Minutes for: Wednesday, February 17, 1999, at 1:00 p.m. in the Holley-Mears Building
Present: Mary Beth Adams, Jeanne B. Alexander, Dr. David M. Bedwell, Phyllis Berk, Stella Cocoris, Dr. David A. Corliss (chair), Dr. Michael Hardin, Dr. Maryanne B. Ivey (staff), Dr. M. Khris McAlister
Absent: Claude E. McCann, Dr. James E. McLean, Dr. Donna Slovensky
The Committee reviewed the UPC policy recommendations that passed the Faculty Senate on February 12, 1999. Since these had been discussed extensively at the SISMAC meeting in March of 1998 and there were no new policy initiatives, the Committee makes no new recommendations regarding these policies. The only policy change that will require significant additional programming time is the recommendation that degree-seeking students must declare a major within their first 64 semester hours of work. Estimated time is 50 hours.
| The original request from the Committee was for $1,003,586. The Provost set aside $1.1 million which was divided into two separate accounts with $463,369 for DARS and $636,369 for the other projects we proposed. |
| As of January 31, 1999, the balance in the DARS account was $347,701. There were no expenditures from this account until June of last year. Since our original budget period was to have extended from October 1, 1997, to September 30, 2000, this represents a delay of roughly 9 months. At the current mean rate of expenditure of $14,459 per month, the account will be depleted at the end of January 2001, about 4 months short of a full 3-year time span. It should actually extend longer than that because this rate includes some start-up equipment costs for the staff. |
| As of January 31, 1999 the balance in the other account was still $636,369. A little less than half of the latter ($288,750) was to be spent for consultants but, because of the excellent management of the year-2000 fix and its implementation by Phyllis Berk and her team, no money has been used for that purpose. There have been expenditures in Web/Kiosk development that will be taken out of this budget. |
| The project is fully staffed. Wendy Troxel is responsible for coding the transfer
articulation tables. |
| In addition to these specific responsibilities, Debbie Blackstone became the acting editor of the Undergraduate Catalog, including the on-line version, and Wendy Troxel has taken the lead in developing the UAB website for statewide articulation. These additional tasks bear a critical relationship to the degree audit project since DARS is essentially a formal coding system for the programs in the catalog and it articulates how UAB courses match those from other institutions around the state. |
| The DARS staff attended a Beginning Encoder workshop at Miami University. Following that meeting, the latest version of DARS was installed at UAB. |
| Initial drafts of the COM (communications) table and the Grade Table have been developed. Work is underway to create a link between the degree audit system and the student information system. TUCC is responsible for this and it will enable the DARS program to pull data from a student's record. |
| The staff has evaluated all undergraduate UAB degree programs to determine a coding system which will identify a discrete set of rules for each major. These codes must be defined to accommodate identification of individual audits and sorts for reporting purposes. |
| The fields which identify the catalog year for each student have been reviewed to determine the source of information when the field is activated and by what authority. A recent change in policy requires students to be admitted as degree-seeking students before a catalog year is assigned. |
| When the Department of Postsecondary Education provides an updated Common Course Directory (hopefully, March 1), Penelope Cain will articulate all Alabama two-year coursework with UAB courses. This will become the foundation for the DARS transfer articulation data base. |
| Troxel and Blackstone have provided valuable services to UAB in the catalog and website production; however, they will be available full time for DARS coding in the next two weeks. Please note that it will continue to be an integral part of the degree audit responsibilities to supervise the catalog (both printed and electronic) and the website for articulation. |
| The staff is working to bring the School of Business up first. It is anticipated that they will be able to do degree audits by the end of the summer. |
| The DSC, with representation from Institutional Studies and Services, The University Computer Center, Registration and Records, and Admissions, has met regularly over the past year to develop a strategy for meeting the student-related data and information needs of faculty and administrators. All parties worked to compile lists of reports being prepared and to discuss in detail the nature of the requests being submitted to our various units. There was consensus that the university community needed to be better informed about information already available and that it would be useful to market a single source to contact with any student information needs. |
| The result of those discussions was the establishment of a website called the Student Data Report Center that will allow people to learn about and access regularly produced reports and to create some of their own. The STARS group at TUCC developed a web-based program that allows users to pull data from the admissions system. The web site will be marketed to the UAB community via the UAB Reporter in early spring. |
| The group also has begun working on creating extensive data dictionaries for the various student information systems and related tools in place on campus (Admissions, STARS, Decision Analyzer). These dictionaries will foster improved understanding and use of the data by current users, but more importantly will be essential tools for the growing number of individuals who take advantage of increased access to the data, especially when a data warehouse becomes a reality. In addition, the dictionaries will aid in a smoother transition to a new student information system. |
| Discussions regarding the data warehouse have been put on hold pending developments on this front in Finance and Administration. |
| Number Denied is an unduplicated count – new screen showing roster of denied students |
| Tuition Distribution to schools |
| School based Tuition and Fee rates |
| Undergraduate Admissions Web adhoc query on prospective and admitted students |
| Capture more information about prospective students from the ACT Load |
| Web access to Class Rosters and Student Reports for Faculty and Administrators |
| Interface with the National Student Loan Clearinghouse |
| DARS interface to the mainframe |
It is currently anticipated that the project will be funded from a variety of institutional sources, including plant funds. Development of a funding plan will proceed simultaneously with the RFP process. The length of this project as well as the breadth of its impact on the institution necessitate the involvement of all the Schools and major units in the development of this plan.
TBA as needed