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Monday, November 20, 2017

Twin Cities updates (November 2017)

Expected Graduation Term (EGT) project
In order to further support the University’s progress toward degree efforts, a project is underway to populate the expected graduation term (EGT). Beginning with the spring 2018 cohort, the plan is to populate EGT after the census date of the student's’ first term of enrollment. The EGT will be based on the student’s admit type. NHS admit types will have the EGT populated based on eight semesters, and the NAS admit types will have the EGT populated based on six semesters.

EGT can be manipulated by the college up until the time the degree checkout status is changed to “applied.” ASR will add the degree checkout status of “applied” when the student has achieved 75% of their degree progress. Once degree status is updated to “applied” students who need to change EGT can request a change. Questions on this project should be sent to Adrienne Bricker.

Transfer Evaluation System (TES) project and Transferology
The TES project is implementing a web-based workflow to help incoming Twin Cities transfer students understand how their courses fit into their degree plan earlier in the transfer process. Students and prospective students will be able to submit courses for review on the Twin Cities’ admissions website, or explore and search for courses that have already been reviewed through Transferology—an online transfer credit database.

This project will increase the number of direct course-to-course equivalencies and elective equivalencies by systematically routing courses to departmental faculty for review. The outcomes of these reviews will be transparent in Transferology and will articulate automatically upon transfer. This efficiency and consistency will help improve the transfer student experience.

Many advisors have already attended or are planning to attend training sessions on Transferology and Transferology Lab. Advisors will use both of these products to serve students and monitor courses in the TES workflow. The project team is meeting with colleges to identify departmental evaluators and backups for each course designator—these staff will directly interact with the TES workflow. The project is planning to continually onboard faculty evaluators as they are identified, and the web page for students will be available in early January.

N/R N/R tuition proposal
At the October Board of Regents (BOR) meeting the Twin Cities Non-Resident, Non-Reciprocity (NRNR) proposed tuition increase for Twin Cities was discussed. The Regents would like the Twin Cities NRNR rate to fall somewhere in the middle of the Big 10. The current proposal is for a 15% tuition increase for each of the next two years 2018-19, and 2019-20. More discussion is expected at December’s BOR meeting.

Big Ten Alliance Military/Veterans Conference
This year’s Big Ten Academic Alliance Veterans Conference was held at the Ohio State University from October 2-5. Representatives from veterans services offices from all Big Ten schools attended, with Jabra Kawas from One Stop and University Veterans Services attending on behalf of the U of M.

The conference provided a forum for veterans services staff to discuss issues pertinent to student veterans in higher education. Highlights included a legislative affairs update by the OSU VP for Government Affairs, a tour of the OSU Military/Veterans Office and Veterans Lounge and campus, and open discussion forums for school representatives. Hosting duties for this conference rotate each year between all Big Ten partner institutions, with the University of Minnesota scheduled to host in 2025 and 2038.

11th Annual Student Veterans Appreciation Day
The 11th annual Student Veterans Appreciation Day event was held on Wednesday, November 15, 2017 in the Great Hall in Coffman Union. Festivities started at 11 am and concluded at 1 pm, with pizza, pop, games, an information fair, therapy animals, and massages on the docket. This event was free and open to the public.

As in past years, University Veterans Services hosted a ‘Bridge Event’ on November 8 as a prelude to the Student Veterans Appreciation Day. Coffee and donuts were provided to those who were willing to stop at tables set up on the east end of the Washington Avenue Bridge and fill out a thank you note to military veterans. These notes were posted at the appreciation event.

ISSP Conference
The 2017 Institute for Student Services Professionals (ISSP) Conference took place on October 8-10 in Peabody, MA, and the theme was Integrating Student Services: Understanding and Exceeding Student Expectations.

Attendees from the University of Minnesota One Stop Student Services included, Julie Selander, Katie Johnson, Karen Magness-Pokornowski, Rick Zmudzien and Josh Geiger.

There were some very informative sessions, one of which focused on the idea of Service Recovery, which is the action taken by a service provider in response to service failure. Customer facing organizations inevitably need to provide Service Recovery to its customers on occasion. One Stop works to incorporate Service Recovery in interactions when the customer feels their expectations of service have not been met.

Josh Geiger and Julie Selander also provided a breakout session focused on One Stop’s training model. The breakout provided information on what content is covered in training, the teaching methodologies used, as well as assessment tools and how One Stop seeks to build culture throughout our training program and beyond.

