Lauren Nostro and Jessica Bennett

---

Student services project to go live soon

UB's new student information system will go live in phases over the next year. The new system will include improvements and simplifications to tasks, registration, grading and processing financial aid. Kara Saunders, assistant vice provost for Undergraduate Education, announced the news to the Faculty Senate at its Tuesday meeting. "A few years ago, the faculty, staff and students at UB were frustrated across the boards with the IT services," Saunders said. "They weren't getting what they expected." The UB 2020 Web Content Initiative Project also includes representatives from three different areas: University Communications (UC), The School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (SMBS), and The Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO.) A Project Team of around 50-70 people, including UB staff, is on board for the project. The new system, which will include personal software, could be beneficial to UB staff and students. The result of the Web Content Initiative Project could result in long-lasting relationships with its many diverse constituencies. "After deciding to use Oracle/PeopleSoft which is used by a number of other universities, we made the system into our own," Saunders said. "We configured the system and it is now called UBSIS. We wanted to personalize the system." Saunders is certain that the changes to the system will provide students with the interactive content they need. "The main message that we want to get out to students is that we feel the transformation will be a really good change and will leave students with greater opportunities at their fingertips." Saunders said. The project will benefit the community, but there are some concerns. While members of the UB community may struggle to adapt to changes, the Student Services Transformation project, part of the UB 2020 long-range strategic plan, will ultimately modernize the university's operations. This will benefit students, staff and faculty, according to an article in the UB Reporter. MyUB will also be seeing some changes. Changes to the look, feel and functions of the MyUB portal will be among the most visible improvements on the way. The new program will increase functionality with MyUB. Students will also be able to view financial aid and their credit balance on MyUB. Faculty members will also benefit from advancements like the new system's ability to assign multiple instructors to a single course. This will also allow multiple professors in team-taught classes to grade and review student lists. The system will streamline data collection, enabling authorized offices across the institution to share students' personal information. "The driver behind the project was partly frustration," Saunders said. "It was also what we needed -- we needed to provide student services and make them more available." E-mail: news@ubspectrum.com