Academic Computing Policy Board

Minutes of the October 5, 2005 meeting

Members Present: Roberta Lembke, Gary Miessler, Meg Ojala, Barbara Reed

Minutes: The minutes of the September 21 meeting were approved.

Roberta gave the following updates concerning campus computing:

  • The college went from 9 to 20 T1 lines and they immediately filled up. Internet2 went online October 4 for St. Olaf through a cooperative arrangement with the Minnesota Private Colleges and the University of Minnesota at a yearly additional cost of only $7-8,000.. Some buildings will have instantaneous loading of webpages through Internet2 and other buildings will find them much faster. Student bandwidth is still capped.

  • The distribution of IIT CDs to new students was a big success this fall. Only 25 students (which includes only 2 first year students) were disconnected for having viruses as opposed to 220 students last year.

Discussion of computing policies

  • “Privacy of Employee Electronic Files”

This is the official college policy now, whereas in the past there were three separate policy statements for faculty, staff and students. The policy has been approved by the college’s lawyers. It appears on the IIT website under “policies.” It will appear in the staff manual. One significant change is that bullet #2 no longer requires two VPs to approve gaining access to employees’ computer files

  • “Intellectual property ownership”

This statement explains that faculty members have an exception to the policy above that says that “All information on St. Olaf servers, desktop computers or on computer storage medias, including electronic mail, is considered college property.” However, there is no explicit statement about how this document relates to the “Privacy” policy.

  • The members of ACPB agreed that as chair of the board Barbara should write a memo to Arnie Ostebee expressing the following concerns:

    • What is the relationship between the documents “Privacy of Employee Electronic Files” and “Intellectual property ownership”?

    • About “Intellectual Property Ownership”: Could we limit the following requirement to curricular materials: “the faculty member agrees to grant the College a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual right”?

    • About “Intellectual Property Ownership”: How do we define “extraordinary resources of the College” (under “Ownership of Creative Works”)? Does it include sabbatical pay? What does it mean in terms of the use of IIT resources?

    • About “Privacy of Employee Electronic Files”: What policies exist to safeguard employees’ rights? If investigations prove there is no problem with employee files, will the employee be notified that his or her computer files have been accessed and by whom?

    • What is the status of students who are classified as employees and are doing student research? Are they treated as students or employees?

We noted that both EDUCAUSE and AAUP might have resources that help us with these issues.

The next ACPB meeting will be October 26 at 1:15 pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Barbara Reed
Acting ACPB secretary