Staff News
  • One Stop Student Services recently welcomed 3 new counselors:
    • Mila Ly was formerly a CRR in the One Stop Office.
    • Jiksa (JT) Tafara brings with him financial aid experience from his role at Bethel University.
    • Jordan Steger comes to One Stop from the Orientation and First Year Programs office.
All 3 will be working out of the Bruininks Hall location and have begun training on their new roles.
  • Mee Vang, One Stop Student Services counselor, has been promoted to Student Supervisor/One Stop Counselor. Mee has been with One Stop 9+ years as a Counselor and, with this promotion, will now be adding the supervision of CRRs to her responsibilities.
  • Brittany Rams joins the Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP) within One Stop. After a 2 year absence living abroad, former One Stop Counselor Brittany Rams rejoined One Stop as the GSSP Coordinator.
  • Chris Abts, former GSSP Coordinator, has transferred to a business analyst position within ASR's Continuity and Compliance department.
  • Nathan Carlson joined the Destiny One team with a focus on the Canvas integration project.
  • Nate Meath returned to ASR on the Student Data and Analytics team focusing on the Student Success Analytics initiative.
  • Richard Balderrama joined the Campus Community/Shared Data team in ASR IT and is focusing on production support in order to allow other team members to devote more time to 9.2 Phase 2 Projects.
  • Andy Fields, formerly of the One Stop, joined the Student Financials team in ASR IT to assist with production support and testing while other BA’s work on their 9.2 Phase 2 projects.
  • Joe Baker joined the Office of Student Finance Fiscal team on October 4. Joe will be working on financial aid process and return of funds.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Eleanor's update

We are already nearing the end of the calendar year, can you believe it? It seems like October was the month for conferences—take a look at the variety of events staff from across the system have participated in this past month. Maybe you’ll see a conference that will inspire you to get involved. You’ll also see that many projects are moving along and closing in on solutions to improve our service for students.

Sue's update

While we have had challenges with various systems going amuck this term, the Office of Information Technology continues to find ways to improve. I realize it has been a difficult term for all of us—students, faculty, and staff. I continue to seek proactive approaches so these inconveniences do not occur often.

The University took the snapshot for the 2017 graduation numbers on October 31 in order that the four-, five-, and six-year cohort numbers can be presented to the Regents at the February meeting. The numbers will become public at that point. In previous years, these were released in December, but with the new format, Regent Omari pushed it to February. The release of graduation numbers is always an exciting time; we get to see if all our initiatives and hard work are drawing us closer to the Regents Progress Card.

I want to congratulate all of you for making the Campus Solutions 9.2 Technical Upgrade so successful. It is exciting to now be in Phase II of the project.

Campus Solutions 9.2 Upgrade: Phase II projects information

The Campus Solutions 9.2 Functional Upgrade (phase II) is actively working on the 15 different prioritized initiatives. Here are a few specific updates:


  • The Direct Deposit Set-up Improvements group has completed development and currently in its first testing round. Go live is December 17.
  • Escheatment Compliance is currently in development and also scheduled to go live in December.
  • After reviewing the technical analysis of the Payment Plan Improvements initiative, a contingency plan has been put in place that will push the delivery date out into the spring term.
  • The Duplicate ID Tool Enhancement and GPAS Exceptions Process groups are also entering the development cycle and currently on track for planned completion dates.

Thank you to all the stakeholders from all campuses for your continued support of the Campus Solutions 9.2 Upgrade. View the project site for more info.

ULearn transition

The University plans to retire the ULearn system for employee training registration and tracking and replace it with Canvas with an additional, new training portal. Content of online training courses will live in Canvas and registration and tracking will occur in the training portal. The training portal will be based on a custom-developed product developed by the Academic Health Center.

System-wide discussion about study abroad

More and more University of Minnesota students from across our system are exploring study abroad. Because of this, the study abroad and registrar staff met in late October to begin reviewing and sharing information on our current practices looking for ways to make the experience better especially as it applies to multi-institutional study abroad.

The meeting revealed several areas in which our processes aligned, as well as revealing areas in which we need to do more investigation. The group will continue to work on identified areas to clarify our understanding, document information, and improve the study abroad process for students.

BTAA conference

Sue Van Voorhis, Stacey Tidball, Carin Thoms, Emily Holt, and Adrienne Bricker attended the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) registrars’ conference held at Michigan State University. This was a wonderful opportunity to exchange practices and discuss issues relating to systems, policy, and compliance. Hot topics included gender identity and pronoun use in the SIS, one-time transcript/document fees, vendor relationships, and many others. This conference will be held in Minneapolis in October 2018.

