NeSIS eNews - December 2024
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Happy Holidays from the NeSIS Team
As we approach the end of another remarkable year, I want to take a moment to reflect on our achievements and express my heartfelt gratitude for your hard work and dedication. I want to extend a special thank you to each team member for your unwavering commitment and tireless efforts. Your contributions have been invaluable, and I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished together. As we enter the holiday season, I wish you and your loved ones a joyful and restful break. May this time be filled with happiness, relaxation, and cherished moments with family and friends.
Let's look forward to the new year with excitement and optimism, ready to tackle new challenges and seize new opportunities.
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Andrea Childress
AVP IT & CIO
October 2024 NeSIS Award Winner
The NeSIS Employee Shining Impactful Superstar award winner for October 2024 is Geoff Putney
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From Andrea Childress: “Geoff stepped up when asked to lead the STAMP team in order to find synergies between STAMP and AMP in ways to automate work and identify efficiencies. He has taken pride in reviewing processes to find improvements and help support the team while maintaining his responsibilities and sysadmin excellence. Geoff is a team player who works to make everyone succeed in significant ways.”
Congrats Geoff and thanks for all that you do!
Oracle Extends Support for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions to 2035
In keeping with their annual tradition, Oracle has again extended support for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Oracle renews the "Rolling 10-Year" guarantee each October, reaffirming that customers will receive over a decade of continuous support and enhancements. This commitment ensures institutions can rely on the platform to manage the entire student life cycle, from prospective students to alumni. For more information on the latest updates and plans for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, visit Oracle's post on the extension here: https://blogs.oracle.com/peoplesoft/post/peoplesoft-support-2035
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Frank Dolezal
PeopleSoft System Admin, Lead
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Nebraska State Colleges Strategic Initiatives to Support Student Success
Over the past five years, the Nebraska State Colleges have engaged in strategic planning initiatives to strengthen the success of our institutions in meeting the needs of all students who choose to attend. The NSCS 2025 Strategic Plan was initially published in January of 2020.
As the 2025 Strategic Plan is closing in on its final year of reporting, Chancellor Turman has engaged the same process used five years ago to engage more than 30 stakeholders from across the System in evaluating the strides we have made in meeting these identified outcomes and identifying and establishing a new set of outcomes for the NSCS 2030 Strategic Plan. The new outcomes are each outlined below.
#1 Affordable Excellence for Every Student - The State Colleges are dedicated to providing an exceptional education without burdening students with excessive costs. By keeping tuition and fees low, we continuously seek opportunities to minimize educational expenses to ensure that financial constraints don't hinder academic success.
#2 Retention-Driven Excellence and Engaged Degree Attainment - The State Colleges prioritize retention-driven academic excellence by providing strategic support throughout students' educational journey (first year and beyond), connecting students to campus, community, and the region by providing continuous access to caring faculty/staff who offer multiple pathways for engagement.
#3 Open Access and Supportive Pathways - The State Colleges prioritize inclusive access, actively reaching out to underrepresented communities and our many partners to ensure that every student, regardless of educational experience, background, or regional proximity, can pursue affordable undergraduate and graduate degrees that support their careers for improving the communities that we serve.
#4 Workforce Development and Leadership - The State Colleges are leaders in cultivating a collaborative workforce by partnering with communities and producing graduates who are actively engaged as change agents who can meaningfully contribute to the economic development of the region and Nebraska in both rural and urban areas.
NSCS has evaluated many technology solutions which can assist in supporting the four NSCS 2030 Strategic Plan Outcomes. Four technology solutions have been identified and selected to add to the NSCS technology portfolio to provide an enhanced and efficient student experience, ensure courses are accessible to students for on-time degree completion, provide effective and timely communications via desired modalities, and provide a comprehensive and easy to use tool for degree planning for students.
CourseDog
As a result of the ongoing analysis of progress toward the Strategic Plan metrics, the State Colleges have recognized the need to optimize course offerings and curricular programs, to increase efficiency and ensure that students have access to the courses they need for on-time degree completion. CourseDog was selected to provide each State College with the ability to manage and evaluate course offerings and establish course schedules informed by campus-wide rules, instructional space availability, student demand, and instructor assignments/loads. The solution
will provide much-needed support for individuals across each campus who are responsible for building each term's course offerings. In addition, it will alleviate existing challenges that occur related to course conflicts, lack of additional sections of courses, and low-enrolled courses that result in last-minute cancellations; these all adversely impact students' ability to complete the requirements for their chosen program. CourseDog also provides a wealth of data analytics through the reports that are accessible and built into the platform.
Stellic
While some students can successfully navigate course catalogs and course schedules, others find this process daunting. Efforts have been made to address this issue through faculty and staff advising training, creation of sample plans of study, and posting of course rotation schedules; however, the reality is that each student's assigned faculty or staff advisors have varying skill sets related to these processes. For first-generation students (comprising 48% of the NSCS undergraduate student population) who may not have other sources of support, data indicate they have experienced the following challenges to successfully navigating these processes:
* Developing a plan of study, based on each College's course offerings and schedules;
* Successfully selecting courses each semester, in relation to degree requirements;
* Comprehending prerequisites and using certain courses to meet degree requirements; and
* Tracking completion of degree requirements and maximizing elective course options.
After reviewing several technology solutions, Stellic most comprehensively addresses the challenges outlined above. Stellic supports students' academic planning via the platform and assists in building each student's academic plan. It also recommends course enrollments for each term based on the existing course rotation schedules and established prerequisites for each program.
