Campus Transportation Committee- 10.7.08

There are several construction projects either finishing up or coming on-line shortly. Of particular interest: University Ave is scheduled for a major overhaul in the next year and a half; this will push all traffic into 2 lanes for much of that time.
Bicycle, moped, and bus pass usage are all up in double digits over the past year. Additional bike stalls are forthcoming. The number of bicycle parking sports has overtaken the number of permitted car parking spots on campus; there are 9700 permitted car spots, but bike spots exceed that as of this summer's additions.
The Budget & Policy subcommittee has re-formed. As the only student rep on CTC so far, I will be serving on it. The committee has decided to remove Traffic Demand Management and Safety from the duties of this subcommittee and will re-evaluate how to approach these topics separately. CTC will be reviewing next year's capital budget draft in December and will be voting on the operating budget in February.
Transportation Services (TS) is in the process of filling their Director position. The Search & Screen process is closed. Facilities Planning & Management (FP&M) would like to have 3-5 finalists chosen soon, and have the ultimate decision made by the end of December.
The independent review process for TS has been changed. Previously, the process was to include the formation of an ad-hoc committee that would receive the final report of the review panel. The ad-hoc was then to relay these findings to the CTC. The CTC voted 5-0-1 to remove the ad-hoc committee from the process, and will instead receive the recommendations of the panel directly, with some additional invited representatives from those interest groups (e.g. the McBurney Center). The aim is a more efficient process, and one that is more in-line with departmental reviews across campus. I abstained from the vote, citing a lack of information; at the time, it was unclear whether the ad-hoc was still necessary. However, I do trust that this revision makes the process more efficient and should not influence the review itself. Both FP&M and TS indicated that it would be a valuable tool for the incoming Director. The review is intended to take place in the spring of 2009.

Information Technology Committee Sept and October Meetings

The Information Technology Committee (ITC) has met twice so far this academic year. The ITC advises the Vice Provost for Information Technology, who is also the Campus Chief Information Officer (CIO) and executive director of DoIT. The ITC also advises and has a role in approving policies for IT in the broader university community – 70% of IT on this campus is not done by DoIT! The ITC has three student members, currently one undergraduate and two graduate students. It’s worth noting that the ITC is not an entirely technical committee. While certainly the ITC does have technically capable members, most of the technical decisions are left to campus professional staff. The ITC does not dictate that we buy Cisco routers instead of Juniper routers, for example, but focuses more in saying that we need a high speed network available everyone on campus and this is the way we’ll fund it. However, we can and sometimes do ask pointed questions about why one particular technology was chosen, or provide guidance in how to evaluate purchasing options.

The first ITC meeting was in September, and focused largely on just orientating new members to the committee. As part of the process, each member was asked to give a list of “pet projects” they’d like to see the committee or campus take up. The full list is in our minutes, which are online here: http://itc.wisc.edu/minutes/minutes.asp?min_id=522

One thing I am very interested in pushing this year is lecture capture, i.e. recording audio and video of lectures and posting it online. I think it is a terrible waste that so few lectures are recorded on this campus – to use a bad analogy, they’re like an inefficient power plant, and capturing these lectures could produce a lot more value for students, faculty, and the public. I think an ambitious but attainable goal would have 100% of lectures captured in five years.

In a related issue from the first meeting, a member of the committee mentioned “clickers”, which are the devices that a professor can use to have students vote or answer questions during lectures. Clickers are unpopular with students, right? Please let me know if I’m way off base here.

Another issue that we’ve spent a lot of time discussing on the ITC is Moodle, which is a software package that does the same thing as the software behind Learn@UW. If you’re in the business school or college of engineering, you’ve probably used Moodle. I will write more about Moodle in the future, but campus and the ITC is paying careful attention to Moodle as a potential replacement for the current Learn@UW. It’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, and certainly not until next fall, which would only happen in the very worst-case scenario.

The ITC website is http://itc.wisc.edu/, and our meetings are the 3rd Friday of every month at 10am. We have many visitors who attend the meetings, and any interested student should absolutely attend – the chair is very good about allowing guests to participate in the discussion!