If you have any questions or require additional information about the conference, please feel free to contact Program Chair Dagrun Bennett at (317) 738-8150 (voice), (317) 738-8146 (fax), and email address bennetd@franklincoll.edu

To view the papers from the last three conferences and also the last three newsletters in electronic form, go to: http://www.gettysburg.edu/ascue

ASCUE's ASCUE-L listserver is also available for discussion of topics of interest to ASCUE members. Subscribe by sending the E-mail message:

SUBSCRIBE ASCUE-L yourname

to listserv@gettysburg.edu.

Send messages to ascue-l@gettysburg.edu

Plans for the annual conference are moving right along. The conference theme "IT trends in the 20th Century: How has it prepared us for the 21st?", gives us an opportunity to look in both directions; where we have been, how far we have come, and where we want to go. The many fine paper proposals I have received reflect all of it. The presentations will cover topics from ubiquitous computing to faculty/staff/student support issues, curriculum development, virtual reality in the class room, assessment, funding, and the implications of the web every where.

The conference will also include hands-on workshops on Sunday. Topics include dynamic web content, faculty development, helping faculty get on the web and part nerships for teaching information literacy. Throughout the conference there will be roundtables on a variety of topics, and countless opportunities to talk to others who deal with the issues you are facing. As always, the heart of the conference will be the interaction between presenters and audience and the informal networking that takes place in the lobby be tween sessions, on the beach and at ice-cream socials.

Once again we will have a first timers session. The opening night barbecue on Sunday evening is a time to meet old and new friends, and an outing to Broadway on the Beach will offer attractions of all kinds.

Additional information about the conference, including registration and travel information will be published in the conference announcement in March.

ASCUE '99 offers a wealth of information in a relaxed and friendly setting. Remember, this is the conference where "resort casual" is the standard, where helpful and friendly people share their experiences and learn from each other. The warm sunshine of Myrtle Beach is waiting to welcome us back. See you there!

(Editor's Note: Please note that the Conference is a week later this year than it has been for the last few years. Hopefully, this will make it easier for spouses and families to attend. This is truly a family-oriented conference, complete with ice cream socials, out ings and mid-afternoon session closings each day.)

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Academic Projects at Gettysburg College

Bill Wilson, President

Over the past several months the Instructional Technology and Training group at Gettysburg has been working on some interesting projects. Every Friday, members of our group go on-line in a chatroom to answer tech questions, sometimes on specific topics.

While the numbers coming in have been small, we are beginning to see a small trend of increase. The sharing environment, where we sometimes learn things too, has been a positive and we hope to see more participants in the coming months. As a result of a call for proposals, we had four faculty groups submit requests for technology enhanced classrooms. We were able to support portions of all four requests. We are in the process of finishing these rooms up by the end of February. We have also completed testing our wireless portable classroom. We will be demonstrating this setup at the end of February; this will allow us to do training anywhere on campus, with the added benefit of not scheduling any of our public labs, which the students don't appreciate. We are also in the final stages of getting a small but well equipped production studio together, which will allow our faculty access to peripherals and software tools necessary for development of digital media. Finally, we completed an upgrade to our RealServer, which provides hardware and software to support the delivery of streaming audio and video content on campus.

I know our ASCUE institutions would be interested in hearing what other schools are doing to support their faculty and staff. I'm sure our membership has a great list of projects they are undertaking; some of these ideas might be the nudge one or more of us might need to get one going on our campus. If you would like to know more about our projects, feel free to contact me at wilson@gettysburg.edu. If you would like to submit a brief description of projects at your institution for inclusion in the newsletter send them to psmith@saintmarys.edu.

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ASCUE "Know Your Board" Profile: Carl Singer

Peter Smith, Newsletter Editor

I had started this series as a collection of "Old- Timer" stories, but when I was interviewing Carl, I realized that he is both younger than I and has been associated with ASCUE fewer years than me. I decided to change the focus of the column to highlight board members.

Carl Singer has spent his entire professional career in the three-state region of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. He did his undergraduate work in Math at Adrian College in Michigan, graduating in 1964. He came to DePauw, in Greencastle, Indiana, (with a wife and baby) to get a Masters in Math, which he completed in 1966. It was during this Masters program that he took his first computer course on the IBM 1620. It was the age of punched cards and single users quite a bit different from today's computer access.

Carl left DePauw in 1966 to start work on his PhD in Math at the University of Cincinnati, where he grew a family of two boys and a girl in addition to completing his PhD in 1973. While there, he developed an Intro to Computers course for liberal arts and design architecture students. In 1973, he had two job offers: one in Math at the University of Cincinnati and the other as director of the computer center and faculty member in Math at DePauw. It was the IBM 1620 experience and the one intro course that landed him the computer center job. Very few folks had any more computer experience than that in the early 70s. Carl has been at DePauw ever since.

