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Administrators prepare online enrollment system
Kyle Ramsey
Kansan staff writer
After years of anticipation and decries from agitated students sweltering in long enrollment lines, the convenience of online enrollment is here — almost.
University officials set next March as the launch date for online enrollment, just in time for Fall 2003 enrollment season.
Bob Turvey, project manager and academic services administrator, said the enrollment Web site would work like common sites such as Hotmail or Yahoo!
Turvey didn't know the exact cost of the initial software purchase, but estimated it was several hundred thousand dollars. He said the project required about 90 faculty members from various departments.
"The site explains itself." Turvey said. "If you can get to the Web, you're there."
The brains behind online enrollment is a software program called PeopleSoft. The software will eventually replace KU's current Web services, which deal with online grades and schedules, and better merge with the University's accounting system, which already uses the PeopleSoft system.
"The common belief is this project has been enrollment. That's only a small piece." Turvey said. "It's really small in comparison."
Implementation comes at a larger cost. Aside from money paid through faculty salaries, the project was given
$1 million in both fiscal years 2002 and 2003. The project received $250,000 from the state in fiscal year 2001, Turvey said.
"We're expecting to add money from the tuition increase," he said.
The project began in 1997 when the University purchased the PeopleSoft program, said Richard C. Morrell, university registrar. It's implementation was delayed to address Y2K concerns on campus and because of various upgrades to the PeopleSoft program since the initial 1997 purchase.
1999 purchase.
And although online enrollment aims to replace the traditional pen-and-paper process, there's still one glitch. The project team has yet to integrate the advising process in to the new enrollment model, Turvey said.
"KU has a plethora of interesting and complicated requirements," he said. "We're trying to replicate the logic behind those, and we hope to generate that electronically."
Gloria A. Flores, associate director of the Freshman-Sophomore Advising Center, said the role of the advising center would not change because of online enrollment. She said the center still planned to provide students with personalized advice regarding their education at the University. Students will also be just as responsible for initiating that contact as in the past.
The current system requires students to collect a series of signatures and stamps from their adviser and academic schools and present these things to officials at the Enrollment
Center.
Online enrollment will mark the third generation of enrollment procedures the University has used in recent history.
Before the opening of the Enrollment Center in 1982, KU used a punch-card system, Morrell said. That setup gathered enrolling students in Allen Fieldhouse. There, students collected the punch cards — one $x$ card for each course the student was to be enrolled in — from tables set up from each department. After all cards were collected, the students submitted them to the registrar, where the cards v'iere fed into a computer that produced students' schedules.
The Enrollment Center will remain open after March, but its purpose will be slightly altered. Instead of meeting with University employees to have schedules entered into the Registrar's database, students will be able to use the center's unmanned computers to select their courses online. Morrell said the center would also be used as a training facility for faculty members who need to become better acquainted with the PeopleSoft system.
Next came the current system, which is based in the Enrollment Center.
Turvey said the project team would begin demonstrating the system to faculty and students in November.
Contact Ramsey at kramsey
@kansan.com. This story was edited by Matt Norton.
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