1. Prema Teklinski and Bryan Penczak
Tracking Doctoral Students from Admissions to Outcome in Banner – Yes You Can!
Prema Teklinski and Bryan Penczak
Nov 22nd 2016
Session ID: 398

2. Thank you for your cooperation
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4. Introduction New Jersey Institute of Technology
7,800 undergraduate and 3,200 graduate students
33 states and 105 countries represented
48 undergraduate programs, 59 Master’s and 19 Ph.D. programs
269 tenured track faculty, 99% hold doctoral or highest degrees
18:1 student to faculty ratio
6 colleges

5. Introduction Awards and Recognitions - NJIT
Ranked #1 Nationally for Alumni Starting Salary vs. Annual Tuition (Buzzfeed.com)
Top 10% nationally for Return on Investment (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Top National University and Department of Computer Science among Top 100 (U.S. News & World Report)
Top 50 among colleges without a medical school for research expenditures and top 10 among universities whose main research is in engineering (National Science Foundation)
Top 10 among technological universities in faculty scholarly productivity (Academic Analytics)
One of Princeton Review’s Best Colleges

6. Agenda Background Business Rationale Banner Degree GPA
Plan and implement the changes
Communication
Phase 2
Future plans

7. Background
NJIT calculated the Graduate student cumulative GPA by combining all courses taken at the "G" level (graduate) for that student
This included Master’s and PhD degree programs
The cumulative GPA is calculated for all courses at that level

8. Background (con’t)
The doctoral student transcript did not accurately represent the GPA for the master’s nor the PhD programs
The doctoral classification code did not represent the true milestone stage of the doctoral student
NJIT has time-sensitive research, which mandates quickest possible tracking of student milestone completion status

9. Business Rationale for this change
Create separate transcripts for MS and PhD students
Restrict dissertation courses for PhD students
Track milestone stages properly for PhD students

10. Banner Degree GPA Banner Degree GPA did not satisfy business process:
Degree GPA did not calculate according to NJIT rules and regulations (too choosey vs. more lump automation)
Degree GPA requires more manual oversight
NJIT also permits counting courses across levels
Multiple same level different levels

11. Plan and implement the changes

12. Going from approval to conception
Create the project scope document
Define the phases of the project
Gain acceptance (Institutional Research, Committee of Graduate Education, Registrar, and Board of Trustees)
Decided on which PhD students we will update
When will we cut over? Why? (July)
Getting the key people to agree to the timeline (Student Team Leaders)

13. Getting it done
Do the research and learn the processes and understand how Banner works
Reverse engineer?
We had a big challenge ahead of us!
What was the first thing we did?
Hit the e-communities for scripts and ideas!
Be optimistic and be on the lookout!
Coffee
Pray

14. Process flow changes in Banner
Prepare all validation tables
Population selection
Update student curriculum
Update academic history
Update class restriction tables
Update registration tables
Update GPA
Review transcripts

15. Prepare all validation tables
STVLEVL – Create a new "D" level to track doctoral students

16. Prepare all validation tables
SMAPRLE – Program Definition Rules SOACURR – Curriculum rules

17. Prepare all validation tables
We ran into an issue with SOACURR/SMAPRLE
We discovered that we cannot use the same program code attached to two different levels
SL-BIOL-PHD level “G” and SL-BIOL-PHD “D”  No because of SMAPRLE restrictions
SL_BIOL_PHD level “D”  No because the underscore was an issue (‘_’ is an Oracle search wildcard in Banner)
SL-BIOL-PHDD level “D”  Yes

18. Prepare all validation tables
SHAGRDE - Grade Code Maintenance

19. Prepare all validation tables
SFATMST – Time Status Rules

20. Prepare all validation tables
SFAMHRS – Registration Min Max Hours

21. Prepare all validation tables
SGACLSR – Student Classification Rules

22. Prepare all validation tables
SHAACST – Academic Standing Rules

23. Prepare other validation tables
SSAPREQ – Schedule Prerequisite Restrictions SFARGTC – Third Party Registration Time Controls SFACPLR – Program Duration Rule Other tables/forms : SFARGFE – Registration Fee Assessment Financial Aid tables and many pop sels affected

24. Population selection
Simply put, we updated all active doctoral level students whether or not they were currently enrolled.

