Steering Cttee Update Aug. 19, 2010

Committee updates

a. Staff Development
Planning is underway for the ‘gadget days’ tentatively scheduled for Oct. 18 at Denison and Oct. 28 at Oberlin (October breaks for those schools, so better facilities and parking available). The committee is meeting by conference calls and details will soon follow re. the October events.
b. Technical Infrastructure – Alan is on vacation, so there’s nothing new to report at the moment.

Institution updates
a. Denison – Three projects have been approved and work began this summer. They are from Black Studies, Theater, and Women’s Studies. One more from Geosciences is in preparation. After the Denison Selection Committee re-convenes in early September, Scottie will send the letters and acceptance forms to current grant recipients.
b. Kenyon – Five projects have been approved. Letters and agreement forms were sent out to the grant recipients. All were signed and returned. Work will start with the Fall semester.
c. Oberlin – Two projects have been awarded grants, one processing the archives of former Oberlin President King who chaired a commission for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, and the other from Geology wherein images of geological features will be processed. Work will begin after the semester starts. Ray will send the award letters and acceptance forms to recipients soon.
d. OWU – They are on track with a link for the grant on their home page. Two projects were done in 2009 as trial projects – 1) the “Krempley Gender Project” -- travel images from professor’s private collection will be used to elicit response from students in Humanities Classics 226 , selected by student (Krempley) as independent study project. 2)“Auxin Transport During Gravitropism and Phototropism using a GFP-based Biosensor“– to be used in Biology/Microbiology 120 (Intro to Cell Biology). Three summer “pilot” projects were approved in May by the NGL Campus Committee and are currently in process -- 1)“Tree Growth data for the Bohannan and Kraus Ecological Preserves” (Botany/Microbiology professor Laurel Anderson and liaison Deb Peoples) 4)”Contemporary Issues in Media Law Podcast”(Journalism professor Melinda Rhodes and liaison Kristine Kinzer) 5)”Digital Resources for the Teaching of the History of the Book” (English professor Patricia DeMarco and liaison Bernard Derr).
e. COW – The first proposal is almost ready for review. It is an oral history project from environmental studies regarding the history of dairy farms in the local area.
Update on the staffing survey
Catalina reported that few responses have been received, but she will send a reminder soon and follow through.

2-year timeline in grant proposal
Mark noted that we are behind schedule. See the timeline he sent via e-mail and see how we can move along more quickly. Catalina has discussed this at COW and she will meet shortly with Kenyon about it and the assessment plan. Note that a detailed assessment plan is part of our responsibility. Ron will work on getting this completed with Catalina’s help.
The Scholarly Communication component needs to be addressed. Oberlin has long been working on this, and Denison will start this Fall. Scottie meets with the Provost today and has invited Ray to give an open talk on the topic November 4th followed by a meeting of the Library Advisory Committee. Summer of 2010 was supposed to be focused on library staff and Summer of 2011 was to focus on faculty. The directors need to discuss how to move forward as a group on this topic.
Interim reports are due September 15th to Mark. LOOK at the timeline and prepare your report accordingly.
"Hardware and software" ($40,000) in grant budget - how do we want to spend this money?
We will ask Alan to discuss this on the next call. Ray will alert Alan about this.