Follow the links below to the 2005-06 Cal Poly Plan Initiatives funding requests (if submitted). Final annual reports will be submitted and published in Summer 2006.

• General Education and Support Courses
  • College of Liberal Arts
  • College of Science and Mathematics
• Information Technology Services
• Robert E. Kennedy Library

General Education (GE) and Support Courses    Top

Funding Request:

A proposed total allocation of $1,150,000 for the Colleges of Science and Mathematics and Liberal Arts has been submitted to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Distribution of funds is proposed as follows:

College of Liberal Arts: $500,000

Support for Additional GEB Lecture Sections: $350,000

This allocation will produce approximately 70 additional four-unit GE lecture sections. Approximately 30 of these are planned for English, 34 for Speech Communication, and one each in Modern Languages, Political Science, Philosophy, and Women’s Studies.

Restoration of Large Writing Intensive English Courses to Sections of 30: $150,000

The English Department offers two large sections of sophomore level writing intensive courses each quarter. These six sections average 200 students each; the other 18 or so sections are limited to 30. This $150,000 allocation will allow the department to restore each of these six large sections to 30 students and create an additional 34 sections with 30 students each. The courses were designed and originally funded for 30 students but some sections were increased to large enrollments in response to the budget crisis. In sections of 200, students are deprived of the important course objective to help strengthen and improve their writing skills.

College of Science and Mathematics: $650,000

This allocation will yield approximately 115 lecture sections and 90 laboratory sections in GE and support courses spread somewhat proportionately among the departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics with priority to those departments and courses where there is greatest need. It is our intention to cover the operating expense and need for technical support staff associated with the laboratories using the normal state allocation.

The Colleges of Science and Mathematics and Liberal Arts offer GE and support courses that are essential to the foundation of a polytechnic curriculum and taken by all Cal Poly students. Cal Poly Plan allocations to these colleges are very productive as the two colleges teach about 53% of the university’s student credit units using only 43% of the budget allocated to the seven colleges.

Although both colleges use substantial amounts of College Based Fee money for instruction per decisions made by student/faculty committees, College Based Fees are distributed by headcount to each of the academic colleges and thus effectively do not address GE and support courses. Had these courses been addressed, these two colleges combined would have received an additional $2.2 million of College Based Fee revenues.

Provost Detweiler began to address the insufficient budget recognition for GE and support courses in allocating the 2004-05 reductions in state budget to the colleges. He separated GE and support courses and imposed a substantially smaller budget reduction to them compared to the colleges in general. The approximate combined savings to the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Science and Mathematics was $1,150,000. The combination of this action, the allocation of $950,000 of Cal Poly Plan money to GE and support, and careful budget monitoring that allowed the two colleges to roll forward approximately 0.9% of their 2003-04 budgets, averted a disaster in offering the programs.

Final Reports:

College of Liberal Arts (CLA)   Top

Year end reports will be submitted and published during Summer 2006.

College of Science and Mathematics (CSM)   Top

Year end reports will be submitted and published during Summer 2006.

Information Technology Services   Top

Funding Request:

A continued allocation of Cal Poly Plan funds in the amount of $75,000 for the fiscal year 05/06 has been requested in order to accomplish key infrastructure support tasks and deliverables.

Past funding approvals (02/03, 03/04 and 04/05) for a System Administrator position by the Cal Poly Plan Steering Committee have been based on the proposal and past deliverables surrounding activities associated with the following goal and strategy. This infrastructure support becomes even more critical under tight budget constraints. The result is that the reliability of the IT infrastructure then becomes even a larger link that binds the process chains of the University. ITS proposes to continue to use this resource to accomplish these strategic goals.

Self-service transactions are a way to enable or increase functionality and at times simultaneously increase the productivity / reduce support overhead of resource requirements. The work plan associated with this request supports the infrastructure activities that enable self-service transactions that include:

• time to degree audits, benefiting students with direct access to their academic progress with the goal of reducing time to degree,
• access to Blackboard resources ensuring course materials and interaction with their faculty and fellow students are available on an anytime, anywhere basis
• wait listing as a means to improve students ability to secure required classes
• portal channels as the consistent, robust, redundant, consolidated entranceway into all on-line student services
• scheduling central University events and resources (as mandated by the President) to allow for an “all in one” access point to inform students about events. A consolidated source for reviewing resource availability provides event planners the information they need to avoid potential conflicts with other events leading to successful outcomes

ITS requests continued funding to meet the existing goal and strategy.

GOAL: Utilizing Cal Poly Plan funding, each year determine key deliverables based on priorities at the time that augment, accelerate and enhance infrastructure support for Student Success Initiatives and report on accomplishments in a responsible fashion.

STRATEGY: Fund a System Administrator position that represents one of 2.3 staff positions required to deliver more, sooner and better. The position will augment ITS support for Student Success Initiatives by improving the infrastructure that will:

• Facilitate Student Success through enhanced support for implementation of projects such as Degree Works
• Augment support for the creation of a self-service data model that enables Department, College and University decision makers to determine and appropriate course of action based on information deployed through PolyData, the Cal Poly data warehouse
• Leverage portal technology to make information available in a concise and targeted format
• Enhance support for learning management systems such as Blackboard
• Accelerate the build-out of a fault tolerant development, test and production environment
• Improve backup and recovery processes for critical student data

Proposed Plan for 05/06

The proposed 05/06 plan focuses on three of the above mentioned strategic elements from an infrastructure support perspective.

• Accelerate the build-out of a fault tolerant development, test and production environment for the university’s critical central systems. Implementation of redundant and more robust portal servers to improve availability and meet continued growth (e.g. single click access to Blackboard, Student Pay, email, calendaring, registration, etc.).
• Improve backup and recovery processes for critical student data through the implementation of a new automated tape library.
• Leverage portal technology to make information available in a concise and targeted format on a 24X7 basis supporting anytime, anywhere access.

Tasks & Deliverables Proposed for 05/06

The following are tasks and deliverables that require system administration tasks to maintain and enhance our core self-service application environments and directly support the key strategic directions described above. The augmentation of staff associated with this funded position allows for either direct support of these initiatives or backfill of work allowing others to complete the tasks.

Final Reports:

Year end reports will be submitted and published during Summer 2006.

Robert E. Kennedy Library   Top

Funding Request:

The Library requests $150,000 in Cal Poly Plan Funds to continue with the general and specific deliverables and services that have been established, i.e., extended library hours, investment in digital collections, enhancements to the online public catalog and support of the Digital Teaching Library/Learning Commons.

Ongoing investments include:

Extended library hours  $40,000
Investment in digital collections/access of E-Learning resources  $50,000
Enhancement of online catalog access (OPAC) public workstations  $40,000
Support Digital Teaching Library/Learning Commons  $20,000

Final Reports:

Year end reports will be submitted and published during Summer 2006.