• Funding of Computing Resources: The need for an ongoing level of funding for replacement of obsolete and depreciated computing equipment as well as repair and maintenance at the department and school level is of continued importance. In addition, the provision and funding of technical support personnel at the decentralized unit level has been a focus of discussion and concern.
• Planning for Future Capacity: Currently this is perceived as a communications band-width, communications access, and server capacity issue. It is not difficult to anticipate the increased demands that will be seen for these resources as more faculty use Internet resources for teaching and research.
• Emerging Need for Collaboration Support: With increased use of Internet and greater collaboration among scholars both Intra- University and Inter-University, the need for "middleware" to support collaboration, overcome platform incompatibilities, and facilitate synchronous and asynchronous collaboration will grow. (This is evident in several of the provocative scenarios developed by Council members.)

The emphasis on the Departmental Information Technology Plan has improved the quality and relevance of the individual proposals. Yet, these plans also help highlight the unmet needs of many of the departments. These plans also highlight the need for a stronger sense of a strategic direction to be understood at the school and department level.

The collective weight of the proposals signals several wider issues:

• Resources for Web Based Documents and Interactions: Academic Departments are moving quickly to establish Web based documents for their classes, research, collaborative efforts and of course departmental information. The provision of sufficient disk space, management software, server cycles and bandwidth is beginning to be perceived as critical issues by departments. The division of labor among the departments, ITC, the Library, or other services needs review, policy direction, and corresponding budget funding.
• Development of Multimedia Instruction Materials: Numerous schools and departments are seeking to create multimedia instructional material. The level of experience and expertise varies widely. The range of proposed hardware and software solutions reflect the diversity of experience as well as need. It is clear to ACAC that we are on only the beginning stage of the innovation/adaptation curve. Careful monitoring and development by ITC, the Multimedia Center, and the Multimedia User Group is merited. Development of a critical mass of equipment and experience is apt to be essential before wide spread dispersion of this expensive technology and support services to the individual departments.
• Centralized or Individualized Multimedia Training: Faculty and students are needing training, instruction, assistance and encouragement as they engage multimedia instruction opportunities. The Council perceives a tension between the general needs of many and the specific disciplinary needs of individual departments or subfields of study. The concentration or dispersal of these "services" among the schools and departments pose personnel challenges for the University.
• Small Specialized Computing Needs: The very existence of centers, institutes and some smaller departments defines "special" needs for computing resources. Departments which are agglomerations of individual faculty each with specialized language/script needs or who use ancient documents, the fragmented needs are difficult to address in any unified proposal. These small units are also individually less able to address their special needs from their own budget resources, yet are not large enough to demonstrate "significant leveraging of funds or impact on numbers of students." Thus, funding for departmental computing either by annual budget allocation or by a allocation process which is less targeted than the ACSP would be helpful.
• The needs of the Off-Grounds Graduate students in Continuing Education were highlighted. Administrative as well as hardware barriers to equivalent computing support need to be addressed.

Several scenarios have been developed by members of the UCIT and the ACAC. These are available on the UCIT Web Site. I invite your review of these scenarios and your elaborations or suggestions. However, there are some implications common to two or more of these scenarios:

• Capacity: Large bandwidth, need for supercomputing and communications to support it.
• General Access: Near universal student accessibility to network communications and distributed data and in some cases distributed software. A few scenarios also mention the need for distributed processing.
• Special purpose high resolution screens and high quality visual workstations and specialized equipment for production of information documents and images.
• Collaborative message systems, scheduling and coordination.
• Access for special learners: Facilitating the education and communications of the hearing impaired or visually impaired student. Recognizing the different learning styles and accommodations of students with specific learning disorders. (This scenario was discussed at the ACAC meeting. A written scenario is in the works and may now be available to the Committee.)

How can the faculty and research community at the University continue to be effectively engaged in formative discussions about the types of policy directions and innovations that can occur at UVa? How can School and Departmental information technology planning be strengthened and better connected?

What kinds of qualitatively innovative activities have emerged at other Universities. Is there anything in the domain of Academic Computing that parallels the invention of "Arts Dollars" at UVa in the domain of the performing arts?

What kinds of personnel shifts have been used to help address the need for more information technology support at the School and Departmental levels? How can flexibility be achieved?

How much does ITC staff participate in the national workshops on finding solutions to academic computing needs? How can this activity be communicated to interested members of the University Academic community?