25. Update student curriculum
We updated the program code and the level: From: CC-CS-PHD "G" To: CC-CS-PHDD "D" with a script Affected Tables/forms: SGASTDN SFAREGS SORLCUR SORLFOS
Effective
Term
Catalog Term stayed the same

26. Update registration tables
SFRSTCR/SFAREGS
Update the course level to “D” for all registered courses with a script
Course level is inherited from the student level at time of registration
Why do we have to do this? Because it was previously inherited from the “G” level
Thank goodness for delivered triggers on tables!
(hint: SFASTCA)

27. Update registration tables (con’t)
Script updated the "G" level to the "D" level

28. Update registration tables (con’t)
On SFAREGS, the time status needs to be reset after updating the student course level to "D" for all registered courses using a script
Submit SFRTMST to reset the time status
Banner does not
retroactively
update the time
status when using
scripts to update
table values directly

29. Update class restriction tables
SCRLEVL
Insert a “D”
level into the
Banner Catalog
with a script
SCRRLVL
Update
“D” only
courses with a
script
SCARRES

30. Update course and section restriction
SSRRLVL
Course section restriction
updates for “D” level only
courses with a script
Allows only doctoral students
to register for dissertation
courses
In addition, we can now
prevent doctoral students
from taking MS-only courses

31. Update academic history
SHACRSE (SHRTCKL/SHRTCKN) Academic History
Update the
course level
from "G"
to "D" with
a script

32. Update academic history (con’t)
Method 1:
Use the Cognos Student Course View to extract the doctoral student courses for our population and use that list as the driving force to update the academic history course level from "G" to "D".

33. Update academic history (con’t)
Method 2:
Use the admit/matriculated
term when the doctoral student
began the PhD program and
update all the courses in academic
history to the “D” level from that
admit/matriculated term forward.

34. Update GPA tables SHATERM - SHRTGPA/SHRLGPA SHRCGPA Must create a new
(blank) “D” level
row in the GPA tables
and initialize GPA fields
to zero using a script
Banner cannot do this
with back-loaded data
SHRCGPA
Recalculate the GPA D

35. Go live day
First, we ran bulk transcripts using SHRTRTC for all active doctoral students to preserve the transcripts before implementing the new doctoral level.

36. Go live day
We gathered in our conference room for one day; ran all the scripts to move the active doctoral students from the graduate level to the new doctoral level students, 19 programs
2 Technical staff
1 Graduate Studies
functional techie
1 Registrar functional

37. At the end of go live day and later on..
We ed the affected students of the changes
We notified Chairs, Associate Deans, PhD program directors, graduate advisors, and administrative staff
We checked transcripts (all of them)
We merged the “before and after” GPA data in
a spreadsheet and reviewed them

38. Communication
The next few slides contain information sent to the doctoral program advisors

39. FAQ created for the program advisors
How does this work?
GPA calculation in Banner is based on the student level (and under the new scenario, their program – PhD or MS) at the time that they are registered for their courses. In any given term, a student can only be a MS or a PhD – not both. In order to make the calculation work, we need to change their prior course history to match the level "G" or "D" based on their program at the time of registration. Therefore, we changed the levels of the students’ courses taken for any given term to match either "G" or "D" if they were in their MS or their PhD program. This will calculate a "G" GPA and a "D" GPA, rather than just a "G" GPA
Who does this affect?
As of now, we are only taking action on the Fall 2016 currently enrolled/active PhD students. Both new students beginning in the Fall 2016 and returning students (with their individual academic history) are included in this batch. There are plans to make these changes to older students’ account in the near future as well (phase 2)

40. FAQ to the program advisors
Here is an illustrated example transcript before and after the change:
Transcript under the OLD way:
MS in CS from to
PhD in CS from to

