4:00 - 4:05pm: Announcements (5 minutes)

Minutes:

Victoria Szabo – Calls the meeting to order with approval of 1/19/23 and 2/2/23 minutes.

Victoria Szabo - Second Announcement – we have a substitute representative from Computer Science Danyang Zhuo is in while Kartik Nayak is out on parental leave.  Welcome Danyang to the community here. 

Charley Kneifel – Announced success of the Data Fest from this past weekend at the LINK, with attendees and participants from Carolina, Duke, NC Central, DKU and 4-5 others.  We typically hosted the infrastructure on prem or in the cloud.  This year we did it at NCShare which is a regional collaborative infrastructure being built at MCNC with grants funded by NSF, NC Central, Davidson and Duke.  Mark McCahill helped setup all the infrastructure we had 200 students participating in it with 100+ containers that they ran R Studio, Python.  By using the new NCShare environment, we saved Duke the cost of cloud computation for this event. 

John Board – NC Share is an example of using expertise that Duke has to benefit other universities around North Carolina that are less well funded like NC Central and other HBCU’s.

A: Charley Kneifel - Tracy is the PI on the NC Share Science DMZ which runs on the network infrastructure for MCNC, so if for instance a school has a 10GB link but it is using only 1-2GB for your connectivity, they can re-allocate the other 8GB to support their science initiatives. 

Compute as a service was awarded as well and Charley Kneifel is the PI for and that was awarded about a month later.

 

A: Tracy Futhey - And that second grant allows for the ability for RStudio or Jupiter notebooks containers can be offered up to smaller schools that don’t have the resources for the education and higher tier access, and make it a common toolset for them to use moving forward all built off MCNC’s underlying infrastructure.

Q: Victoria Szabo - We should have this as a regular agenda item to learn more about this.

Victoria Szabo – Third Announcement - Next week in the TEC we will have the Research IT Poster Session Review at 4pm-530 pm it will be an Open House.  We want to get feedback about all hard work the various project teams are busy working on.

Charlie Kneifel – Final Announcement - SymMon app is retiring on Monday.

 

4:05 - 4:25pm: Special Guest: Joe Salem (20 minutes)

  • What it is: Each year ITAC has the opportunity to hear from selected senior leaders. This week we are pleased to welcome the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs, Joe Salem, who will answer questions and share his perspective on the role of libraries in supporting learning and scholarship.
  • Why it’s relevant: Salem comes to Duke after 4 years as the Dean of Libraries and interim Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Michigan State University. At MSU, he co-led the development of their university-wide 2030 Strategic Plan and re-organized their Libraries to emphasis diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as faculty and student engagement. ITAC members are invited to pose their questions to him.

MINUTES:

Tracy Futhey - Let me welcome and introduce Joe Salem to the group, as a fantastic partner here.  Sorry I couldn’t be there in person, but I will be taking notes from afar.

Joe Salem - Thank you for welcoming me as well, no worries for not being here.  I came to Duke from Michigan State – I was really kindly given the opportunity to work on a few initiatives at the University Level, and one of the takeaways is that I see the Libraries as a partner at the University Level as we move this initiative along.  

Talking Points from Slides (Here)

Strategic Planning:

At MSU: Re-org of MSU Libraries, I led integration of University archives and MSU press into MSU Libraries, having Co-Chaired University Strategic Planning at MSU.  MSU Press was rolled into part of the Strategic planning, it used to be situated in the VP for Research when really it needed to be aligned with the Libraries.

For Duke: We really feel strongly and part for the reason I felt happy coming to Duke is the idea Libraries being a vital partner is already part of the DNA here.  Libraries are vital partners teaching, researching, and learning at Duke University, Scholarly publishing, digital publishing, center for data visualization sciences.  It focuses on the teaching and learning opportunities for students.

Data:

Earliest version of this slide was titled Data, Data, Data and more Data. It won’t surprise anyone in this room because we have a heavy role to play with Data and or the folks in this room.  If I could propose the perfect play book for a University Librarian coming into an R1 university would to have a good relationship with the CIO, the VP for Research and Innovation and to invite the Librarian to be involved in that.  Over the last few months, we have had such a heavy role to play with Data:

  • Data Management
  • Visualization
  • Curation Services are in high demand
  • Crucial role in supporting research IT infrastructure at Duke, 
  • Support for Digitizing Collections
  • Data storage to meet demand.
  • Libraries have their own data needs that are growing like analog collections that are becoming more and more digital and that has impacts on storage.

