DARS to be upgraded to uAchieve

A long-term project is in its beginning stages as the University of Minnesota plans to upgrade its Degree Audit and Transfer Articulation (DARS) functionality. The plan is to keep our current software vendor, CollegeSource, and move from a very old, COBOL-based version of their software, DARwin 3.5.4, to their newest, java-based version, uAchieve 4.4.x.

The project is expected to last two years and will be lead by ASR and OIT. The first year will focus on the base software upgrade, and the second year will focus on redesigning our system integration with PeopleSoft in order to maximize business benefits of the upgrade. The project will rely on staff from ASR, Admissions, OIT, the vendor’s services team, and partners on all 5 campuses for expertise. We hope to begin the vendor services engagement in July 2018, although the timing depends on negotiations with CollegeSource.

The upgrade will:

• Improve system security 
• Add core functionality
• Provide us the ability to better maintain this software over time
• Retire some system customizations made over the past 10-20 years

This software has a large and complex impact on undergraduate student services, so the work will require partnership and assistance from many campus stakeholders. While upgrading the system, a few key business benefits are expected:

• A new web-based user interface for degree audits
• New Peoplesoft pre- and co-requisite checking for transfer courses
• Improved consistency of business practices and data related to degree encoding
• Better University-wide analysis of student degree progress

For questions, contact project manager Santiago Fernandez-Gimenez (ferna010@umn.edu).