Read "A Conversation With Professor Harry Matthews, Chair of the AC4"

The two Councils (AC4, chaired by me, and AdC3, chaired by Alan Laub, Dean of Engineering) comprise the largest part of the new oversight structure for information technology that was implemented about eight months ago. The Councils provide input to the IT Policy Board (http://itpb.ucdavis.edu/) and coordinate campuswide information technology activities.

One of the Councils' first tasks was to recommend recruitment of a Vice Provost-Information and Educational Technology, replacing the Associate Vice Chancellor position. That recruitment is now in progress but nominations and applications are still welcomed. As it permeates more of our work and becomes more and more critical to our missions of teaching, research and service/outreach, it becomes necessary that information technology be represented at the highest level in our administration. In addition, a position at this level, possibly filled by a person with an academic background, will provide a broad strategic overview of information and educational technology on campus.

The new Vice Provost will be a member of the IT Policy Board and the two Coordinating Councils. The AC4 membership also includes:

• Several other senior administrators, including the University Librarian, two Deans, another Vice Provost, and a Vice Chancellor
• A comparable number of faculty members representing Academic Senate and School/College Executive Committees
• Representatives of the Academic Federation, staff, students, and some other committees. More details of the membership are available on the Council's Web site at http://ac4.ucdavis.edu/.

One of my goals, as Chair of AC4, is to involve the campus as a whole in the work of the Council. Clearly, it is critical to get broad-based input as the Council deliberates such issues as:

Provision of remote access. The staff and student modem pool is saturated for several hours every day, leading to frustrating busy signals as people try to connect to the campus network from their homes. Should people respond by signing up with an independent Internet Service Provider (ISP), like CalWeb [1], as I have done, or should UC Davis get further into the modem business by providing higher availability alternatives to the existing "fully subsidized" modem pool? How should the modem pool, if any, be funded? AC4 has adopted a group of guidelines or principles to help analyze and judge different approaches (see "Shaping the Future of Remote Access").

Instructional Technology Funds. How should we balance the resources and responsibilities for instructional technology between central services such as general access student laboratories and decentralized services in the schools and colleges? What are the most pressing needs for central services?

Student access to computers. Roughly 80% of our students currently have access to a computer in their homes. Are the students without computers at a disadvantage? Are those without a computer getting the education they need for today's and tomorrow's professional, social and political environment? How can we make sure that students who are financially disadvantaged are not further disadvantaged by lack of appropriate computer access? Can financial aid cover computer purchase? At what point, if ever, should we have a formal expectation that each student own a computer? What kind of computer? What infrastructure do we need to support students who own computers?

A second major goal is to develop an overall plan for academic computing at UC Davis. The plan will simplify the decision-making process and the development of systems that interact synergistically and complement rather than duplicate each other. The plan is a work in progress, but the first stages are described in the December minutes, which are posted on the AC4 Web site (http://ac4.ucdavis.edu/). Vicki Suter in the Division of Information Technology is leading a complementary effort, to define the technological infrastructure of academic computing at UC Davis. AC4 is sponsoring this important project, known as the LEAD project (http://lead.ucdavis.edu/), which is related to national developments in the area of academic computing architecture.

With such a large Council, it is inevitable that subcommittees do some of the detailed work. One subcommittee, chaired by G.J. Mattey, is now deliberating UC Davis' role in the California Virtual University. The report of the first subcommittee, chaired by Bill Hornof, on Multimedia and Databases (MAD) in Instruction, has been adopted by the AC4 and is available on the Web site (http://ac4.ucdavis.edu/). It is a forward-looking report recommending that standards be adopted for electronic storage and retrieval of academic digital materials for teaching and research, and that academic databases be made more available and easier to use. The report is helping guide the allocation of resources for information technology and some of its work is being continued by the LEAD project.

Campus members are encouraged to submit suggestions and comments through the Web site (http://ac4.ucdavis.edu/) or by email (ac4list@ucdavis.edu) [2]. ac4list@ucdavis.edu is the forum for discussions of issues before the Council, like decentralizing resources and responsibilities or universal student access to computing. In addition, the email address, ac4@ucdavis.edu, is available to members of the campus community who wish to communicate directly with AC4 staff and myself. I also welcome direct correspondence to hrmatthews@ucdavis.edu.

Harry Matthews is Professor of Biological Chemistry and Chair, AC4.

Notes:

	[1]	http://www.calweb.com/. The service costs from $9.95 to $24.95 per month, depending on the number of hours used per month and I have found it reliable. I also like having a second email account that lets me keep my personal email separate from my professional email. Some campus services are still unavailable through an ISP, but many sites have moved to a Kerberos-based security system that accommodates access through an ISP.
	[2]	To subscribe, send an email message from your usual workstation to listproc@ucdavis.edu. In the body of the message type: subscribe Harry Matthews ac4list@ucdavis.edu (replace "Harry Matthews" with your own name -- I'm already subscribed)..