MINUTES
SUB-COMMITTEE ON STUDENT RECORDS
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Present:T. Harrington-Lau (Acting Secretary), J. Barrett, P. Bassett, S. Bezeau,M. Brettler, J. Brossard,S. Comeau, S. Duciaume, H. Emami,D. Jackson (Chair), F. Lees, F. Lisi,F. Maniaci, J. Martuccio, M-J. McCullogh,M. Moscato,S. Pellecchia, P. Pombo, F. Ship, C. Spadafora,H. Van Eyk,A. Walsh, A. Zakka,C. Zilberman
Regrets: J. Alton, L. Anand, C. Arsenault, G. Arseneault, V. Belanger, A. Cerrone-Mancini,L. Chalmers,S-S. Choong, Y. Cousineau, N. Czemmel, J. De Rose, M. Fafard, N. Gamal, C. Gervais, R. Greco-Pepe, D. Hay,S. Higgins, D. Lamfookon, C. Lavergne, L. Lavergne,J. MacNeil,L. Mundy, A. Pacheco, J. Pharo, M. Pietraroia, H. Ray, K. Reany, A. Santandrea, S. Vodopivec, A-M. Wasacz, K. Wilmot,J. Younan,
1. Adoption of Agenda:
The agenda was adopted with the addition of one item of new business.
4.1K, L, Standings – Heidi Emami
2.Adoption of Minutes:
The minutes for the meeting of March 8thwere adopted with no corrections.
3. Business Arising
3.1 Fee Information – M. McCullogh
Mary Jo McCullogh reviewed Student Accounts Office documents that were distributed with the agenda for today’s meeting. These were distributed for information only. The first document is information on McGill’s policies for overdue accounts provided on the Student Accounts web page under the heading “Overdue Accounts”. All the information students need about what happens if their fee payments are late has been grouped together.
Some of the highlights of the document are:
1. The definition of when a student’s account is delinquent is failure to payin full 60 days after the bill is issued
2. The interest charged on late payments is set for 2006-07 at 1.24% (not at 1.3% as in the document Mary Jo distributed)
3. The steps McGill takes once a student’s account is delinquent are outlined as well as the actions a student can take to reach a suitable arrangement to pay the debt
4. The notification to students that when neither the University nor the collection agency to which a student’s overdue account has been referred is able to collect then the student may be reported to a credit bureau
5. The “Request for Reinstatement” form students submit if their registration is dropped because of outstanding fees is provided with the overdue accounts information
Mary Jo said that reporting a student to a credit bureau is a new initiative intended to provide an extra incentive for the payment of the student’s dept to the University.
She reminded SCSR members that her office will be sending out lists of students with outstanding debts whose registrations will be dropped and asked for assistance in contacting these students. Once again, receivables are down largely due to the efforts staff members are making to contact students with outstanding debts.
The second document Mary Jo distributed summarizes administrative charges to students. There will be a cost of living increase of 2.3% for fees for 2006-07. She pointed out that the current “graduating fee” charged to students who have applied to graduate will be discontinued as of September 2006 and replaced by a “Transcript and Diploma Charge”. Students graduating in fall 2006 will be the last students paying the old graduation fee. The new fee will be assessed at a rate of $1.20 per credit and will be spread over a student’s entire registration at McGill.
Mary Jo reported that the application fee for 2008 will increase to $80 with these exceptions: application to the MBA will remain at $100, application to Continuing Education will remain at $60, and CEGEP students will continue to pay $60 to apply.
An on-going project for the Student Accounts Office is the introduction of third party access to student account information at the discretion of the student.
Finally, Mary Jo has learned that SunGard will be coming out with e-billing in version 7.3 and has asked McGill to share the uploading code developed here. She hopes that McGill will be given credit for work done on this major initiative.
Doug Jackson asked Mary Jo what was the outcome of the mass emailing problems her office experienced prior to the March SCSR meeting. She reported that the problem was resolved. Johanne Brossard said that NCS needs to be aware that mass emailing to students is an increasing trend. If mass emailing requires updates to equipment, then action should be taken now to prevent future problems.
3.2Student Information System – J. Brossard
Johanne reviewed the current status of the top ten SIS priorities presented at the March SCSR meeting.
1. Walk-in Web Registration [Quickstart] (p.6)*– delivery is expected for June 1st. A key developer being partially shifted to the portal project has caused some delay.
2. Waitlist pilot project with Law and CE. (p.7) – the project is on track with a planned go live for May 29th. Johanne hopes that other faculties will get on board after go-live to the pilot project.
3. Inter-Faculty Transfer and Study Away Work Process - Phase III(p.6) – The project is on track.
4. Curriculum Change Forms (p.7) – [see also Preparation ofBanner 7.x (p.5)] – The changes for Arts and Science are done, while thosefor Engineering and Management are on track for a May 30th deadline.
On the topic of curriculum, Joan Barrettcontinues working on the curriculum rules for the Banner 7 upgrade. Kathy Wilmot gave a demo of Banner 7.2 to a small group of records staff. Johanne noted McGill will be upgrading to Banner 7.3 not 7.2.
