Faculty to work with OIT on resolving SPIRE issues

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

iting a handful of problems faculty and students have had with the new student information system in use for registration and advising, a Faculty Senate committee asked the senate to approve the creation of a group to address the issues. At its March 13 meeting, the senate approved the creation of an academic liaison group to work with the Office of Information Technologies to resolve issues in academic use of the system.

     "The SPIRE SIS user interface and, especially, the Mobius report utility are user unfriendly," the report from the Committee on University Computing and Electronic Communications said. The report called access to SIS "unbearably slow at critical times" and said that information and reports that previously had been readily available are now difficult to obtain.

     "INCREASED STUDENT EMPOWERMENT IN REGISTERING FOR COURSES EARLY HAS LEFT DEPARTMENTS CRIPPLED IN BEING ABLE TO DISTRIBUTE STUDENTS EVENLY INTO COURSE SECTIONS," THE REPORT SAID.

     The report also noted that while units such as the Bursar's and Registrar's offices have structures in place to communicate with SIS programmers at OIT, faculty and Academic Affairs staff have had to work on problems individually through the OIT Help Desk.

     "It was well and good that OIT organized and got the SIS system installed and that the bursar and the registrar needed an early direct pipeline to the programming," said Joseph Kunkel, chair of the committee making the recommendations, "but we're into a different phase now where we're utilizing it and we really need the academic people to have a way of organizing their needs that are not being met at the moment from the SIS system."

     Committee member Marilyn Billings called the administrative liaison group already in place "very effective" and said the academic group would "be in complementarity" to it "to address problems and concerns that faculty and students and others have with [SIS]."

     "I have heard enough comments from the faculty through the Rules Committee to support pulling this committee together," Provost Charlena Seymour told the senate. "We'll keep working on it and get it started real soon."

     "I hope we can trust that they won't wait until this committee is formed and makes formal recommendations when we have seen a number of problems already and we could move ahead and change those problems, rather than wait for the committee," said Rules Committee chair Roland Chilton.

     "Time is the enemy," replied Chancellor John Lombardi. "We're working on it."
Geosciences professor Rutherford Platt said advising without a hard copy of the course schedule had been difficult.

     "For those of us who are somewhat removed from using the Web all the time, it would be darn useful to have the printed course registration guides, and especially for those of us who are advising students about courses and programs all across campus, it's very daunting, if not impossible, to continue to do that," he said. "And it discourages any kind of interdisciplinary program planning."

     Deputy provost John Cunningham said he had recently promised the Rules Committee that a PDF version will be available to be downloaded before the counseling period begins.

     The committee, as recommended by the senate, will exist on three levels. A Level I group, which will be responsible to the provost, will address function and planning issues, discussing priorities and future needs identified by the Level II and III groups. The second group will comprise some administration and staff members from OIT and academic department end-users, which will meet regularly to discuss problems, share expertise and develop "practical immediate solutions." The Level III group will be a weekly drop-in discussion to provide help for end-users with routine problems. It will be staffed by members of the Level II group, who will return to that group with any new difficulties identified at the Level III session.