Lisa Chow, IST–SIS
The fourth annual Campus Student Systems Forum, sponsored by Office of the Registrar (OR) and Student Information Systems (SIS) was held on July 31 with attendance exceeding 200 people and representing over 100 campus units. The Forum's theme this year was "Partnering to Strengthen Our Student Systems"; and the various presentations, presenters, and attendees reflected how student systems require a broad collaboration involving many across the Berkeley campus.
With the main goal of the forum as strengthening communication and dialogue between the users, planners, and builders of student systems, Registrar Susie Castillo-Robson and SIS Director JR Schulden provided an overview of this year's student systems activity and developments. In a humorous exchange, the Registrar acted as the interpreter for Director Schulden's "tech talk" (IDMS, VSAM, J2EE, etc.). Director Schulden spoke about the operational systems database conversion from IDMS to DB2, last minute program changes to accommodate fees, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), UCLINK's replacement, and a number of recent system enhancements. She emphasized major areas of collaboration in the past year:
In the uncertain and ever changing future, it was stressed that systems development would require much more partnering with academic and business units and different campus IT groups.
A lively and informative question and answer period followed with six panelists (JR Schulden, SIS; Susie Castillo-Robson, OR; Mindy Lopez, CARS; Jann Fong, CalNet; Betsy Livak, Graduate Division; Jon Conhaim, e-Berkeley). Attendees raised questions that covered all areas from a concern about missing addresses, to coordinating email addresses, to keeping more history available online on students.
The forum ended with two breakout sessions of the attendees' choice. Sessions included "Working with Online Student Data", "Graduate Application and Admission System", and "CourseWeb". In addition to the breakouts, attendees could visit poster sessions providing information on various issues and systems from sources campuswide — Security, Student Awards, DARS (Degree Audit Reporting System), GradLink-on-the-Web, AirBears, eDesign, SEVIS, CalNet, MyBerkeley, CARS (Campus Accounts Receivable Systems), and SIMS.
As always, recommendations for next year's forum are welcome. Of course, if you have any problems using a student system, please do not hesitate to email Lisa Chow, or JR Schulden,
[ iNews | Search | IST | UC Berkeley Computing | UC Berkeley ]
iNews: UC Berkeley information technology news on the Internet
Copyright 2003, The Regents of the University of California