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About the Faculty of Arts & Sciences IT Support Program

The Faculty of Arts & Sciences IT Support Program provides baseline access and support to teaching faculty in academic departments for computing related issues. This program was formally announced by the Provost on June 2, 1999.

Program goals are to provide two levels of basic assistance to faculty in the Arts and Sciences:

1. Support to departments, and, within that context, to individuals in planning, purchase, and installation of computer equipment, and
2. Ongoing computing support to faculty within the department's plan.

The Faculty of Arts & Sciences IT Support Program currently provides support to 33 academic departments and programs. IT support is delivered by a group of local departmental technology consultants.

Program overview

Jon Lizee, Philip Long

Initiated in response to a recommendation of the AY96 Provost's Advisory Committee on Information Technology, the Faculty of Arts & Sciences IT Support Program provides FAS departments with IT planning, basic support and budget for new baseline computer equipment (renewed every four years) for full time teaching faculty. In Engineering and the Natural Sciences where many faculty have advanced computer workstations, departments generally focus program resources on support. During AY98 the FSP was piloted in fifteen departments in the Humanities including approximately 300 faculty members. The pilot provided new computers and upgrades to 25% of the full time teaching faculty and deployed 12 Departmental Computing Consultants to serve as local support personnel. Based on this successful experience, the program was expanded in AY99 to 22 departments (450 faculty members), including five departments in the Social Sciences and nine departments in the Natural Sciences and Engineering. By AY01 the program will be fully deployed across all 37 academic departments and 700 faculty members.

Support

The faculty IT support program is built upon the distributed, tiered support model. The first tier of support is an individual or small staff associated with each department (Departmental Computing Consultants - DCCs); the goal of this first level of support is to respond quickly and ably to needs which fall within the scope of the departmental support plan. Problems which the DCC cannot answer are referred to second tier staff. The second tier of support uses existing discipline support organizations, primarily ITS Academic Media & Technology, but also library staff and others; the goal for the second tier is to train and support the first tier staff as well as to address discipline-specific and more technical issues. The third tier of support consists of ITS professionals and provides deep technical support to address complex, and/or institution-wide issues.

Departmental IT plan

One of the principal components of the Faculty Support Program is developing a basic inventory and support plan for IT in each department. In the pilot project in the Humanities, this involved each department developing an active Computing Committee and conducting an annual inventory of university-owned computers and a review of computing needs for each faculty member. That information is developed into a rolling four year plan for computing for the department including faculty machines, supported software applications, any departmental clusters and service targets for the DCCs. Some departments elect to supplement the FSP program budget to provide a higher level of support.

This same approach is used in engineering and the natural sciences, but the inventory and plan generally includes significant server and research facilities as well as faculty machines. Again, the department forms a Computing Committee, conducts an inventory and develops a support plan, recognizing that technical computing tends to be organized by work group and many work groups already have local support. To date, the program has provided support as funds to hire Tier 1 staff, matching funds used to supplement departmental and/or grant funds to hire Tier 1 staff, and central staff support paid for jointly by the program and department or research funds.

Support budget

Current and projected budgets are based on $1,200/yr per ladder faculty member for Tier 1 and partial Tier 2 support. For faculty with Mac and single-user Windows, this budget provides each faculty member a new machine every four years and 1/2 hour of first tier IT support per week. For faculty using technical workstations, this budget provides 1 hour of first tier IT support per week. In addition, the FSP provides professional management for Tier 1 staff and incentive funds for standard configuration research machines.

Future directions

Substantial challenges remain for the Faculty Support Program, including training issues, the sometimes uneven quality of support provided by casual staff, and the security and complexity of advanced workstations. But, departmentally centered planning, standard solutions to common problems, and a strong support management structure hold much promise. Early responses from faculty suggest the program is warmly welcomed, but this is clearly a program that will take several years to develop fully.