University Senate Instructional & Information Technology Committee Annual Report – 2005/06 We must begin with a tale of two committees. Many details are available from the Committee’s home page, with monthly agendas of each meeting. http://www.stewart.cs.sdsu.edu/USenate/ In the Fall 2005 semester, the Instructional Technology (IT) Committee continued its efforts to consider topics referred to us by the Senate as well as topics consistent with our charge. Our membership was composed of Senate appointed members and advisors/consultants: Members: (all members shall have one vote): 9 faculty representative 1 from each of 7 colleges, the Library and Imperial Valley Campus 1 staff representative 1 student representative (appointed by Associated Students) Advisors/Consultants: Director of Instructional Technology Services Library IT Director Academic Affairs IT Director Information Technology Security Officer Technology Security Officer Student Affairs IT representative Business and Financial Affairs We continued to discuss formalizing our membership to ensure that the voluntary efforts of experts who participated with the committee as Advisors/Consultants in the past years is acknowledged and credited by the Senate and by their supervisors. In our October meeting, the committee identified an issue with the SPAM filtering policy on the computer system mail.sdsu.edu. We were informed that with no consultation with users, the administrators of this system chose to filter and not deliver all SPAM with no notification to the sender or receiver that this filtering is occurring. Since some users of this system are required to receive official email, they felt it was necessary to at least receive a notification that this filtering was being done. We submitted an official inquiry to Sally Roush, V.P. Business and Financial Affairs, and suggested alternative techniques to handle this. At our November meeting, Riny Ledgerwood, Telecommunications and Network Services (TNS), presented their rationale for choosing the Mirapoint software to handle email and the SPAM policy. We had a discussion and reached an understanding. We are happy to report that now all mail passing through mail.sdsu.edu is delivered and those messages that are identified as SPAM have an appropriate tag added to the Subject field. By December 13, 2005, we formulated the recommendation to present to the Senate that changed the name of the committee to Instructional & Information Technology (IIT) Committee, expanded the membership to include several new members and correspondingly charged the Committee’s charge. We were pleased that the Senate voted to adopt this change to their policy, which we present below. “Instructional and Information Technology Committee 1.0 Membership (15): nine faculty, one from each college, the Imperial Valley Campus and the Library; one staff member; one student; Director of Instructional Technology Services or Designee; Academic Affairs Information Technology Coordinator or Designee; Information Technology Security Office Designee appointed by the Associate Vice President of Financial Operations; Member of the Information Technology Managers Committee selected by the Information Technology Managers Committee. 2.0 Functions 2.1 The Committee shall advise the administration and the Senate on instructional and information technologies. 2.2 The Committee shall assist the Directors of Instructional Technology Services, the Library, the Academic Affairs Information Technology Coordinator, and other campus Instructional / Information Technology offices, with developing long- range master plans and shall review and make recommendations on the mission and services of ITS, the Library and Academic Affairs on instructional and information technologies. 2.3 The Committee shall consider any matter referred by the Senate or by the administration of the University (and may consider, at its own discretion, other matters relating to instructional and information technologies at the campus and CSU system-wide levels.) The committee shall review and provide feedback on campus information technology initiatives as related to instruction, research and operational needs. Rationale: Since 1993, the beginning of Mosaic web browser, there has been a dramatic expansion of the use of the Internet. This has led to wide-spread use of networked technologies, even to having the San Diego City Bus System display a URL on their buses. With this widespread usage over the past decade, has come increased performance and capability. Also, increased responsibility for each network user. The University has recognized this responsibility with the creation of the Information Technology Security Office (ITSO), a campus-wide responsibility. Additionally, Academic Affairs has hired an Information Technology Officer. The University Senate has no standing committee to look into issues of Information Technology and with the growing dependence of the university on computer- assisted/enhanced mechanisms for communication, collaboration, research and instruction. We feel the current committee [Instructional Technology (IT)] is best suited to expand its responsibility to the Senate to examine these issues. Please note that in recent years, the Senate has asked the Instructional Technology committee to look into the appropriate student email policy – http://senate.sdsu.edu/agendas/committees/it/it_email_febsec2004.htm, the