Carl spent the first few years at DePauw teaching math and developing administrative software for the college's PDP 11. It is too bad that he did not know about ASCUE in those years because he would have found a supportive group of colleagues willing to share administrative software they had written in exchange for the programs that Carl was developing. It was not until the late 80's that news about ASCUE made its way to Greencastle and Carl found himself at Myrtle Beach. Carl began teaching computer courses at DePauw almost from the start. One of the early courses was Assembly Language and Computer Organization. The students could not run their Assembly Language programs when timesharing was up, so they had to work between midnight and six in the morning. Some of those students got so caught up in computing that they slept through their other classes and flunked out.

Carl has had three very profitable sabbatical leaves, a benefit from his status as a full-time faculty member as well as computer center director. The first, in 1980, was devoted to taking courses at Purdue. It took him a year and a half to finish his Masters in Computer Science. He founded the CS major at DePauw in 1982 and graduated the first students in 1985. The College hired a full time faculty member in Computer Science as the program grew.

For the second sabbatical in 1987, Carl worked for DEC in New Hampshire and developed a memory model to predict performance from paging hard ware. This experience motivated him to expand the CS offerings at DePauw until, in 1992, the program split off from Math, and the faculty increased again. In 1992, Carl and Dave Maharry at Wabash wrote a Pascal-based CS1 book which emphasized a graphical approach in the weekly lab sessions. They have used the book successfully for a number of years now. For the past several years Carl has successfully promoted the use of teams for problem solving and process improvement. He has given workshops and consulted on team-based methods for project management at ASCUE Conferences and elsewhere.

His third sabbatical in 1994 found him working at Penn State for part of the time and also working with an English teacher at DePauw to apply technology in the teaching of the novel. It was through this experience that Carl realized how important it was to support faculty as they tried to incorporate technology in their teaching. He cut back on both teaching and his computer center director duties (from holding down two full-time positions to some thing closer to one full-time combined position). He also applied for and received a Mellon grant for faculty development and began the Faculty Information Technology (FIT) center. He was able to use grant money to hire a manager of campus labs and technology classrooms and hopes to find a new person in user services. These additional staff members should free up Carol Smith and Carl to focus more on the FIT center.

Carl has been an active member of ASCUE from the very first year he began attending. He ran for an at-large board position during his second year in 1990, and, although he lost that election, he observed that the program chair ran unopposed. So the next year he ran for program chair and organized our 1992 25th Anniversary Conference (including a Sunday night banquet and dance).

Of course, becoming program chair guaranteed two more years on the board through the 1994 conference. He left the board for the 1994-95 year, but ran again in 1995 for program chair for the 1996 conference. But the incoming past president resigned after the 1996 conference, forcing Mary Connolly to serve a second year as past president. This pattern repeated itself in 1997-98 when both president and secretary resigned in midyear, forcing Carl to fill out a second term as president and then this year as past president.

He has contributed his wonderful organizational skills to the Board, helping to streamline the Program Chair's and President's duties until it has become routine to finish our fall board meetings by mid-afternoon on Saturday. We will greatly miss his guidance when he leaves the board after serving 7 of the last 8 years. He has no plans to retire from teaching and working in information technology, but does look forward to playing with his grandchildren on weekends. I understand some of them will be at Myrtle Beach this June. Stop by their beach umbrella to meet his wife Margaret, son Carl, and the grandkids.

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Y2K Ready or Not, It's Coming

Peter Smith

Many colleges are well into Y2K contingency planning. It appears that every conceivable agency from the General Accounting Office (GAO) on down is developing and publishing guidelines for institutions to follow to prepare themselves for the Year 2000. I have selected a few of the more interesting and informative commentaries (and those I could get permission to use).

The GAO has establishes some sample guidelines for colleges to follow. They suggest breaking down the preparation into four phases: Project Initiation, Business Impact Analysis, Contingency Planning, and Testing & Rehearsal.

During Project Initiation, they suggest obtaining Senior Officer support, selecting the Contingency Planning core staff and team leaders, identifying critical business processes and naming teams to do contingency planning for each critical business process area.

During Business Impact Analysis, they suggest: (1) describing and prioritizing all critical business processes and their dependencies on each other and on external agencies; (2) identifying and document ing system failure scenarios; (3) performing risk analysis of each critical business process including contacting external partners (vendors, lenders, etc.) re their preparedness levels; (4) assessing and documenting infrastructure risks including preparedness of critical public services (power, phone, etc.) and determining whether emergency alternatives are available; (5)defining minimum acceptable levels of service for each critical business process; (6) obtaining feedback from students, administrators, faculty, and external partners; and (7) promulgating the business analysis report to all concerned.