5. McGill equivalent course table SZREQIV(p.8) – This project is still in the meetingstage. Heidi Emami pointed out that a position has been recently posted in ARR related to this work.
6. Reserved Seating/Registration Restrictions [U1/R1 settings](p.6) –This project is in production.
7. ezRecruit[see Recruitment](p.8) – The move to a McGill hosted server is delayed until December 2006.
8. Incomplete Standing Decisions (p.7)–Joan Barrettis in testing mode.
9. Degree Evaluation[Advisor From] (p.6) – There are ongoing meetings for this.
10. Proof of Registrationletters [RESP letters are a subset of these](p.6) – Work has not yet begun on this item.
*Note, the page no. after each item refers to the “SIS Priorities Overview 2005-2006 Discussion Document – January 18, 2006” distributed at February’s SCSR meeting.
Johanne reported there is ongoing work to have two college codes each for Medicine and Dentistry (one for undergrad and one for post grad).
She announced that ISRwill receivethe 7.3 Banner instance on Jul 3rdand go into full upgrade mode. Upgrade is scheduled for Friday, November 10th. Projects that have not been completed by July 3rd will go on hold until upgrade is completed.
Johanne proposed postponing the full SIS Priorities review scheduled for June’s SCSR meeting until October because of upgrade. Membersagreed with this suggestion.
Johanne explained there had been some problems when Minerva opened to students for 2006-07 fall and winter course registration. While there were a number of causes, adding extra CPU had positive results and other changes have been implemented. Anna Walsh pointed out that because registration opened to graduate students at the same time it opened to the first group of undergraduates, there were more students registering than in the past on the first day.
Doug Jackson, Joan Barrett, and Johanne along with Anna Walsh attended the recent Banner Summit. Johanne said what she learned at the meeting about the experiences of other large schools that upgraded to Banner 7.1 made her very grateful that Doug chose to postpone McGill’s upgrade and wait for the 7.3 version. Schools that upgraded to 7.1 are still in repair mode. The 7.3 version should be a better product. [Doug was given a hearty ovation for his intervention.]
Johanne suggested having a demo of curriculum changes in Banner 7.3 at the June SCSR meeting.
3.3 Registration Issues –A. Walsh
Anna Walsh reported that the first group of students with the post-graduate Dentistry college code will be registering next week. In response to questions, she explained that these Dentistry students register in three terms. To assist in the process, once students have registered for the first term, they will be batch registered (a manual processby ARR staff) for the other terms in July. There is a plan to look at a true batch registration process in the future.
Anna said a request has been made by Continuing Education to allow CE students to register for summer courses on Minerva. She asked members if they had any feed back for her. Fiona Lees said Arts and Science could go along with summer session opening to CE students on Minerva. However, she disagreed with permitting CE student to register for undergraduate courses in the fall and winter terms using Minerva. She pointed out that allowing this would reduce the number of places in courses for undergraduate students. She also explained that allowing this would mean that students who were not admissible to a faculty could register in courses offered by the faculty in a regular term. A later registration date for CE students was suggested as a means of controlling their numbers in summer courses. Johnny Martuccio added that Continuing Education would not want CE students to have fall and winter registration access on Minerva to undergraduate courses.
3.4 Exchange and Term AwayProject – H. Emami
Heidi Emami said the project working group will have its third meeting next week. The planning for phase 1, the application and course approval forms, has been done and once approved programming will begin. Medicine has withdrawn from the group as their needs will not be met by the first stage of the project. A demo of the prototype will be presented to SCSR when it is ready. The next phases are the approval process and the notification process.
3.5Degree Evaluation – F. Ship for D. Hay
Fern reminded members that batch reports for graduating students can be requested using the buttons at the bottom of the graduation list on the Minerva graduation module.
3.6 New Web Interface for Course Look-up – A. Walsh/L. Anand
Anna Walsh will provide the go-live date for this option by email.
3.7 Minerva SR Admin Menu – H. Emami
Heidi Emami advised members that the changesto the SR Admin menu are now in production. There was a small glitch when the menu went live over the weekend as professors did not have access to grade submission. Once this was discovered, it was fixed immediately.
4. New Business
4.1 K, L, Standings – H. Emami
Heidi Emami said that during testing of the new process for standing decisions for students with K and L grades, some students were found who graduated with incomplete K, L, standing decisions on their records. She wanted to know if this happened often. Fiona spoke for Arts and Science advising it is not their policy to graduate any student with outstanding grades. Joan Barrett clarified that the grades (signifying completion of the K or L) were on the student records, but the standing decisions did not reflect this (i.e. the standing decisions had not been changed).
After discussion, members agreed that faculties need an ad hoc report to identify graduated students with incomplete standing decisions in order to clean uptheir records.
Joan Barrett concluded that no changes would be needed to the specifications for the new K, L, Standing decision process. The new process should be run in production on May 23rd. Heidi said graduation legends would be added on May 24th.
Meeting adjourned at 11:05 am.