During Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting, Vice President of Infrastructure Dan Ewart informed the senate about revisions made to the University of Idaho Administrative Policy Manual (APM).
Two APM’s, both of which fall under infrastructure, were old, outdated and needed updating, Ewart said.
“Some of the updates deal with things like technology that is out of date and things like that, that we needed to change,” Ewart said.
In general, Ewart said some of the APM’s needed more flexibility in order to deal with situations that might come up.
“(APM’s) were a little too rigid in certain areas,” Ewart said. “We want to make sure people know what they’re responsible for, because that’s an important part of the APM, but also to have that flexibility.”
Ewart said one of the revised APM’s, that dealt with the acceptable use of technology resources, required a rewrite from the late ‘90s.
The purpose of this rewrite, Ewart said, was to make sure individuals understand their user responsibilities in regard to technology.
The policy also deals with what happens when there technology is misused and what certain misuse might entail, Ewart said.
“The most important thing to remember is that the technology for the university is provided for the work at the university and not for your own personal use or to forward other personal aspects,” Ewart said.
The second revised APM covers university space and the allocation of it throughout the institution. Ewart said the policy changed significantly after revisions were made, but for a couple good reasons.
The first reason was because of inconsistencies with the university space policy among other policies. This included the responsibilities of the university president, Ewart said.
“Anything that has to do with these kinds of decisions is ultimately the responsibility of the president, and we had parts of this with responsibility of the provost and things like that,” Ewart said.
A better way to handle this was to have the responsibly be represented as the president, Ewart said. This means having him do what he normally does, while delegating responsibilities as appropriate.
The second reason for change was made because of the inactivity of the Space Advisory Council. Ewart said they wanted to take out some restrictions for membership and have an opportunity to reassess.
“As we grow as an institution, space is going to be a critical issue for the institution,” Ewart said. “We’re going to have to have some flexibilities in institution to look at how we allocate space and things like that.”
Ewart said the third reason was because they wanted to talk more about the assignment of campus space and the need to track it in a more efficient way.
The final reason was the need for simplification. Ewart said they simplified the space request process by eliminating it from the policy.
“We are re-doing the space request policies right now,” Ewart said. “Instead, we have a space form that if anybody needs additional space they fill out that form and it goes in the queue for evaluation.”
Savannah Cardon can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @savannahlcardon