The purpose of this section is to provide faculty and staff with information related to the new SIS. As the project progresses, this section will be updated with information specific to the impacts to faculty and staff.

New Functionality Available

With the implementation of the new SIS, there will be several new tools available to faculty and staff.  For example, DegreeWorks, a Web-based academic advising, degree audit, and transfer articulation system, provides a planner that allows advisors to develop long term course plans by semester.  Departments can generate a report that will give them the number of students advised to take a specific course in a specific semester.  This can help determine course demands in a specific semester.  While this will not account for all students needing the course, it does give us a place to start that has not existed before.

Another new feature in the SIS is the ability for departments to utilize waitlisting.  Waitlisting is an enrollment management tool that assists in maximizing enrollment numbers in individual course sections.  Automated waitlist processing assists in managing the movement of students from waitlists to active registration statuses through rule and control forms and job submission processes.

Options for automated waitlist processing include the following:

• Ability to limit the use of wait lists
  
  • Limit by term
  • Limit by specific course reference number within a term
• Automated notifications to
  • Student
  • Faculty
  • Advisor
  • Registrar
• Set registration controls separately for waitlist
• Control waitlist prioritization manually or with rules
• Control selection of waitlisted courses
• Display or suppress waitlist sequence to student

For faculty, the SIS system provides a suite of online services designed to support the instructional mission of the university.  The services provided include the following:

• Faculty detail schedule
• Faculty week at a glance
• Detail class list information
• Summary class list
• Student contact information
• Online registration permits
• Online final grades
• Active faculty assignments
• Semester class schedule
• Course catalog
• Course syllabus information
• Faculty office hours
• WebCT connection

These services will be accessible to faculty both on and off campus through Internet access.

The New SIS Brings Some Change

With these new tools, come some changes to terminology and some processes.  A key part of the admissions, registration, scheduling, and curriculum process is the term.  The code for the term is composed of two parts – the academic year and the semester. Since most of the academic activity during the academic year occurs in the second calendar year, the second calendar year is used for the first four digits, similar to the budget year. The semester is represented by two digits.