computer security document – http://security.sdsu.edu/policy/security-policy.html as well as the Technology infrastructure upgrade. Starting with Spring 2006, the new committee has been meeting to discuss Instructional & Information Technology Issues. Our committee members are: Kris Stewart, Sciences, Chair Bob Hoffman, Education Bongsik Shin, Business Administration Tom Impelluso, Engineering Jong Won Min, Health & Human Service Richard Burkett, Professional Studies & Fine Arts Cyndi Chie, Staff Ellie Dworak, Library Mary Ann Lyman-Hager, Arts & Letters James Frazee, Director of Instructional Technology Services John Ross, Academic Affairs Information Technology Coordinator John Denune/Felecia Vlahos - Information Technology Security Officer (ITSO) Kevin Carter, appointed member of campus Information Tech Managers Group Vacancy, Imperial Valley Campus Vacancy, Student from Associated Students Our January meeting, had the committee discussing goals. It was brought to our attention that planning was underway to strengthen the Campus Border Firewall for large parts of the computer network. We discussed potential impacts of this measure on faculty and the teaching role. In February, the IIT committee received a referral from David Ely concerning the recent CSU Senate statement on Misuse of Computer Facilities. We were asked to look into whether SDSU had a policy already that covered these issues. This was placed on the agenda for the next meeting and, in time, we discovered that the University Senate Policy file contained a similar specification in the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) on p. 60 covering Facilities/Computer Use/ Acceptable Use. This was reported to David Ely in time to be included in the 09May06 meeting agenda. Felecia Vlahos, a committee member, announced that SANS would be offering a Computer Security Course on the SDSU campus and that IT Managers should consider having appropriate staff attend. August 11 - 16, 2006. At the March IIT Committee meeting we celebrated the apprehension of the juvenile who pleaded guilty to hacking the SDSU Financial Affair computer 2 years ago. This apprehension was a collaboration between the SDSU ITSO, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The Daily Aztec featured an article on the front page (22 March 2006) and it is suggested that this be brought to the attention of students widely on campus. Also at the March meeting, Victor Hazlewood from the San Diego Supercomputer Center, on the campus of UCSD, was invited to speak to the IIT committee about the issues of computer security they see and how they respond. Victor has a paper, “Defense in Depth”, that we found useful. Victor also made a copy of his Powerpoint slides (with references) available to share with all interested parties – at http://security.sdsc.edu/SDSCsec.ppt Mary Thomas, a faculty member from Computer Science, presented to the committee her goals for a Data Grid / Research Network on the SDSU campus. Grid Technologies and Computer Network Security would be key issues to be dealt with. Also in March, Stewart shared the email that the College of Sciences IT Support Staff, Jim Varnell, Sciences Help Desk, distributed to all faculty and staff in the college to begin the inventory of computer systems, network connections and software needs to contribute to the university-wide inventory being gathered by ITSO to assist in redesigning the Border Firewall. Members of the IIT were asked to take this information back to their own colleges and their college IT support staff to provide a possible model to use more widely. We also received a live demonstration of the upgraded resources in AH1120 Smart Classroom, from James Frazee. Our April meeting was also packed with activity. We met in the Art North 215 and received an update on progress with Smart Classrooms. The committee had just received a memo from Associate Dean Gordon Lee, College of Engineering. In this memo, Dr. Lee specified his concerns with the manner in which the campus Border Firewall implementation was being handled. Since this was a topic the IIT committee had been discussing at each of its meetings the entire semester, we spent time discussing a possible course. A motion was made to form a small sub-committee that would volunteer to work during the summer month to collaborate with the ITSO as it solicits an inventory of firewall exemption needs from the colleges and begins its implementation of stricker Border Firewall Software Rules. The meeting had to break up before we concluded the discussion and an electronic vote was held by the committee chair seeking opinions from each committee member on their support (or lack of support) for this issue. There was a quorum of positive votes from the committee members. The information item presented to the University Senate on 09May06 is a slightly expanded version of this committee motion, subsequently fashioned into the standard template for communication with the Senate. Stewart will present the Information Item to the Senate 09May06. Stewart has also been invited by Vice President Ellene Gibbs to attend the IT Managers meeting on 15 May 06, as this group discusses further details of the plans for the design of the campus Border Firewall. The IIT committee will have their final meeting of the year on 18 May 06.Wednesday, May 03, 2006