Advising

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Academic Advising

SA student records and advising functionality promises significant improvements in curriculum management, student enrollment, transfer credit, degree audit and the maintenance of student academic records.
  
SA will facilitate enhanced management of topics and cross-listed courses in terms of enrollment as well as academic records operations.  Departments will also be able to develop their preliminary schedules online, streamlining the existing cumbersome, paper-based process.
  
UMBC will be able to maintain and enhance on-line registration with automated registration controls, including prerequisite checking, which will eventually replace class permissions as the primary means of ensuring student-appropriate registration.  The current "hold list" process will be replaced by true "waitlisting" with automated enrollment functionality.
  
New on-line tools will assist students in identifying appropriate class choices and managing their registration.   In addition, enhanced functionality and full integration with the Student Financials module will streamline and improve the accuracy of student billing operations. Grade processing will transition to an online process, which will streamline not only grading but graduation clearance and academic standing processes.   
  
SA's automated transfer credit evaluation processes will replace our current entirely manual processes, increasing both timeliness and accuracy. Degree audit functionality will improve our advising, course and major selection, and graduation processes.

SA & MAP

Once SA will come online in March 2009, advisors will retrieve advisee information through SA Self Service features which will take the place of current MAP functionality.  Most MAP features will be replaced by new and much improved similar capabilities in SA, some features will be captured by reports in iStrategy, while others will be obsolete in the new SA environment.  The table below provides some details.

Progress

In conjunction with the staff of the Registrar's Office and other related offices, the Student Records and Advising team has completed a review of SA functionality and is in the process of developing a prototype which will enable the team to identify and evaluate potential issues and business process strategies.   Simultaneously, the team is working with the technical staff on data conversion activities.

Personnel

The following personnel are part of the SA Advising Functional Team:

Pam Hawley, Records and Advising Functional Lead (mcinnis@umbc.edu)
Dave Hollander, Records and Advising Consultant (half-time) (dholla2@umbc.edu)
Robert Jordan, Records Consultant (rjordan@umbc.edu)
Cheri Putro, Technical Lead (putro@umbc.edu)
Vickie Thomas, Advising Consultant (vickieth@umbc.edu)

Updates & Timeline

AcademicAdvisementTimeline -updated.pdf- September 2008

Registration for Summer and Fall 2009 will be conducted in SA. Registration for both terms begins March 24, 2009.  This will require that the SA Course Catalog be fully complete and functional by the end of Fall 2008 so that the Schedule of Classes for those terms can be developed in SA   The initial load of current and historic student records will need to be completed in early Summer 2008 in order to support registration operations for Summer and Fall 2009.   In addition, conversion and configuration of transfer credit will take place throughout Summer 2008.
  
Although we will be "live" on SA for Summer and Fall 2009, registration and records operations relating to Spring 2009 will be managed in the "legacy system," SIS.   A final conversion of student data, including Spring 2009 enrollments and grades, will take place once Spring 2009 grades have been posted.
  
SA's degree audit system for general university requirements (GEPs and GFRs) will go live in conjunction with registration for Summer and Fall 2009. Degree audits for undergraduate majors, minors and certificates will go live in October 2009. In addition, system-enforced prerequisite checking will go live in October 2009.  The Registrar's Office and the project team will begin working closely with departments on degree audit, prerequisite checking and course scheduling early in Fall 2008.