An additional area identified area of focus is communication. Current processes used by the State Colleges prioritize traditional methods of communication (direct mail and student emails) across numerous technology applications. The number of emails students receive from various campus offices and departments and technologies makes it difficult for them to identify critical information; in addition, students have self-identified they prefer other modes of communication. To address these challenges, NSCS has selected two technology tools to address communication needs across the system.
EdSights
The first technology solution is EdSights which is a "pre-built Adaptive AI framework that engages with students about once a week to keep and becomes increasingly personalized to each student over time". This tool engages with students over text messaging where "Check-Ins and Interventions are delivered to students via SMS text messaging by an institutionally-branded chatbot". With this tool, each College supplies its academic calendars and other student-related events. The tool then engages with students via SMS to ask questions on financial distress, academic engagement, overall wellness, and engagement with the campus community. The AI functionality instantly responds to the answers supplied by the students by indicating additional campus resources for questions and support.
Pathify
The second identified communication technology solution is Pathify. Pathify is an interaction hub that allows all technology tools to be integrated within a "centralized user experience unifying
everything". Pathify is available as an app for all types of devices and provides a single-panel display experience with all services available on the single-panel.
The System has initiatives, goals, and measures in place to improve the College experience and ultimately strengthen its support of student success. Outcomes are consistently measured, and adjustments are proposed at defined intervals. Strategic plan goals will continue to be measured and NSCS will continue to evolve based on analysis of the goals and the feedback from focus groups, faculty, staff and students.
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Cheri Polenske
Vice Chancellor IT & CIO
New Face at NeSIS
Tracy Grauer is our newest member of NeSIS in the role of Student Finance Functional Coordinator. She has been working at the University of Nebraska for 18 years, in addition to receiving her degree at UNL. Some of you may know her from her days with the Production Scheduling & Output Management team. Tracy's most recent role was with NeBIS (Nebraska Business Information System) as an SAP Business System Analyst. When she is not working, she enjoys spending time with her husband, Aaron, two kiddos, Greta & Henry and dog, Rosie. Tracy also loves midcentury modern, art deco and brutalist design, music, traveling and spending time in nature. She looks forward to getting to know everyone and is eager to learn more!
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Production Migration Deadlines for Year End
The last Production migration for 2024 will be on Monday, 12/16/24, with a signoff deadline on 12/13/24. The first Production migration for 2025 will be on Monday, 1/6/25, with a signoff deadline on 1/3/25. Please plan accordingly. If you have concerns about these dates, please contact amp(a)nebraska.edu<mailto:amp@nebraska.edu> as soon as possible.
Tip of the Month: Adding/Updating Social Security Numbers to not Cause Duplicates
It's the time of the year to make sure that data in the system is clean in order to successfully produce 1098-T tax forms for students. One of the data points that will cause issues is if two students have the same SSN entered for them. To reduce the chances of this happening:
* If you are updating a SSN manually, make sure you are using the Add/Update a Person or Add/Update a Person (Student) screen and NOT the Maintain Applications screen. There are edit checks that have been added to the Add/Update a Person screens to check for an existing matching SSN that are not available on the Maintain Application screen. These checks will let you know if you are adding a SSN that already exists for someone else.
* Pay attention to the message that is displayed if you enter a SSN that already exists. It will give you the NUID of the conflicting record which you can then use to research and/or resolve the conflict.
* If you click OK when you receive the message, the SSN is saved even though it's already being used. Click Cancel to not save the update so you can do some research first.
* OR, If the update is saved, make sure to research the other NUID and remove the conflicting SSN.
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Eform Text Issue and Resolution
This last PeopleTools upgrade included a change to the text editor in Campus Solutions which now uses html tags to format text. This change caused the Insert Object and Variable value functionality in Eforms to no longer work for newly created objects. Existing eforms that were set up to use this functionality prior to the new editor to work, however, if those objects get updated, they will break.
Setup Example:
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A Change Request (4479 - Fix Insert Object/Variable Functionality in Eforms) has been submitted to change the replacement string for inserting object/query values. Included in this change will be a script to update all of the places in eforms that contain that syntax. This CR will need to be migrated as part of a PUM/PeopleTools maintenance window to ensure ample testing of both new and existing eforms. In the meantime, please remember to always test eform changes in a non-production instance (TST or QA) before updating Production. If you find issues in a non-production instance, please contact the NeSIS Enterprise Tools Team (nesisetteam(a)nebraska.edu) prior to making any changes in Production.
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Susan Lee
Functional Coordinator, Enterprise Tools
Upcoming Events
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Tuesday, 12/10
9am - SC Financial Aid Team Meeting
10:30am - Student Records Team Meeting
1:30pm - Integration Team Meeting
Thursday, 12/12
9am - Enterprise Tools/Dashboard Team Meeting
Friday, 12/13
Signoff for last PRD migration (12/16) until 1/6/25
Tuesday 12/17
9am - Financial Aid Team Meeting
Wednesday, 12/18
9am - Admissions Team Meeting
12/21/24 - 1/1/25
Holiday Shutdown
Monday, 1/6/25
First PRD Migration of 2025
3pm - Campus Community Team Meeting
Tuesday, 1/7/25
9am - Financial Aid Team Meeting
Wednesday, 1/8/25
10:30am - Student Financials Team Meeting
Thursday, 1/9/25
8am - TSTNU/SC Refresh
9am - Enterprise Tools Team Meeting
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