While the Provost is reviewing the final recommendations from the graduate education work groups, he has asked Academic Support Resources (ASR) to work with Graduate School staff to lay the groundwork for changes to student administrative processes.
Purpose and scope of the preliminary work
Whatever shape the final changes may take, ASR's goal is to help facilitate changes to student administrative processes and systems so changes can be implemented efficiently and expeditiously.
ASR has begun working with staff in the Graduate School, colleges, and departments to more fully understand current processes related to student services and the administration of academic programs. ASR's role in this process will be to assist in the transformation of business processes and to facilitate the development or modification of automated systems.
The scope of ASR's work at this point is limited to processes and systems affected by the Student Administrative Processes Work Group recommendations.
How to stay up-to-date on changes to student administrative processes
ASR and the Graduate School will regularly post updates to the graduate education transformation webpage. Please check back frequently.
ASR would also like to share and gather information with colleges, departments, or administrative units that will be affected by these changes to student services and systems. If you have not yet been contacted by ASR but would like to be involved, please contact Frank Blalark.
Current task: Mapping a new academic data structure
Background: In the current academic data structure, Graduate School students and academic programs are all tied to one "college code" in the system: the Graduate School's college code. This centralized structure makes it difficult for individual colleges to access data about their specific graduate programs and students for reporting and other purposes.
Problem to solve: If colleges are ultimately going to take on additional accountability for graduate education, and if automated systems are to be built to accommodate a college-centered administrative structure, data must be structured and easily accessible by college.
Working solution: ASR would create a new structure for academic data by creating a separate graduate program code for each collegiate unit. Academic program and student data would be distributed accordingly.
Benefits: The new data structure will allow colleges to more easily access and have local control over many elements of their graduate program and student data. Ultimately, this data structure should allow colleges to more easily access the data they need to make informed decisions.
Considerations: This change will have significant ramifications on existing reports (especially including all Graduate School UM Reports) and all other systems. All of these will need to be analyzed, and many will need to be modified. The process for handling interdisciplinary program data within this new structure also needs to be determined.
Timeline: The new structure would need to be created by July 2010 for fall 2011 applicants only. Current students would be moved into the new data structure during spring/summer 2011.
Future projects: Automating graduate education processes
Read more about additional enterprise-wide system modifications and developments that were recommended by the Student Administrative Processes Work Group.