Preparations for the 1098-T

The Student Finance group has begun work on the 2017 tax year preparations for 1098-T. The W-9S forms (requesting SSNs or ITINs from students) have already been sent out and the reviews of setup and updates to critical data like names and addresses are in progress.

The Campus Solutions 9.2 Payment Plan project is underway, which impacts 1098-T reporting. The current payment plan causes major issues in the ability to report what a student actually paid, so we want to create a payment plan that still does three installments per term, but in a manner that does not impact 1098-T reporting and removes the confusing payment plan transaction lines in the student account.

2018-2019 aid year underway with first ISIR load

The new aid year has begun with the successful loading of 3814 ISIRs on October 23. Here are the campus numbers from our first run:
  • Crookston - 116
  • Duluth - 958
  • Morris - 258
  • Twin Cities and Rochester - 2,482

Tech-People event

Tech-People’s fall meeting was Thursday, November 16. Tech-People, a biannual gathering of UMN’s IT communities of practice (Web-People, Net-People, DevOps, Code-People and more), features is about all aspects of IT life. Ian Whitney presented his talk, “Destroying Silos with GitHub.” Slides and videos from all talks are available at http://tech-people.umn.edu.

Destiny One registration system begins collecting admission fees

Destiny One registration system begins collecting admission fees

The Office of Admissions recently began utilizing the Destiny One Registration System to collect the application and confirmation fees for incoming freshmen and transfer students. Fees are now being collected in the system for both spring 2018 transfer students and fall 2018 freshman students.

SalesForce’s Dreamforce conference

Dreamforce is now the largest software conference in the world and the University of Minnesota had its own representation via Carrie Otto and Grant Clavelle. Held in San Francisco in November, there were 171,000 registered attendees.

Carrie and Grant attended and presented their own break-out session: “Creating a Continuum of Value through an Enterprise Implementation.” Officially, one whole conference venue is devoted to higher education. This gave Carrie and Grant the opportunity to attend higher ed sessions, network, and meet with Salesforce.org to review the University’s strategic direction.

Crookston updates (November 2017)

Staff News
Peter Phaiah, Associate Vice Chancellor, recently left Crookston after 10.5 years as UMC’s Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, and is moving on to become Assistant Vice President for Student and University Relations at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico. Congratulations, Peter!
Lisa Samuelson has agreed to serve as Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, effective Monday, November 6. Having worked closely with long-time Associate Vice Chancellor Peter Phaiah, Lisa will provide continuity and strong leadership for Student Affairs. We will begin to develop plans for a national search to fill the position on a regular appointment. At this time, we anticipate that Lisa’s interim appointment will extend into the 2018-2019 academic year.

Duluth updates (November 2017)

Higher Learning Commission (HLC)
University of Minnesota Duluth has begun preparing for its periodic evaluation by its regional accrediting agency. The University will host a visit April 16-17, 2018, with a team representing the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). UMD has been accredited by HLC since 1968. The team will review the institution’s ongoing ability to meet HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation.

Staff News

  • David Norman - OTR welcomes David as Business Analyst
  • Katie Meisner - Has left her Athletic and Academic Records Coordinator position in OTR

Morris updates (November 2017)

UMM receives Department of Education grant
Morris has earned a $1.2 million Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement (McNair) Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant will fully fund (through September 30, 2022) the McNair project, which will prepare cohorts of low-income, first-generation students and students from groups underrepresented in graduate education for doctoral study.

It will build on Morris’s culture of support for student engagement, academic excellence, and scholarly activity, providing McNair Scholars with a cohesive series of activities designed to prepare them for successful admission to and completion of doctoral programs, particularly in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields.

Staff News

Congratulations to Jacqueline Johnson, University of Minnesota, Morris Chancellor Emeritus on receiving the James Farrell Re(Cognition) Award. The award honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions toward advancing sustainability efforts in the upper Midwest.

Rochester updates (November 2017)

Chancellor search committee kicks off
In October, President Kaler kicked off the search for Rochester chancellor by assembling a committee of faculty, staff, and community leaders with a broad range of experience and expertise, and a deep understanding of UMR’s unique and innovative model. Jenny Casper is on the search committee. The committee will do its work over the course of the next three months with the goal of having a new Chancellor named in early 2018.

State of UMR Campus address, 2017
Interim Chancellor Lori Carroll provided the 2017 UMR State of the Campus on November 7. Her presentation focused on UMR Students: Passion and Purpose. She shared that a majority of UMR students have had a pivotal health care experience in childhood or adolescence that serves as the catalyst for their passion and purpose.