Scholarly Publishing Complexity:

  • Renegotiating – Big Bundle deals with journal publishers – think of it as unbundling your cable, but the scale if we unbundle from these deals then it can save us over $1M/yr.
  • New agreement with PLOS to cover open access fees for Duke authors.
  • Rising costs of journals, concentrated in the hands of a few for-profit corporations
  • Duke Space
  • Research Data Repository
  • Data Licensing
    • We have different needs to meet on campus-- the biggest one is Data Licensing and also access to data with the Research Data Repository

Open Science Funding Requirements:

  • OSCP Memo - Office of science and Tech Policy Memo, upcoming changes to federal guidelines
  • Duke research data policy initiative to be implemented by May 2013
  • 200th data set recently added to Duke Research Data Repository
  • Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS)
    • Geeta Swamy and Tim McGeary represent Duke on HELIOS project

Library Role in Climate Initiative:

  • Center for climate data
  • Reducing carbon footprint

Lead Role in Digital Humanities:

  • Project Vox
  • SNCC Digital Gateway
  • Stone by Stone – who built the Duke Chapel?
  • Digital Humanities – needs to be met better (refer to the recording)

Q&A:

John Board - It’s great that we have 200 data sets in the collection now.   So, what are your thoughts when someone shows up with a Petabyte from their great project, when the government says it has to be open but not completely open. What are your thoughts with rising costs.

Joe Salem - It’s an area of focus as we think about restricted or other sensitives that determine the data size and complexity to access the data. Storage capacity will get cheaper but it’s the access that the most complex. I welcome that it’s part of the outcome of the research IT work.

Lindsay Glickfeld - There are also other repositories popping up like the Danby repository.  How do we interact with them, would there be another pipeline between them?

Joe Salem - You can think of these things as a bit of an ecosystem, but it’s going to be around the outcomes of the Research IT function.   We may decide that it would be the published data, however we will focus on developing an ecosystem. 

Tim McGeary - We have other agreements with repositories, and we have staff that focus on or help folks connect with those repositories. 

Tracy Futhey -  Joe thanks for all you said, when we went through the Research IT process – some people had the notion “Hmm Library I would not have thought of them as a partner of Research IT.”  Can you paint a picture for us for on how you view this?

Joe Salem - Libraries are already doing a lot of what we need to do like:

  • Helping with the outset on data plans.
  • What the data would look like.
  • Setting up collaborative work environments.

 

What was raised just a bit ago around data, preservation, long term access – are things that when you think of libraries being involved are helpful. We are really good around the things related to:

  • Privacy
  • Data ethics
  • Clean data.

If you want to focus on this, you involve a Librarian.  Most teams are surprised at what the Librarians bring to data teams.

Sunshine Hillygus, Political Science - I get the sense that there is a hope that you guys, Librarians, will solve all our Research IT Concerns and needs. Is Data Repository really the most important for you guys? I would love to hear more about - Identifying some of the gaps in research support and what that might look like?  Empirical models that say we hire people that are specialized in this OR do we have Data Librarians that have that data analytics support? What’s the unique training for a data librarian – which makes them available to fix things for many different data support / data analysts?

Joe Salem - We have a very robust but scoped program in CDVS (Center for Data and Visualization Sciences). Data Librarians look at the licensing of Data-- it’s a growth area.   Why a Librarian in that role? They sit at this nexus of roles between research and curricular enterprise. They bridge that area – sometimes it goes as far as Data design, sometimes it’s curatorial work, or it’s data structure. 

 

 

4:25 – 4:50pm: Undergraduate Student Presentation - State of IT - Chase Barclay, Preston Nibley, Zoe Tishaev (25-minute presentation)

  • What it is:  ITAC Student Representatives appointed by the Duke Student Government will present on the state of IT from the undergraduate student perspective. Each year, our Student Representatives prepare and distribute a survey to their peers to gather this information.
  • Why it’s relevant:  Feedback from the students allows IT administrators to hear firsthand the challenges that students face on a regular basis. This information can help set goals and priorities for various IT projects and initiatives. By presenting these viewpoints earlier in the spring semester, IT leadership can respond to the students’ issues and concerns before the end of the academic year.  

