Council debates proposals

The Bloomington Faculty Council discussed a newly developed University Information Technology Services portal as well as an interim re-implementation policy for language proficiency standards at a meeting last night in Ballantine Hall. \nPortal to cater toward individuals\nThe "OneStart" portal was presented by Barry Walsh and Jim Thomas of UITS. The portal, when completed, will allow students, faculty, staff and alumni to customize their computer desktops based on their individual needs and preferences.\nThe portal would automatically bookmark Web sites a user utilizes most often and save them as windows that can be clicked on and immediately accessed. Other features include automatic links to the Bloomington forecast page of the Weather Channel. \nWalsh hopes the portal's user-friendly format will make finding things on the computer a much simpler and less time-consuming task for users.\n"We want to envision helping you get right to all of the services you need in a single entity," Walsh said.\nSome BFC members expressed concern over certain aspects of the development of "OneStart." Professor of physics Harold Ogren questioned whether a system of having several different pages instantly accessible from the desktop would cause greater potential for a security breach or allow a virus to spread more quickly.\nWalsh denied the possibility.\n"Nothing else in the portal would be affected by a virus in one application," he said.\nChancellor Sharon Brehm expressed support of the portal's development but wants to make sure the ability for users to individualize their desktops will not take away from the sense of community on campus.\n"If there was a state of emergency, there should be a space for people to obtain information," Brehm said. "There should also be a constant reminder on the portal of the campus as a community."\nInstitutions with portals similar to "OneStart" include the University of Texas, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Minnesota, University of Washington and University of Buffalo. \n"OneStart" will not be implemented until the BFC agrees on what it would like the default settings to be and UITS can fully prepare servers for a potentially heavy user load.\nNew standards help students\nAnother issue brought before the council was the interim policy on associate instructor English proficiency standards. The policy was updated in December 2001 for the first time since November 1979.\n"Foreign graduate students whose native language is not English shall be tested by the Center for English Language Training to insure that they have adequate proficiency in the language before they may be allowed to engage in direct instruction of students," the policy said\nForeign graduate students had to fill out a waiver under the old policy, giving them a semester to perfect their English skills if they did not meet the requirements. The waiver policy, however, has not been used for about five years, thus allowing no quality opportunities for international students to improve their language skills.\nThe situation kept foreign students who were required to teach in order to receive grants out of the classroom. Those whose language skills were somewhat questionable remained in the classroom, Robert Eno, BFC president and professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures said.\n"We want to institute a flexible waiver policy that is very carefully monitored while we build up proper training vehicles," Eno said. "For example, someone teaching high-level French should have a semester to perfect their English skills."\nThe Dean of Faculties and the Research and University Graduate Schools will be responsible for creating the training programs, which will be available in August 2003.