Each academic department selects a faculty Tech Rep as its liaison to the Academic IT program. Their names, along with those of the Library Representatives, appear below in Section III, Becoming a Model Citizen in the Borough of Brooklyn, The Library Representatives & Technology Representatives.
"To fill the need to listen to a wide range of faculty viewpoints, another approach for ACAC is needed. This year that has been partially fulfilled by turning the Tech Reps into ACAC. From my perspective, this has been extremely successful. It has given AIT a faculty forum in which to advance and debate technology issues, as well as a forum in which faculty can make requests of AIT. So successful were we that at the Provost's roundtable the representative of Faculty Council's computing committee stated that ACAC had assumed it functions." Howard Spivak, Director for Library Systems & Academic IT
This year, ACAC (AIT's faculty advisory committee) has taken an exciting new turn: now, all the department Technology Representatives are also ACAC members. Below, a chart showing ACAC's executive committee, followed by the annual report of ACAC chair, the able and affable David Bloomfield.
| David Bloomfield (Chair) | Education |
| George (Skip) Brunner | Music |
| Fabio Girelli-Carasi | Modern Languages & Literatures |
| Mark Gold (ex officio) | Information Technology & Services |
| Nicholas Irons (ex officio) | Library & Academic IT |
| Yehuda Klein | Economics |
| Wendy Hall Maloney | Seek |
| Wayne Powell | Geology |
| Barbara Rosenfeld | Education |
| Howard Spivak (ex officio) | Library & Academic IT |
| Vanessa Yingling | Physical Education & Exercise Science |
March 14, 2003 Dear Professor Higginbotham: I wish to report on the activities of the Advisory Committee on Academic Computing (ACAC) during the 2002-2003 academic year. As you know we have been meeting regularly under the new arrangement of ex officio ACAC membership for departmental Technology Representatives along with non-Tech Rep "volunteer" faculty members who have stated an interest in attending ACAC meetings. The transition to this new arrangement has been accomplished with great success, measured by the number of faculty attending meetings (over a dozen at meetings compared to 2 or 3 last year) and the expanding role of ACAC in technology decision-making at Brooklyn College. I also believe that this formal role for Tech Reps has reinvigorated the title, which will pay further dividends through increased faculty awareness of their role in technology development at the College.
Three ACAC subcommittees are in operation: Faculty Incentives for Technology Engagement (Professor Vanessa Yingling, chair), Hardware and Software Procurement and Distribution (Ms. Elizabeth LeDoux, chair), and Blackboard and Beyond (Professor Wayne Powell, chair). The TE subcommittee has produced a draft report that has already been the subject of a lengthy and productive meeting between myself and the Director of the Office of Information Technology Services regarding faculty concerns in that area. The HSPD subcommittee has produced a Survey on Departmental Lab Use and Instruction that has been distributed to all Tech Reps for responses and will be analyzed to more effectively resource and employ the proliferation of stationary and mobile computer labs on campus. The BB subcommittee continues to work on a draft report.
In addition to subcommittee work, ACAC has discussed many issues related to campus technology and has heard presentations from Mark Gold and Dr. Sylvie Richards on present and future matters related to ITS and the Blackboard instructional platform, respectively. These discussions and presentations serve an important new function of ACAC, which is to disseminate faculty and administrative thinking on campus technology among departmental faculty and to campus technology decision-makers.
Finally, ACAC has been active in campus-wide technology issues, particularly through the new Teaching Learning and Technology Roundtable (TLTR), where the entire ACAC Executive Committee of 7 members provides strong faculty representation of our collective and individual views. Through this and other campus media, ACAC has become an important "player" in the design and implementation of technology innovations at Brooklyn College.
I thank you for your continuing support of ACAC and I hope we have met your expectations for quality faculty advice to the Office of Academic Information Technologies.
Respectfully submitted, Professor David C. Bloomfield Chair, Advisory Committee on Academic Computing
This year's Faculty Fellows are David Bloomfield (Education; chairing ACAC) and Raymond Weston (Health and Nutrition Sciences). Professor Weston is working on an assessment of AIT programming, employing interviews, focus groups, and a variety of techniques that are new to us. In the spring 2003 he will pilot his assessment with three or four academic departments.