As part of the address there was a panel of alumni (former Rochester students) speaking to their educational experience at Rochester. The alumni shared how the great access to faculty and student success coaching model shaped their learning experience and helped them achieve their academic and career goals.

Rochester hosts 2018 Higher Education Innovation Summit

The University of Minnesota Rochester will host the Higher Education Innovation Summit June 6-8 featuring keynote speakers Freeman Hrabowski, Randall Bass, and Stephen Lehmkuhle. The summit is designed to connect creative educators and researchers seeking to transform higher education through innovations that enhance student learning.

MIDHEUG Alliance conference

Midwest HEUG (Higher Education Users Group) conference in St. Charles, Illinois on October 12-13 was attended by Carolee Cohen, Carolyn Davidson and Jack Kimmes (ASR IT) and Carla Boyd (Duluth). Read more about the conference and roles University staff have with the group on the blog.

Overall there were 396 attendees at the conference. This conference in particular offers many opportunities to take in presentations from multiple tracks and to make connections with other schools in the MIDHEUG region.

We were well represented by these staff as they participated in the following;
  • Payment Application - Jack Kimmes presenter 
  • Using Communications in Student Financials - Jack Kimmes presenter 
  • Security - Carolyn Davidson presenter
  • Student Financials/Financials Community Track - Carolee Cohen moderator
  • SF Birds of a Feather sessions - Carolee Cohen moderator
Carla Boyd finished up this year in her role as the Reporting Track Chair and has smoothly transitioned into her role as the Conference Program Chair for next year. 

We encourage others to consider submitting presentations and attending this conference in 2018 when it will be held in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Destiny One workgroup update

The Continuing Education Units/Professional Credit/Certificate/Badge Standards Workgroup kickoff meeting was conducted October 11, 2017. The group has been charged to define common standards for the issuance of CEUs, certificates, badges, and other credits offered through Enterprise-supported, non-credit registration systems.

The group’s work will also include defining assessment of worthiness, and creating a process to validate that standards are being followed and met.
  • Participants are from across the TC campus’ and Duluth
  • Some issues raised during the initial meeting include:
    • Internal vs External credentials
    • What will be best for the University of Minnesota as a whole
    • Standards for U of M sponsored credentials may differ and be superseded by professional organization or national standards
    • Benchmarking of other institutions
The group will continue to meet and establish project governance, timelines, and a standards recommendation. For more information contact dorshelp@umn.edu.

Update on Big 10 FA conference

Michelle Curtis and Deb Pusari attended the Big Ten Associate Director’s meeting at the University of Maryland. A wide variety of topics were covered and several areas were identified where additional policy development is needed. View highlights from the conference on the blog.

Topics included: 
  • Discussion on new guidance on release of FAFSA information
  • Mandatory reporting of sexual violence or abuse (especially as part of Professional Judgement appeals for budget adjustments or dependency overrides)
  • Breach procedures
All schools were struggling with interpretation of regulations in these areas and implementation of policies and procedures that will meet requirements.

We shared our University of MN student debt letters/communications that we’ve implemented for fall/spring and summer with the group and received very positive feedback from a number of schools.

MAFAA fall training day

Many Office of Student Finance and a few One Stop staff attended the annual fall Minnesota Association of Financial Aid Administrator’s (MAFAA) training in Eagan, Minnesota. Highlights include: 
  • Our new Federal Training Officer, Zak Goodwin, began the day with a Federal Update and ended the day with an open Q&A general session. 
  • MAFAA members and MN Office of Higher Education staff presented various breakout sessions on:
    • The FAFSA
    • Professional Judgement and Dependency Overrides
    • R2T4 Basics (Return of funds to Title IV financial aid programs due to withdrawal)
    • VA Benefits
    • NSLDS & COD (National Student Loan Data System & Combined Origination And Disbursement federal system)
    • MN programs: Child Care Grant, Indian Scholarship, GI Bill, Dream Act, and State Grant

Big 10 Bursars conference

Tom Schmidt and Tina Falkner attended the Big 10 Bursar’s meeting at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan in mid-October. The meeting is a great time for us to learn what our colleagues are encountering and how they are surmounting some of the same problems we encounter (or sometimes just a good place to commiserate about a shared dreaded issue).