MINUTES:

Link To Slides

Chase Barclay – presented first on the survey was sent out via Qualtrics and the results are attached above in the link.  As compared to last year there was an increase in the number of students reached.

Key areas noticed:

The top 10 majors represented were Biology, Economics and Engineering specifically Electrical & Computer Engineering.

What do students use:

  • Ton of iOS mac and iOS
  • Some windows and 5% Android and a very vocal 5% at that.

Academics and then Deep IT and the Services

We reduced the length of this to reduce the comments.

Key takeaways:

  • Sakai to Canvas Transition
    • They really liked to having the simple place in Sakai to see what mattered – grades schedule
  • Email – students are generally happy with Outlook
  • Duke Unlock – is lovely when it works – when it doesn’t work it’s frustrating
  • Duo Push – it’s disliked
    • Students don’t like having to register the device and short approval time is a problem.
  • Box – students are generally satisfied – when people are registered for a platform
  • Duke Mobile – students who use are dissatisfied and then there are ones that just don’t use it.
  • e-Prins – they get it to work on their computer but student report it is unreliable/doesn’t work.
  • TransLoc –  Duke Vans got integrated into Transloc but people are not necessarily using it.

IT Services presented by Zoe Tishaev

  • Wifi – most people use Duke Blue –
  • Cellular – lots of satisfaction  AT&T & Verizon
  • Drop zones C1 route
  • Mobile Duke Card  – Android Accessibility – very vocal , some vending machines don’t take duke mobile duke card.  
    • Inconsistency in dorm access throughout the day
  • Outlet Accessibility  - outdoor study spaces – dissatisfaction..
  • Duke Licensed software – Microsoft Office, Adobe are highly used
  • Cyber Security – most people want to know how to protect themselves but don’t know how to
  • AV software/ ad blocks / VPN is used more than webcam covers

Other Services and miscellaneous (Non-OIT) resources presented by Preston Nibley

  • Slack, GroupMe, iMessage are all heavily used
  • Students love SLACK – (he has 6 slack channels for clubs)
  • Newspaper – NYT , WSJ, TWP, Atlanta Constitution Journal
  • Request for NYT Games – Crossroad Puzzles
  • Smart Devices in Home – 4/5 don’t use them
    • Very easy to setup or very difficult --varies by device.

Where do people go to for IT Resources?

  • Friends / Duke Websites then I don’t seek help from the service desk or they usually don’t seek help

Most Frustrating things:

  • Outdoor Wi-Fi connectivity
  • Outlet access
  • Ease of registration for essential services
  • Freshman – don’t know where to go an even before they get here because they don’t know where to go for email or how to login with that.
  • Duke Mobile app – they want to see it work

Q&A:

For the interest of time – Q&A was held off so the Graduate Students presentation.

 

 

4:50 – 5:15pm: Graduate Student Presentation - State of IT – Brandon Le (25-minute presentation)

  • What it is: The ITAC Student Representative appointed by the Graduate & Professional Student Council will present on the state of IT from the graduate student perspective. Each year, our Student Representatives prepare and distribute a survey to their peers to gather this information.
  • Why it’s relevant:  Feedback from the students allows IT administrators to hear firsthand the challenges that students face on a regular basis. This information can help set goals and priorities for various IT projects and initiatives. By presenting these viewpoints earlier in the spring semester, IT leadership can respond to the students’ issues and concerns before the end of the academic year.  

MINUTES:

Link to Slides

Brandon Lê – Presented on the Graduate Slides key talking point below:

  • Demographics  - Pratt school did the most response
  • The graduate School was second and they are affiliated with another school
    • Degree types lots of Masters and PhD types
    • Variance in years reported the longer you are here the less you want to be involved but also Masters’ degrees are 1-2 years and then they drop off.
  • Demographics – Technological Utilization
  • Computing Devices folks use.
  • Personal smart devices and/or a department provided device and more smart/ biometric activity trackers
  • Mostly Mac, Windows
  • Browsers- a few folks use Brave

In the end the overall IT experience – people feel satisfied

 

Q&A:

No Q&A for either Undergraduate or Graduate.  Meeting adjourned.