Unit Updates: Office of Classroom Management survey feedback

“This classroom provided a dynamic space for teaching and learning and for collaborative work. It is spacious, bright with natural light from strategically placed windows, and contains furniture (i.e., chairs, a table, and an ADA-compliant desk) that can be easily rearranged, which is very useful when teaching a discussion- and humanities-based course. Additionally, students and guest speakers were able to access technology easily throughout the course of the semester. This term (unlike the previous one), I learned how to use the sound, and this has made a significant difference when showing video or film. It's also extremely helpful to have access to a DVD player. I am especially grateful to the janitors, maintenance staff, and groundskeepers for providing such a clean and welcoming environment. Thank you!” - Blegen 220

“This is without a doubt the best experience my co-instructor and I have ever had with presentation technologies. The classroom presentation setup is perfect! It is intuitive and exceptionally easy to use...both for student presenters and instructors. My co-instructor and I applaud the efforts that have gone into this system. We have both taught at the University of Minnesota and at other colleges and universities, and have made presentations throughout the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. We agree that this has been our best experience. Great work! Thank you.”

Office of Student Finance

• FAFSA Simplification Update
• We’re presenting on the FAFSA Simplification Project at the OUE General Assembly on December 14.
• We had an all day, in-person “retreat” to prepare for the upcoming software rollout with the IT BA’s. For 2024-25, students will not have to get parents to “sign off” on their lack of support, which is going to require a new process.
• We completed the housing question that will “pop-up” before actual packaging since a housing preference is no longer included on the FAFSA.
• 24-25 financial aid communications have been reviewed and updated in anticipation of the new Student Aid Index that is replacing the expected family contribution (EFC). We’re also reviewing the queries that use EFC.
• We’re still reviewing the parent contributions process for those Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) programs (grants and loans) since the FAFSA will not allow parents of independent students to complete the FAFSA. 
• American Indian Scholars Program Update
• The State of Minnesota’s new American Indian Scholars Program (AISP) is now available. The program covers tuition and certain fees for eligible Minnesotans who are enrolled members or citizens of any federally recognized tribe or Canadian First Nation.
• The project team is working diligently to finalize the process of posting the funds through third-party billing. Funds should be applied by early December.
• A big shout out to the project team for all of their hard work: Andrew Hill, Carolee Cohen, Caylin Scheff (Crookston), Jana Koehler (Morris), Kari Ellering, Meghan Czarniecki, Nancy Carl (Duluth), Richard Toetschinger, and Sarah Hoegger.
• College of Education and Human Development Grant & Scholarship Funds Update
• OSF worked closely with CEHD on disbursing the following Minnesota Office of Higher Education grants:
• Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship
• The Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship pilot program provides financial assistance to eligible undergraduate and graduate students who are preparing to become teachers, have demonstrated financial need, and belong to racial or ethnic groups underrepresented in the state’s teacher workforce. The University of Minnesota has awarded 36 students the Aspiring Teachers of Color Scholarship. $171,335 has been disbursed for fall 2023 semester, and $174,669 has been awarded for the spring 2024 semester.
• Minnesota Underrepresented Student Teacher Grant
• The Minnesota Underrepresented Student Teacher Grant provides financial assistance to eligible students who belong to a racial or ethnic group underrepresented in the Minnesota teacher workforce. 9 students have been awarded this grant for fall 2023, and a total of $66,099 has been disbursed.Minnesota Shortage Areas Student Teacher Grant
• The Minnesota Shortage Areas Grant provides financial assistance to eligible students who intend to teach in a license shortage area or rural school district. 4 students have been awarded this grant for fall 2023, and $25,607 has been disbursed.

ASR-IT

Application Development team:=

• A year ago, we set up our first application to automatically renew its SSL certificate (SSL certificates keep communication with our applications encrypted and secure). A couple weeks ago, it renewed itself without any intervention from us. Now all of our applications are configured to do this, which means we are well situated for when renewal periods go from one year down to 90 days.

• There are a few upgrades currently in progress: TFMS and our Sessions API, which is a service used for an integration on the OCM website.

• We’ve been configuring a service called Traefik that will allow us to run multiple applications on a single server using containers. We already have three applications running in a test environment! Once this infrastructure is expanded, we can work towards deploying more than one Traefik server consistently.

  
  

Data Engineering team

• Began using Coursedog data in our Databricks proof-of-concept and working on how to best transform and store this data in Databricks. This is progress towards establishing a cloud based home where BA’s and technical staff have the ability to access and service data needs from ASR’s  many student data sources.

• Provided Student Degree Progress data and expertise to Student Data Analytics (SDA) so that they could work with Duluth on a curriculum analysis request.

• Started the move from LastPass to Azure Key Vault for secret management. Migrating to Azure will set us up for OIT's eventual planned Secrets Management service.