Here are a few items that were of particular interest:
  • Tuition insurance: No schools in the Big 10 currently offer this to their students and only one school is looking into it. An aspect of this concept that was new to us, was that many of these companies require schools to cease offering any other form of tuition relief if they offer this insurance. Also, there are options for different levels of insurance. For example, it only pays out for medical reasons.The U of MN is not currently looking to offer this to students, but if the topic arises these nuances will be good to keep in mind. 
  • 1098-T: There was robust discussion surrounding the change in 1098-T reporting, (reporting what students paid instead of what they were billed). All of the Big 10, except for Indiana University will continue to report billed charges instead of paid amount in January. Indiana has significantly modified PeopleSoft to be able to report on paid amount. Like us, everyone else is trying to establish a way to meet the new IRS regulation by tax year 2018. 
  • Texting students: It was interesting to hear that none of the Big 10 schools are currently texting students about billing or other student finance related matters. 
  • Payment plan: Most schools have payment plans that mimic our own (three to four installments per term), but several schools have extended payment plans that allow students and families to pay monthly installments for the entire bill. These plans start in advance of enrollment and are timed so the money for each term is received before the end of that term. These schools have either contracted with their tuition payment vendor or have a home-grown system to provide this option to students. 
  • Military Third Party Payments and credit cards: Branches of the Military and veteran groups are pressuring schools to accept the military purchasing credit cards for payments for Third Party billings. In the Twin Cities we still have the exception to receive payment via wire transfers, as many schools do. But we learned that two Big 10 schools have lost the exemption and are covering the merchant fees for the military payments. Hopefully those of us with the exemption, will continue to be able to keep it.

UMACRAO conference

Several staff from across the university system attended the Upper Midwest Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (UMACRAO) conference that took place in Alexandria, Minnesota. Other attendees came in from Iowa, the Dakotas, and Canada.

Varied session topics allowed for much discussion: creating web forms, handling campus emergencies, creating effective registrar offices, commencement, grades and end of term processes, FERPA, and conversations about gender identity, pronouns, and preferred name.

At the conference, Amber Cellotti was sworn in as 2017-18 UMACRAO president, and Erik Sparby was elected UMACRAO treasurer.

University staff gave presentations including:
  • Registrar Lessons Learned—Amber Cellotti
  • Serving as Registrar and Refereeing the demigods - Ken Myers and Carla Boyd
  • FERPA Pre-Conference Session—Tina Falkner and Stacey Tidball
  • Financial Aid and Records Working Together—Tina Falkner
  • Reduce Debt and Improve Graduation and Retention—Tina Falkner and Holly Johnson
  • FERPA Q&A—Tina Falkner and Stacey Tidball
  • FERPA and Social Media—Adrienne Bricker
Helping Parents Navigate the Alphabet Soup: AP, IB, CLEP, CIS, PSEO, A Level — Judy Korn

Google lifecycle proposal

OIT recently presented a proposal for how long to retain Google account data, (google email, calendar, and Drive files). This proposal is driven in part because of a growing data security concern should Google ever be compromised in some way, it could pose legal concerns for the University.

Current Google account end-of-life policy defines what happens to account data when a user ends their affiliation with the University. The proposed solution ensures that OIT is enforcing the current policy and sets a limit on how long the University retains Google data.

The proposal for student information is that the account remains available for seven consecutive semesters after their most recent program activation. After this time, the account is suspended if the student does not register for classes. Once the account is suspended, Google data is retained for 5 years and then deleted.

Note: The account is suspended immediately if a student is administratively separated or if a student drops all registered courses during their initial semester. Delete account data after 5 years.

The proposal for alumni is that Graduated students with a degree retain lifetime access to their accounts, so long as they are used regularly. Inactive accounts are suspended after 90 days of inactivity. The account remains active as long as it's accessed at least once every 90 days through the Web Interface. If the account remains suspended, the Google data is retained for 5 years and then deleted.

Stacey Tidball is our point of contact for providing feedback on this proposal.

Ad Astra's Users' Conference—Aspire 2017

From the Office of Classroom Management’s (OCM) Scheduling Unit, Bob Quinney, Christine Mounts, and Derrick Aly attended Ad Astra’s Annual Aspire Conference in Kansas City, Missouri that was held in October.

This three-day conference brings together attendees from all types of academic institutions and state systems to talk about scheduling challenges and business practice in higher education offering the chance to collaborate and share ideas with many peers.

Highlights of the conference included:
  • Bob Quinney presenting on “Leveraging SQL and MS Excel Pivot Tables to Maintain Complex Scheduling Preference Sets”
  • Christine Mounts presenting on “Users and Roles/Permissions”
  • Educational sessions on how to use data to inform course offerings to create student-friendly schedules and advance completions
  • Information about the future of higher education scheduling and technology
  • Information on how to maximize campus space and resource allocation