VCAA Newletter

Dear Colleagues,

This combined newsletter for June and July has important information and updates on the Student Advising Information System (SAIS), the electronic database that will facilitate faculty participation in advising. As we moved from Freshman Division to direct admits of students to their respective academic units, we were faced with the challenge of providing speedy access to student information that would enhance faculty advising. Staff in OIT and academic affairs have spent the last year in developing a prototype to be used at IUSB.

Thanks to the good work of staff in our admissions, financial aid and external relations offices, enrollment in summer school is above last year and enrollment projections for the fall indicate that we will exceed last fall's numbers. Our challenge, as always, is to increase retention. Retention is the responsibility of every faculty and staff person at IUSB. We must continue to have strong academic programs; we must provide a conducive learning environment for every student and believe firmly that every student can succeed. We do this through individualized attention to students and by encouraging every student to participate fully in the life of the university. Our new Student Activities Center is a long-awaited and welcomed addition to the campus and is critical to our retention efforts. Assistant Vice Chancellor Karen White and Professor Randy Isaacson will be part of a team of university-wide faculty and staff working with Vice President Charlie Nelms on retention initiatives. Their work is being facilitated by a grant from the Lumina Foundation. Additionally, with assistance from faculty, I will be asking each dean to develop a retention plan for his/her college/school.

Professor Cheri Brown will serve as interim director for international programs for the fall semester. Professor Gabrielle Robinson will return in the spring after her fall sabbatical.

Unfortunately, the search for a UCET director has failed. I have met with the UCET executive board for advice and counsel. For the next academic year, I will appoint an interim director and re-open the search in the fall. I invite interested faculty willing to serve in this interim capacity to contact me as soon as possible.

The searches for the deans of Education and Nursing and Health Professions will begin again in late summer. The chairs are Tom Miller (Nursing) and Miriam Shillingsburg (Education).

I wish each of you a productive summer -- plenty of rest and exciting travels across the globe. Happy reading as well!

NEWS FROM ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT

Admissions statistics, recruitment/retention and financial aid processing information may be found on the "W" drive in the temporary folder under: deans council report.060202

Assessment Third Year Review

The Campus Assessment Committee's Departmental Third Year Review Summary for 2001-2002 can be found on-line.

Report on Student Advisory Information System

Work is continuing on the Student Advisory Information System. Dorothea Solymosi has demonstrated the program to a number of users and solicited feedback and suggestions. These changes have been incorporated into the program. A request from Mike Carroll, requiring major restructuring has also been completed. This enhancement pulls data from IUCARE for degree requirements. Beta testing by some of the advisors will begin in the next few weeks.

Before making the production version of the system available to advisors, it will be moved from Access on Novell to an Oracle database server. Oracle will provide increased speed, security and flexibility. The new unix server which will house SAIS has been installed and is awaiting configuration for Oracle. Once that is completed, the SAIS system will be migrated and tested. This process involves the migration of virtually all current OIT databases, since most are linked in some way to the SAIS database. It will also require time for the database programmers to become familiar with Oracle. We expect SAIS to be in production before the end of the year