the system requires the person to push the pound sign (#)  first and then dial the number.  Why would someone call the e-mail messaging system if he/she didn’t have a mailbox on there?  So why that is the extra step necessary?  Mr. Shomper asked if he was referring to where the system asks a person calling in if he/she wants to listen to voice-mail.

            Sen. Craig said what he is saying is exactly right.  Someone is off campus and dials 713/743-8400, then it says press #, if # isn’t pressed the system assumes that person is trying to call somebody through the voice-mail system.

            Mr. Shomper said he will check into that because he didn’t believe it shouldn’t work that way.  For the on-campus system where a person has to enter 1-1, the reason is that unified messaging might be two, or whatever the number is going to be, so the person will have a choice.  

            Sen. Craig asked is there a way to make it more efficient all the way round?  It is always saying press # for more options or something like that.   Most faculty don’t need to hear that but still get all this over head stuff.  Is IT working on just streamlining the voice-mail system?  Mr. Shomper said an internal group is working on that.  Some of the things can’t be changed because that is just the way the system operates.  UH could ask the vendor to modify the system but there would be a charge.  IT is looking at all those things and Mr. Shomper will bring any suggestions back to the group that is trying to streamline the system.  These suggestions will also have to be shared with the Change Review Group.  Any additional suggestions, particularly things faculty would like to get out of the system, IT will try to do.  Most of these suggestions are going to require modification to the system.

            Sen. Copeland said one of the things he misses about the old system is that he didn’t have to go through a whole lot of extra effort to find out when the message was delivered.  That was very helpful in the old system.  Now he listens to the message but has to press some buttons to find out when it came.  Sometime knowing when the message came is enough to let people know that they don’t have to listen to it.  

            Mr. Shomper said he has checked into that to see if the system can be modified but that is just the way the system operates.  The time of the message is in the envelope information.  There are some positives with this system but there are some negatives, too.  Any time there is a massive change like this to a totally different vendor, some things will have to be done differently.

            Mr. Shomper asked if everybody recalls why the change had to be made.  In Tropical Storm Allison the voice-mail system was so damaged that it had to be replaced.  There wasn’t any choice.  UH couldn’t go back to the same vendor.  They were not making that product anymore.  There was nothing that was similar to the old system.

            Sen. Craig said with all the other firms available, UH now has the worst phone system in the city.  That didn’t used to be true.

            Sen. Karger said in his opinion the old system was better.  It was elegant in its simplicity rather than having all these buttons to push.  It was simply a superior system even though it was outdated.  He added that he personally has no interest in listening to voice-mail while driving around 610 and he never will listen to e-mail on his cell phone.  It is just of no interest.

            Mr. Shomper said that wasn’t a driver at for IT to replace the system, but the old system was failing dramatically.  The voice-mail system was in the basement of PGH and there was three feet of water in that room and that is when the old system was damaged.

            Sen. Karger said the point is faculty don’t need the options that the new system has, they need the options like the time stamper that were in the old system.

            Mr. Shomper said the College of Business brought up the Avia system also and that has been pretty easy over there.  They brought it a year before UH.

            Sen. Papell said from the perspective of a lot of faculty members the primary consideration is to get the messages as fast as possible, pushing as few buttons as possible.  Everyone understands that the old system had to be replaced. 

            Mr. Shomper said when IT looked at the system, they all had the same capabilities and the same sort of presentation to the customer as Avia does.  IT is adding new face plates to the phones.  The problem is the change had to be made all at once. 

            Sen. Kotarba said he who would like to see a survey done on spam to find out who at this point would like to have IT filter everything that is not tagged as Spam.  He added that he would be willing to have everything tagged as Spam be erased completely.

            Mr. Shomper said he will take that both to the ITCC and the Change Review Group.  There was still a feeling before that if it was done based on content that a research paper might be lost.  It looks at the content of the message.  It looks at everything in the message and reviews more than just the titles.

            Sen. Warner said in handling the Spam it may take a fair amount of time to consider a whole lot of issues.  It is better than doing something drastic.  The problem with the phone mail change was that it was done overnight to respond to an emergency and there was virtually no input so it came as a great surprise.  If the University could get in the habit of taking its time on things, even when things seem desperate it would be better.  Now UH is in its second year of trying to fix the phone mail system because it rushed into it on the front end without proper input.  Sen. Warner said it seems that he can’t walk around this building and access his own phone mail from any other phone.  Sen. Craig said press 9 and dial entire number 713/743-8400.