ASR-IT PeopleSoft Business Analysts

• All Teams

• We’re testing two PeopleSoft Images and a Critical Patch (CPU) security update to remain in compliance with our ERP vendor (Oracle/PeopleSoft).

• We’re working on UM Reports deprecation.

• Financial Aid IT

• We’re continuing work on FAFSA Simplification, which includes analysis of impacted custom code, equations and SQL, and user queries. We’re also testing and preparing for Federal Work Study reporting, reviewing new data models delivered by Oracle, and finishing up a new housing survey. Lastly, we’re updating the Student Aid Internet Gateway to protect federal tax Information.

• We’re working with SF-IT and functional staff on each campus to implement the new Minnesota Office of Higher Education (MOHE) program: American Indian Scholars Program.

• We’re collaborating with HR to implement replacement reports for Work Study.

• Student Financials/Campus Community/Shared Data IT

• The Spring 2024 Tuition Calculation setup is in progress.

• For the 1098-T, we’re providing data for business areas to review and correct prior to year end and moving to a digital  W9-S form.

• We’re testing QuikPAY changes for administrative users with a new dashboard and multi-factor authentication.

• Non-resident Alien Tax process updates are being tested.

• Poorly-formatted email addresses were removed from the system, which helps reduce SalesForce errors.

• We’re partnering with the UX and Content Strategy team to move posting training online.

• There are various working groups addressing policy or process changes, including Regents Scholarships and Student Service Fee changes.

• We’re hiring a new BA for the Campus Community/Shared Data team.

• Sarah Hoegger and Jack Kimmes presented at the HEUG Central Conference in Chicago this month.

• Student Records IT

• The Coursedog team provided a building program requirements demo this week.

• We created and posted registration appointment times for Twin Cities, Morris, and Crookston.

• We’re finalizing work with Parchment to configure single sign-on (SSO).

• We finished the fall 2024 operations and job processing calendar.

• We delivered PSEO fall 2023 files to the system campus representatives, and we’re working through corrections before delivering it to the Minnesota Department of Education.

Operations & Strategic Initiatives

Operations

• Annual review of our Williamson Hall building emergency plan and ASR’s Continuity of Operations plan is happening.
• The annual space survey was completed last week. Each year departments are asked to look at the space they are responsible for and ensure that everything is accounted for accurately. 

Projects

• Completed the New American Indian Scholars Program workflow in Jadu and it is ready for launch.
• The Projects team is providing project management coaching for lead staff working on the FAFSA Simplification project through the launch in spring 2024.
• We continue to partner with the ASR Application Development team to provide ongoing UX & Business Analysis to support their work intake and refinement.
• The Projects team has taken on the OIT PI Planning coordination efforts for ASR. We have been meeting with all ASR-IT and business unit teams to ensure our collaborative efforts with OIT are submitted to the appropriate OIT agile team for prioritization in the coming quarter. 

Training

• To coincide with the Coursedog launch, OSI Training created four new training courses that teach Coursedog authors and approvers across the University the basics of the new system.
• OSI Training is beginning to create an updated online FERPA training.

UX & Content Strategy

• The team has been supporting the FAFSA Simplification effort mandated by changes at the federal level. There are many changes related to terminology, so a thorough review of forms, emails, and web content is underway. The team is also helping ensure that students and families are aware of the changes and this year’s delayed availability of the FAFSA form. 
• Following a redesign of the DORS website, an awareness campaign was kicked off so that the campus community is aware of the benefits of using DORS. This effort is based on feedback from users saying they wished more people knew about DORS. 
• The 2022-2023 annual report process has kicked off. This is an update of a publication initiated for the previous academic year (linked on the ASR website homepage). An area of focus for this year’s project is documenting the sources of data we publish. 
• We’re also starting a content review of the One Stop website. This annual process ensures that all the content is accurate and trustworthy.

One Stop Student Services

The 2023-2024 academic year has kicked off with its usual excitement and fervor for students wanting to work with One Stop. We are immensely grateful to the staff who worked tirelessly throughout this time. The One Stop team headed into "Fall Start" almost fully staffed and completely trained. This is the first time in quite a number of years! One Stop is extremely thankful for all the support from our partner offices across ASR. Thank you!

University Veterans Services

• Handling the certification of Veteran Education Benefits for over 600 veteran and military-connected students. 
• Navigating a new certification platform and changes to VA processing procedures.
• Planning our annual Veterans Appreciation Event on November 9, 2023. 
• Attending the Big Ten Academic Alliance Military and Veteran Conference at the University of Iowa. 

Financial Wellness Committee

• Hosting workshops and attending campus events, including a workshop hosted with the Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence during Welcome Week. 
• Managing an increase in requests for 1:1 financial wellness appointments because the pandemic pause on federal loan repayments is ending, and most borrowers are set to resume repayment this month.