During Contingency Planning, they recommend (1) identifying and assessing the costs, benefits, risks, and practicality of potential alternative procedures to continue business processes disrupted by data system failures; (2) defining and documenting trigger events that would activate contingency plans; (3) recommending the best contingency options to senior administrators and obtaining approval or adjusting plans; (4) obtaining needed resources; and (5) establishing teams responsible for implementing contingency plans.

During the Testing and Rehearsal phase, they recommend preparing test plans, selecting testing teams, executing the tests, evaluating the test results, validating the capability of the contingency plans and updating these plans based on the lessons learned from the testing. Only when all the plans pass the tests can an institution be confident of its ability to handle its Y2K problems.

Embedded Processes Inventory

Dan Deeter, Saint Mary's Purchasing Director

Part of examining our internal Y2K readiness is completing a full inventory of affected equipment. One area that can easily be overlooked is equipment with embedded date-sensitive processes. The following questions should assist you in identifying this equipment in your department.

To identify potential problems, answer these six questions for stand-alone (non-computer) devices:

1. Does it operate with electricity? If no, the device is low risk. If yes, look further. Examples of low-risk items: tables, chairs, wind-up clocks, etc.
   
   
2. Does it have a battery or power supply? If no, it's low risk. If yes, look further. Some low-risk items: lamps, hair dryers, electrical pencil sharpeners, analog clocks, etc.
   
   
3. Does it have a display? If no, it's low risk. If yes, look further. Low-risk devices: paper shredders, power supplies, refrigerators, old microwaves, etc.
   
   
4. Does it have a microprocessor? If no, it's low risk. If yes, look further. Low risk devices: televisions, stereos, computer monitors, etc.
   
   
5. Does it have a calendar? If no, it's low risk. If yes, look further. Low-risk devices: microwave ovens, coffeepots, printers, most copier machines, etc.
   
   
6. Does the device use the calendar to schedule events? If no, it's low risk. Examples: digital clocks or calendars that don't schedule anything, camaras, watches, etc. These are low risk because operation of the device is not dependent on the calendar.

   Some devices that might be in trouble include: answering machines, bar code devices, CCTV systems, digital cameras, fax machines, kitchen equipment, mobile phones, pagers, scientific calculators, video recorders and video cameras.

Your Customers and Suppliers

Tom Gusler, Clarion College and ASCUE Secretary

You are only as strong as your weakest link in the chain of other organizations on which you depend for supplies, materials, or services. Your organization's customer interfaces must be examined to make sure that your business can run smoothly even if problems occur with your business partners.

Year 2000 problems may exist directly or indirectly. Direct problems may be caused when data is transferred to or from another organization. This can occur if any of their computers are connected by a network to any of yours. Indirect problems may hurt you if your suppliers or customers have their own Year 2000 problems.

You probably depend on others for power, phone service, transportation, delivery of documents or materials, protection, etc. Make certain that you have assurance of Year 2000 compliance or have appropriate backup available.

You must work with vendors who may not know of a problem or who cannot, or will not, correct their products; suppliers who cannot fix problems; and customers who will not understand the problem.

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1999 Annual ASCUE Summer Conference Preliminary Report

Dagrun Bennett, Program Chair

Plans for the 32nd annual conference are taking shape, and it looks like it will be another excellent conference. I encourage all of you to attend.

As always, ASCUE members are offering to share their knowledge and expertise, and the presentations will cover a wide range of topics relating to the conference theme "IT trends in the 20th Century: How has IT prepared us for the 21st?" This includes diverse issues such as training and support, web development, resource management, the effect of technology on student learning and the curriculum, the use of virtual reality, and the new social dynamics created by virtual classrooms.

The pre-conference workshops are held on Sunday prior to the barbecue dinner which officially opens the conference. This year there will be half-day and full-day workshops in the following areas:

• "Strategies for Supporting and Encouraging Faculty Use of Technology for teaching"
• "Delivering Dynamic Web Content Through Active Server Pages and Database Technology"
• "Web based Communication Tools: Supporting Faculty Use; Analyzing; Implementing"
• "Campus Partnerships for Teaching Information Literacy"

USAir has been designated as the official carrier for attendees of the conference and agrees to offer an exclusive low fare. The conference announcement, scheduled for distribution in mid-March, will contain information about how to make your reservation.

The conference fee is $140. Workshops are $80 for full-day, and $40 for half-day. Half-day workshops are scheduled in such a way that attendees could take both a morning and an afternoon workshop.

Ocean Creek room rates are $84 for a studio, $97 for one-bedroom and $125 for a two- bedroom unit. Complete details will be included in the registration materials and conference announcement.

The most important part of ASCUE is people. The annual conference is always a success because of the open and active participation of ASCUE members. This year's conference builds on more than 30 years of sharing and I am sure it will be another outstanding event. I look forward to seeing you there.

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