University Times

Vice Provost Robert Pack

By Aug. 28, 2005, when the University’s new student information system is scheduled to be fully up and running, students at all five Pitt campuses will have gained anytime/anywhere access to a wealth of enrollment, financial aid and tuition information — all through a standard Web browser.

The Internet-based system will be phased in on a rolling schedule, planned to avoid disruptions in services. The project’s campus community/admissions and student financials components are scheduled to “go live” in August 2004, to be followed by student records (October 2004), financial aid (March 2005) and academic advisement (August 2005).

For implementation updates, a project history and other information, see: <https://www.pitt.edu/studentsys/> This site is restricted to persons with University computer accounts. Accessing it requires entering a Pitt network account user name and password.

Among the things that Pitt students will be able to do under the new system, which aren’t possible now, will be keeping tabs electronically on whether they (and/or their parents) have submitted required forms and payments to Pitt’s Office of Admissions and Financial Aid and the Housing office.

Also, thanks to a planned feature called “Degree Audit,” students will be able to track their progress toward completing degrees and easily check which classes they need to graduate. Students considering a change in majors will be able to quickly calculate how many of the courses they’ve already taken would count toward a new major.

Students will even be able to see on-line whether they have any unpaid library fines or parking tickets that could prevent them from graduating.

Powered by software that the University is buying from PeopleSoft, Inc. (neither party will disclose at what cost), the new system will make it technically possible for Pitt students to register for courses on-line, although it will be left to individual schools to decide whether to offer that option based on curricular considerations.

“Basically, this new system will make it easier for our students to do business with the University by moving as many transactions as possible to the web, so [students] don’t have to come in person to some campus office to do those things,” Vice Provost Robert F. Pack told the University Senate’s educational policies committee (EPC) at its Nov. 25 meeting. “It will be easier for students to get information about themselves in much more of a self-service environment, which is what they’re used to in dealing with the outside world.”

The system also will benefit faculty, staff and administrators, according to Pack, who is project director for the new system. “The purpose of this whole project is not simply to provide more efficient student services. It will do that. But it will also provide far better curriculum, enrollment and faculty utilization information than we now have,” he said.

Just as students will be able to chart their academic progress on-line, so will the faculty and staff members who advise them. “Advisers will be able to look at a student’s course history and say, ‘Here’s what courses you need to take over the next three terms,’” the vice provost said.

“If you’re a staff member in the Registrar’s office or in Admissions and Financial Aid, you will have more information available to you to answer questions. You’ll have it quicker. Your answers will be more authoritative because you’ll have better information than you did before. There will less need to send students hither and yon.

“From the point of view of a department chairman,” Pack continued, “this system will make it much easier to project ahead and determine which courses – and how many sections of those courses – your unit will need to offer in coming years to meet the requirements of your majors. Chairs as well as deans will gain a firmer idea of what types of faculty members they should be hiring to meet future needs.”

The new system will replace Pitt’s outmoded, unwieldy and expensive-to-maintain Integrated Student Information System (ISIS) as well as dozens of “shadow” systems that schools and departments have created over the years to bypass ISIS.

PeopleSoft training staff will be assigned to Pitt campuses to help University personnel learn the new software. “As with any new system, processes will look different,” Pack said. “What you see on your computer screen will look different.”

Pitt plans to hire two full-time-equivalent staff in central computing to administer the new system, he said. Although Pitt’s student services should become more efficient, the administration doesn’t plan to eliminate any existing staff jobs, according to Pack.

“In the corporate world, advances in technology usually yield savings because corporations find they can achieve the same levels of service with fewer people. But universities typically don’t operate that way,” he told the University Times. “For us, the return on our investment [in the new system] will be better service and better data.”

Replying to EPC members’ concerns about system security, Pack called the PeopleSoft system “highly secure” and heavily firewalled, with access strictly limited to authorized personnel and students. “Even if you can hack into these kinds of systems, usually you can only read them,” the vice provost said. “Generally, there’s not much interest in hacking into them unless you want to change a grade. But that leaves an audit trail, meaning the system generates a record that the grade was changed. The system shows when it was changed, what the authorization for the change was, and what document supported the authorization.”

Students’ health records will not be included in the new information system, Pack told EPC.

A committee of Pitt staff, faculty and administrators unanimously selected the PeopleSoft product after years of analyzing the University’s student information needs and reviewing vendors’ proposals; the final choice was between PeopleSoft and SCT Banner, Pack said.

The committee conducted e-mail surveys and received detailed evaluations from campuses that used PeopleSoft and SCT Banner. Eventually, committee members met with student services personnel at two PeopleSoft campuses — Virginia Tech and the University of Wisconsin.

Last December, representatives of PeopleSoft and SCT Banner demonstrated their products here. An average of 90 Pitt staff from student services units attended each session.

Pitt also got advice from consultants Cornelius & Associates, who interviewed personnel from Pitt student services offices and academic departments. The consultants mapped 112 student service business practices at Pitt and found that 66 could be simplified and streamlined, according to the system web site.

Pack told EPC that Pitt’s administration expects to get 10-12 years out of the new student information system, which PeopleSoft is contracted to upgrade continually and automatically — for example, in response to changing federal guidelines on student financial aid.

“What will happen is, there will be some new, fundamental change in technology like the web” that will antiquate Pitt’s new system, the vice provost predicted.

“If you can get 10-12 years out of a system like this, you’ll have gotten your money’s worth,” Pack said.

—Bruce Steele