1. The meeting was called to order by Lewis Ulman, Chair.

2. SAC Membership on the Council--The University's Staff Advisory Council presented a proposal to add an SAC representative to the Council. The Council can make a recommendation to the Senate Steering Committee, which in turn would make a formal recommendation for Senate approval. The Rules Committee would make the necessary changes to the language regarding the Council membership. There was general agreement that the addition of a staff representative would be a positive action. The Chair will draft a letter to be sent to the Steering Committee recommending the addition, but also recommending the addition of another Faculty member to retain a Faculty majority on the Council.

3. Election of a Chair--Nominations were requested for the position of Chair pro tempore for the summer and Chair for the coming academic year. Ilee Rhimes nominated Lewis Ulman for the position, and the nomination was seconded by Phil Smith. Professor Ulman was elected unanimously.

4. Main Library Renovation Update--The month of May has been used to try and obtain information from the campus community. There were two widely advertized open meetings on May 21 and 22; ca. 25-30 attended each of the sessions. The attendance was sparse, but there was a balance of participants. Undergraduate participants were interested in a place to study, while graduate students and faculty were more interested in collection size. During the same time period there were focus groups for students and faculty, with ca. 15 participants in each. A Renovation Advisory Committee with wide faculty and student representation; the Committee also had it's first meeting during the month. There were also compus-wide surveys of both faculty and staff. The Libraries' faculty and staff will have open meetings with the architects over the summer and will also participate in surveys and interviews. The fall will see additional open meetings and focus groups with the campus community to react to options being provided by the architects. Additional questionnaire will be distributed to the Humanities and other affected colleges.

5. Update on the IT Strategic Plan--The allocation of resources becomes even more important in reduced budget times. There is a meeting with stakeholders (appointed by Deans) on May 29 to review the initiatives that have been identified. They want to be as inclusive as possible--review the proposed actions to make sure they haven't overlooked anything. Once a draft has been developed, input is needed from the entire campus community. The Core Planning Team discussed the relationship of the various initiatives individually and collectively to curriculum and the academic mission of the University. Even if faculty aren't using technology for teaching or research, technology is used for all support functions of the University. What is the curricular impact of technology? How are the curriculum committees in the various colleges dealing with this issue? What is the relationship of the Strategic Plan to the academic/curricular side of the University? Should we tell Steering that they should be looking at what they could do to see how information technology impacts on the curricular mission of the university. The library can manage published information, but how do we know what the faculty and graduate students are doing outside of that realm. The concept of having field librarians with offices in the academic departments to facilitate response to needs was suggested. IT followed many avenues to try to get as broad input as possible in their strategic planning process, and will continue to do so. Susan Metros has put together a Telecoordinating Council, and IT has reallocated 11 positions to Susan’s area to provide more support to faculty. Students are beginning to ask faculty why they aren’t using WebCT. They are continually looking for ways engage faculty. Ways need to be found for rewarding faculty for using technology in their classes. The student intern program has worked well; they’ve provided support to administrative staff and are now are beginning to think about providing additional support to faculty.

6. Intellectual Property Issues--. Bob Kalal is working on getting a group together and scheduling a meeting to begin working on an intellectual property policy for the University; existing documents have dealt with copyright and trademark. Established a specific faculty committee. The working group would have representation from the CIO's Office, the Libraries and the Office of Research. Representatives from the CIO's Office, the Libraries, and the Office of Research met with Dave Winwood and agreed to move forward on this issue. Ed Ray has agreed to accept a proposal to separate intellectual property for e-learning from copyright/patents which would stay in research. He was positive about separating the two and coming up with a policy; a draft policy will be generated before involving legal. Ownership needs to be negotiated up front; otherwise it belongs to the University; if dealing with sponsored research where the University's equipment, etc. is used, the University is clearly the owner. Development of an intellectual property policy is very important for development of the Knowledge Bank. There is a definite need to know what rights and responsibilities are. There is often confusion between copyright and intellectual property. Content is copyrighted; development of a fuel cell would be intellectual property.

Betty Sawyers for
Joseph Branin & Ilee Rhimes