Graduate Student Services and Progress

• Meeting with cohorts of newly hired Graduate Program Coordinators to help them learn about important resources for their work, system access, and GPAS basics. 

Chatbot

• Launched the One Stop Student Services chatbot officially on October 2, 2023, which replaces One Stop’s live agent chat with conversational AI technology provided by Ivy.ai. This new service allows One Stop to shift resources to other communication methods where they are better suited to answer student-specific questions.

Student Account Assistance

• Kicked off Third-Party Billing policy changes to better align with the policies and processes of our peers from the Big Ten and AAU. 
• Moved the late payment policy for sponsors from 90 days to 45 days, which will notify students earlier in the process if there are issues with a sponsored payment, and allow them additional time to secure alternative funding if necessary before the term ends.
• Implemented an authorization acceptance policy with a deadline of the last day of the term. This will alleviate issues with repackaging financial aid and issuing refunds and the potential for prior year adjustments to 1098-T forms. 

Billing dates

• Shifted the billing due dates to allow students and families more time to arrange their finances. The turnaround time proves to be quite short in the Fall term for students requesting funds from their college savings plans (i.e., 529 plans), applying for private loans, arranging funds to come from international banks due to holidays, etc. 

Homecoming

• Happy Homecoming! A big thank you to all that supported One Stop and ASR’s participation in the homecoming parade. It’s a cherished tradition! GO GOPHERS!

Office of the Registrar

• Staff in OTR are preparing to represent the University and ASR at the Big Ten Registrar meeting (October 1-3), the Upper Midwest Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (UMACRAO) annual meeting (October 25-27), and Convergence: Credential Innovation in Higher Education (November 1-3).
• Degree audit (APAS & GPAS)
• Preparing for new/changed program proposals to come through in Coursedog after October 1.
• Destiny One (DORS)
• Members of the DORS team are partnering with undergraduate students in the MiS program in CSOM for their capstone project. The student teams will be evaluating the brief, “The Value of Competency-Based Alternative Credentials and a Comprehensive Learner Record for the University of Minnesota,” to help us better understand the evolving accreditation and credential landscape.
• Preparing to work with usability lab on assessment of Helio Campus (Comprehensive Learner Record).
• Since the beginning of August, we have consistently seen revenue between $350,000 and $360,000 each week for registrations completed in Destiny One. The week of Sept. 4-10, we had actual revenue of $499,656.60. If we factor in in-kind revenue it is nearly $515,000 for the one week. So for the month of August, registrations completed in Destiny One generated over $2.3 million dollars of actual revenue (not including in-kind) for the University. 
• Grad Ed Records (GERT)
• The team continues to do ongoing analysis for graduate education workflows in preparation for the move off of the WorkflowGen platform. 
• The team welcomed Michelle James in July and are starting to settle in as a fully staffed team!
• Training Duluth OTR on GPAS degree clearance processes.
• Quality Assurance (QA)
• HUGE kudos to the team for the ongoing support and providing data during the UM Report outage. 
• As of Friday, September 15, we have seen 153 total requests via the Student Data Request form of which 129 were student records related.
• Records & Enrollment / Service Operations
• We recently concluded an RFP for transcript and diploma (digital, print, mail) services, and we are working with partners in Purchasing, OGC, and UIS to get all of the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. We’re excited to maintain our transcript services with Parchment and to move forward with a new partnership with Paradigm to support diploma production and move it to a vendor solution. 
• Staff continue to partner with OSI and OUE to develop a new process for change of college (known internally as ICT), which will be more consistent, streamlined, and provide a better user experience for students, collegiate staff, and OTR staff. This will also move the process off of the WorkflowGen platform and onto Jadu, and we anticipate having the new process in place to support the fall 2024 application cycle for change of college.
• Transfer Evaluation System (TES)
• A high volume of transfer courses continue to be submitted for evaluation.
• Continued work with transfer guides.
• Proactively gathering syllabi for system campus courses with equivalencies expiring in the near future.