            Sen. Warner said even though he is on campus, he must pretend to be calling as off-campus to reach his voicemail from a remote location.  Mr. Shomper said he shouldn’t have to do that.  He said IT would go back and see what that problem is.  He should be able to go to any campus phone and do that.

            Mr. Shomper said he has heard that the e-mail account size is a concern for some folks.  Especially, if faculty are traveling and out of the country for a period of time, then all of a sudden e-mail may be bouncing.  IT policy is 20 MB on mail.uh.edu.  That is where an individual starts but it can be incremented by calling the help desk.  The same thing is true for Exchange except the initial size is 40MB.  One of the things that IT is talking about internally is trying to get more people moved to Exchange but he will take that into account what the faculty are saying.  IT may not want to do that. 

            What to do with the overages is call the help desk and they will ask if the user has deleted unneeded data and try to find out if some things should be deleted from the mail box at that point and time.  If it looks like all these things are done, they just increase the user’s allocation.  For Exchange the increase is 40 MB at a time.  If it is POP they increase it by 30 MB up to 100 MB.  100 MB is the limit because of performance issues on the system.   IT is now looking at the possibility of setting everything at 100 MB.  It is not just a storage issue as far as getting additional storage but there is also performance. 

            Sen. Copeland said he just did a survey of the people at this table and no one has heard of Exchange.  Mr. Shomper said Exchange and Outlook is a way that to get email.  It is mostly used by administrators.  It is not used by many of the students and most of the faculty members are not using it. Texas Tech has moved everybody over to Exchange.  Microsoft Exchange is a system that is very robust system.  IT gives the user mobility capability as far as tying into mobile devices and so on.  Some of that can be done with POP mail, too.  Mr. Shomper offered to get can get Sen. Copeland some additional information. 

            Mr. Shomper said there are some other important issues of interest like on-line ordering of telephone equipment and network equipment.  That will be available in the near future.  IT has been working with focus groups trying to figure out the best ways to do this.  Spyware is another problem and the associated pop-ups.  IT is looking at updating McAfee to include Spyware protection.  IT has evaluated their product.  It looks like a good solution.  It will be included in the site licenses arrangement.  That should be ready in the next month or two.  IT is moving to the enterprise version of WebCT right now.  There are a lot of courses offered on that and a lot of students involved in that.  IT hopes to complete the transition of over 800 courses on this campus by August 2005.  There are some transitional issues that have occurred in the past couple of days.  IT is working on it with WebCT folks to try to figure out what is causing that problem.  IT is also looking at un-metered long distance and trying to set up a contract to pay a certain amount, then you can call as much as needed.  The RFP hasn’t gone out yet.  Wireless coverage for the whole campus is a goal. It is in about 40% of the buildings now.  Outside the buildings is not covered.  A primary goal is to finish up the network.  It is a $6 million project and IT doesn’t have that kind of money and probably won’t be able to get that kind of money in place for years.  The project will need be done gradually.

            Mr. Shomper said if there are any questions about the handouts and if at any point and time that faculty feel they are not getting the kind of service that they ought to be getting, don’t hesitate to contact him at extension 31602 or by e-mail at shomper@uh.edu.  The main goal in IT is providing good service.  IT has tried to do that in the past but sometimes we don’t always succeed.

            Sen. Ferimer asked the IT department gave classes that were free but now it is starting to charge for them.  Is that true?  Mr. Shomper said there are two different pieces to that.  There were a lot of additional classes that people wanted to have so in addition to the free classes some other ones will be offered on a charge basis.  IT is running a little bit short right now as far as staffing.  IT is in the process of trying to replace one of its trainers so there may be a reduction right now because of that but soon as that position is filled IT will be able to get more courses going.  IT only had two trainers for the whole campus and that was for the free courses.  A number of classes are on the Web and are on CDs that are available. 

            Pres. Auchmuty said the Executive Committee just asked Mr. Shomper a couple of days ago about increasing the size of the voice-mail and it has already been done.  The IT group is responding to issues these days and the faculty appreciate it.

NEW BUSINESS:

            Sen. Paskusz said the Senate ought to take up the business of the name of the university again.  In public when one says the University of Houston, people either think it is UH-Downtown or they ask which one.  At one time this was University of Houston University Park.  It was changed because there wasn’t a University Park, but it is a good designation to separate UH from the other universities in the system.  If there ever is going to be a University Park this is probably the place where it will be, so there would be no harm in changing to a designation that identifies this university as the flagship of the system.      

            Pres. Auchmuty said he would add this to the agenda for the Fall Faculty Senate Retreat.

The meeting adjourned at 2:40 p.m.