AIS Quarterly Fall 2007

To contact AIS, email ais@ucsc.edu
For training specific questions, call 9-1471 or email ais-training@ucsc.edu
To reach the help desk, email help@ucsc.edu or call 459-help

In This Issue

Welcome back to UCSC for fall 2007! In this edition of AIS Quarterly you’ll learn about our upcoming upgrade, receive updates from the different units that work with AIS, and see some results from the AIS survey. You will also hear about GARP 2.1 and get a reporting update. As always, we look forward to receiving your feedback, and we would like to have your participation in an upcoming AIS Upgrade Focus Group. Learn more about the upgrade and all our activities in our fall 2007 newsletter.

AIS Welcomes a New DBA, App Admin and Developer

Academic Information Systems (AIS) is pleased to introduce our new Database Administrator Ken Smith, our new Application Administrator Daniel Gutierrez, and our new Developer Ken Nordgren.

Ken Smith spent the past 15 years working for First Franklin Financial Corporation, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 company Merrill Lynch. Daniel Gutierrez worked as a Services Engineer for 17 years at a major Unix vendor, and Ken Nordgren earned his BA at UC Berkeley and comes to us from PeopleSoft.

Ken, Daniel and Ken have hit the ground running and we are so pleased to have them as part of our team.

Upgrade to 9.0 Update

Academic Information Systems has recently begun the process of upgrading the Student Administration System to a more advanced version of Oracle's Campus Solutions. This upgrade process will take most of the academic year, and the new version will be launched in the summer of 2008.

Some of the new features will be:

• Improved navigation - fewer clicks, more organized and portal-like
  
• Customizable pages - personalize content for your login ID
  
• Enhanced search features - savable and sortable searches with more search options (like "begins with" and "contains")
  
• Grid data download – any grid can be downloaded to Excel
  
• Spell checker - in more fields, custom dictionary capabilities
  

Another set of new features are the Faculty, Student, and Student Services Centers. The Faculty Center provides simplified and better organized access to information about faculty and their students. Like faculty, students will benefit from improved organization and access to the information they need in the Student Center, and staff working with students use the Student Services Center to see all of the information a student sees in their Student Center. Additional tabs provide other student information to allow staff members to better serve students.

There are many benefits of this move to Campus Solutions. Throughout the upgrade process AIS will be presenting more specific information about the improved functionality and the process. New functionality can be found in almost all areas of the new system, including Academic Advising, Student Records, Admissions, Financial Aid, and Student Business Services.

Look for updates in the AIS Quarterly as more information about the features and functionality of Campus Solutions becomes available. If you would like to participate in or learn more about a Campus Solutions 9.0 focus group, please contact Suzanne Willis, willis@ucsc.edu.

• 33% of responding faculty and 33% of responding staff were either extremely or very satisfied with AIS, while 48% of faculty and 42% of staff were neutral and 21% of both faculty and staff were not very or not at all satisfied with AIS.
  
• 52% of responding students asked are either extremely or very satisfied with the MyUCSC portal. 34% are neutral and 10% are not very or not at all satisfied with the MyUCSC Portal.
  
• 95% of faculty and 94% of staff feel that system reliability is extremely or very important, and 41% of faculty and 49% of staff are very or extremely satisfied with system reliability.
  
• 88% of students feel that system reliability (is it available when I need it) is very or extremely important while 42% are very or extremely satisfied with MyUCSC’s reliability.
  

• 45% of faculty and 26% of staff feel that AIS has had positive influence on their work and 27% of faculty and 53% of staff feel that AIS has had both a positive and negative influence on their work. 13% of both faculty and staff feel neutral and 14% of faculty and 8% of staff feel that AIS has had a solely negative impact on their work.
  
• 37% of responding students feel that AIS has had a positive influence on their school life while only 4% feel that it has been solely a negative experience.
  
• 92% of students feel that registering for classes is extremely or very important, while 60% are very or extremely satisfied with registering for classes on MyUCSC.
  
• 91% of students feel that seeing grades on MyUCSC is very or extremely important and 71% are very or extremely satisfied with viewing their grades on MyUCSC.
  
• 88% of students feel that system reliability (is it available when I need it) is very or extremely important while 42% are very or extremely satisfied with MyUCSC’s reliability.
  
• The majority of students feel that it is very or extremely easy to find the information they need on MyUCSC, print class schedules and register for classes on MyUCSC.
  

• Faculty members and students generally access AIS several times a month. The majority of staff access the system less than 20 hours per week. However, 25% use AIS more than 31 hours per week.
  
• 94% of faculty and only 16% of staff access AIS only through the MyUCSC portal. About 50% of staff access AIS through the administration page, and 33% of staff and 5% of faculty access AIS through both pages.
  
• The majority of users have been accessing AIS for more than 1 year, and they generally access it via some type of high-speed connection.
  
• The majority of student respondents use a Windows operating system, while slightly more than half of faculty and staff respondents use Macintoshes.
  

• The survey was emailed to 17,774 addresses: 14,238 Students, 2879 Faculty; and 657 Staff.
  
• 1,449 individuals completed the survey. 1135 Students, 168 Faculty; and 146 Staff.
  

GARP 2.1

The Graduate Application Review Portal (GARP) 2.1 was released on September 27, 2007 for the 2008 admission cycle. Although this year's development was much smaller in scope than last year's, the newest version includes improvements that both faculty and staff should enjoy, including navigational improvements and new functionality to view and export suggested financial support awards.

Two GARP training classes are scheduled for early November:

• Introduction to GARP (11/5) will provide both new and returning users a thorough overview of the application and related business processes.
  
• Tips, Tricks and New Features (11/14), is a new class created to help users that are already familiar with GARP make the most of newer features.
  

For users who are unable to attend training, there will be updated training materials released in mid- to late-October, which will include several short training videos. Sign up for training at http://survey.ucsc.edu/ais/signups/. GARP training materials are available from the GARP login page or at http://graddiv.ucsc.edu/admissions/GARP.php.