41. FAQ to the program advisors
Transcript under the old way:
201410
G CS 610 A
G CS 631 B
G CS 645 B+
Term GPA: 3.5
Cum GPA: 3.5
201490
G CS 652 B
G CS 696 B+
Term GPA: 3.25
Cum GPA: 3.4
(PhD begins)
 201510
G IS 634 A
G IS 678 B+
Term GPA: 3.75
201590
G CS A
G MGMT A
Term GPA: 4.0
Cum GPA: 3.61

42. FAQ to the program advisors
Transcript Under the new way :
201410
G CS 610 A
G CS 631 B
G CS 645 B+
Term GPA: 3.5
Cum GPA: 3.5
201490
G CS 652 B
G CS 696 B+
Term GPA: 3.25
Cum GPA: 3.4
(PhD begins)
201510
D IS 634 A
D IS 678 B+
Term GPA: 3.75
Cum GPA: 3.75 (new)
Cum GPA: (old)
201590
D CS A
D MGMT A
Term GPA: 4.0
Cum GPA: (new)
Cum GPA: (old)

43. FAQ to the program advisors
Summary
John Doe has taken 9 courses, and they are counted between two levels
At the "G" level (MS), he has taken 5 courses, with a 3.4 Cum GPA
At the "D" level (PHD), he has taken 4 courses, with a Cum GPA

44. Post implementation steps

45. Post implementation steps
What are we doing with the old transcripts:
Archive the bulk transcripts from SHRTRTC
Export .lis file containing all transcripts
ID field used to segregate pages into separate files with unique names (AutoSplit;Adobe Plugin)
Report Manager Application setup to accept these files as individually named transcripts, loaded to BDMS

46. Post implementation steps
Updates to Business Processes
Tuition and Fee Assessment
Financial Aid Satisfactory Academic Progress
International Students (ISSM)
FGAC access as needed
Reports to include the new level as needed
Clearinghouse submission
BRM campaigns

47. Post implementation steps
Developed exception reports
Scheduled follow-up meetings and reviewed checklists of post completion tasks on a regular basis

48. Post implementation steps
Updated pending doctoral admissions applications (about 80 active)
Manually updated their program code and level
Needed to reload the new catalog of “D” level items, to feed the new data properly for the Admissions Application (in house development)

49. PHASE 1 COMPLETE!!

50. Gingerly, onto Phase 2…

51. Track doctoral milestones stages and classification status
SHATCMT – milestones
SGASADD – attributes
SGACLSR – classification

52. Track doctoral milestones to classification status, con’t
Create a process to properly reflect the milestone stage the doctoral student is at
SHATCMT  Enter all phases doctoral student must fulfill with a script
SGASADD  Refresh and enter the completed phases with a script
SGACLSR  Set up form to use the new attribute from SGASADD

53. Using SHATCMT for 6 milestone stages

54. Using SHACOMI for the PhD committee

55. SHICOMQ Committee Query

56. Milestones to Class standing

57. Milestones to Class standing

58. Future plans

59. Future Plans Set up: FGAC: SHATCMT, passing milestones
FGAC: SHACOMI, directors enter the committee information
BDMS supporting document upload and view (EXABCXT for SHATCMT)
Front end uploader, approved loading into Application Manager

60. Future Plans
Bravely, we will tackle the extreme situation of moving all awarded doctoral students course work from the "G" level to the "D" level.

61. Special thanks E-communities Slippery Rock University in
Pennsylvania for the change of
program script
NJIT technical staff in University Information Systems
NJIT functional staff in Graduate Studies and in the Registrar’s office

62. Results of our efforts
“they are very happy”

63. Thank you!

64. Please take time to complete our Conference and Session evaluations
Please take time to complete our Conference and Session evaluations. YOUR INPUT MATTERS!!!

65. Thank you! Prema Teklinski Project Leader
University Information Systems
New Jersey Institute Of Technology
Phone:(973) Fax:(973)
Bryan Penczak Assistant Director, Graduate Digital Programs Office of Graduate Studies New Jersey Institute of Technology P:   F: