Minutes - ITAP meeting Wednesday, March 5, 2003

Jed Schwendiman-Res Life, Brian Miner & Tony Cabasco-Admission, Michael Quiner-WCTS, Varga Fox-Financial Aid, Sarah Jones, Development, Sherrie Kamara-WCTS

Items for Action:

• Campus education on “Digest” mode for receiving student emails, such as PIO article, posters for Jed to post, info in all the labs.
• Staff default to community@whitman.edu
• Mass mailing demo for personalized email
• Next meeting-May 14, 3:30 pm
• Committee for FTC ruling and NAUCBO recommendations

Items for further discussion:

• NAE updates assigned to set offices

Agenda Summary

• Student E-Mail list:Varga explained the problem of students receiving 50-60 emails per day and not reading them because there are too many–important deadlines are being missed. Michael had a handout on the Community e-Mail lists including:
  • students@whitman.edu
  • community@whitman.edu
  • rides@whitman.edu
  • forsale@whitman.edu
  • lostandfound@whitman.edu
• each list was defined and directions for subscribing or unsubscribing. He also explained the “Digest” mode which pools all the daily community lists messages into 1 delivery in 24 hours with headers for sorting and quick reference.
• There is a login page on the web now to unsubscribe and to digest messages at http://people.whitman.edu/~alias/stulists.
• This summer the plan is to default all student email accounts to the digest mode. At this time anyone on or off campus can post to the students list serve. More education about this option for the digest option was discussed including a PIO article. Posters for Jed to distribute and in the labs
• Students can choose not to subscribe to the students@whitman.edu but not to their class year student list serve. There are a small pool of people allowed to post to the class year list serve.
• Michael said another option for emailing important information out to students is the mass mailing program allowing for personalized letters giving more flexibility and control for individualized information. Michael said he could do some demos for different departments.
• Staff/Community E-Mail list - The group discussed and agreed to have staff defaulted to the community@whitman.edu with the option of unsubscribing over the summer.

Next Meeting:

The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 14 at 3:30 pm.

New FTC Ruling:

Michael handed out information from NAUCBO on the new rules regarding safeguarding privacy and customer information for financial institutions. Since Whitman gives financial aid we need to be in compliance by May 23, 2003 with the federal regulations. Michael said we can borrow documentation from other institutions using DATATEL and similar institutions for a starting point but a committee would need to be established to take on the task. He suggested it should include Financial Aid, Business office, Clair Carson, and the Registrar.

National DUG conference:

National DUG starts Sunday, Michael, Ken Paine, Varga, Denise Mann, and Jenny Miles are all attending.

NWDUG conference:

NWDUG is scheduled for July 23-25. Michael encouraged anyone who wants to present to let them know.

R17:

Release 17 is scheduled to go live over April 12-13. They are currently in test mode. One of the issues is FTP and the server being open to anyone who does imports. There are protection and security concerns with this process. Varga requested to schedule time with Barb on a regular basis for their testing concerns. The areas of biggest change are HR, Financial Aid and the BO.

Other:

Varga expressed concern about who is changing NAE information. She would like to see designated offices and personnel updating addresses and information because there are so many details critical to mailing addresses. She said we need to discuss this more. While the task of assigning it to a small group adds to their work load it cuts down on errors and record duplication.