Office of Classroom Management

• Scheduling Team
• The team is busy with fall 2023 class changes! Final exam room requests are being processed as well. 
• Check out the Course Section & Student Modality Dashboard to see up-to-date class modality stats for fall semester. As of publication, on the Twin Cities campus for all careers, we are at 82.66% in-person class sections (that's 8,887 classes); 10.72% are remote or online (1152 classes); and 6.62% are blended (a little in-person and a little online/remote; 712 classes). 
• Spring 2024 class details are still being updated by departments, but we have about 75% of the classes already assigned. We expect that pace to pick up as we roll into late September. 
• CCS will open for department schedulers to start scheduling May/summer 2024 classes at the end of September, so the team is busy with data clean up to prep for summer scheduling. 
• Friendly reminder that you can reserve a general purpose classroom (GPC) for your meeting needs as well! We encourage you to use GPCs when they are not otherwise scheduled for classes. They make great meeting spots if you are on campus. You can log in to Astra directly to submit a room request and use Room Search to see room details.
• Service Team
• Fall semester prep by the numbers:
• 4 new students Classroom Technology Monitors hired this August.
• 130+ technology upgrades completed over the summer - Thanks CTS!
• Congratulations to Noah Holm who was promoted to Service Manager in August! Noah has been with OCM since 2017, and has been instrumental in improving the faculty and student experience in learning spaces. In his new role, he will build on his previous efforts by cultivating a team and creating connections across the University to improve services.
• To build out the team, we are looking to hire a Technology Service Lead (see open position below).
• Operations Team
• OCM has been focusing on right-sizing our classroom inventory capacity-wise. We replaced furniture in over 30 classrooms this summer, including Ford and Vincent Halls, where we decreased capacities for more square-footage per student in the rooms. 
• Other notable projects this summer include furniture and finish replacements in Ford Hall, new furniture in Vincent, and card reader replacements for classrooms in Burton, Murphy, Elliott, Keller, and Smith Halls.
• Classroom Technical Services
• CTS is positioned to support a great start to the fall semester. For the first two weeks of the semester, project work is put on reduced priority to ensure we have staffing capacity available to assist faculty and students who may have challenges working with the audio-video systems. 
• Summer project activity wrapped up last week. Over the past few months, CTS was able to complete approximately 30 large, 75 small, and a few additional miscellaneous projects on the TC Campus despite significant staffing shortages. Working with our partners in OCM, several project schedules were adjusted to balance workload with available resources. Thanks OCM!
• The organization is looking to hire a Senior Electronics Technician/AV Specialist (see open position below).
• In August, CTS began working with a new software support vendor, 3K Technologies, to assist us in managing our business software systems. We’re looking forward to working with our new vendor to bring improved performance and functionality to our systems.

Office of Student Finance

• We are rolling into the fall 2023 financial aid and disbursement season! We are just as excited as everyone else to welcome new and returning students back to the Twin Cities campus. We are thankful for all of the work done around ASR to begin yet another successful year.
• As you are all likely aware, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) released a decision regarding race based practices being used in admissions. The Office of Student Finance is working closely with the Office of Undergraduate Education, Office of Equity and Diversity, Office of Admissions, Office of General Counsel, and University Relations on determining how this decision will impact the University of Minnesota system. A recent article from Inside Higher Education outlines some of the challenges ahead for higher education institutions.
• Systemwide FAFSA Simplification working groups are going strong and making decisions for the 2024-25 changes. Information for students and families has been posted to the One Stop website.
• Undergraduate and Loans Unit
• Aid year 2022-23 has wrapped up and staff are working on closing out their financial aid programs. At the same time, we are gearing up for 2023-24, making aid adjustments and certifying loans in preparation for financial aid disbursement on Monday night August 28, 2023.
• Due to the change in the 13-credit tuition policy, Twin Cities/Rochester Undergraduate students who decrease their enrollment to fewer than 13 credits may receive a tuition adjustment during the first two weeks of the term. Starting with fall 2023, full-time students who drop courses below 13 credits, are receiving certain types of financial aid, and have a credit balance, will have a temporary hold placed on their student account. This hold will ensure a refund is not immediately issued in cases when a student may be swapping courses, and allow OSF time to notify students that if they remain enrolled in fewer than 13 credits they may owe a balance on their account once their financial aid has been adjusted. 
• Starting in fall 2023, the financial aid late enrollment appeal form will no longer be needed if a student adds credits after census. OSF will be running a weekly query for all careers to identify these students. Financial aid eligibility will be reviewed/adjusted accordingly. All the same aid rules still apply. 
• OSF has updated our Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) email communication to students. The first sentence in the email was designed to notify the student of their SAP status and if they need to complete an appeal. A link to the appeal is provided (if applicable) with more detailed information in the email. In the past, the email had an attachment with the detailed information. It is our hope that more students will read this text and understand if there are any next steps needed to qualify for financial aid. Thank you to Meghan (OSF - Undergrad), Tom (FA-IT), and the many others that helped review the communication. 
• The American Indian Scholars Program, a new program announced by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, will be implemented for 2023-24. Information has been added to the One Stop website and the system-wide implementation team is being led by Kari Ellering.
• Compliance, Graduate Unit, Athletics, Professional and Scholarship Unit (CGAPS)
• The CGAPS units continue to make manual adjustments on financial aid packages for our populations, based on scholarships and grants that are being added to students’ financial aid packages.
• Medical School financial aid kicks off our disbursement processes this week, and we are excited to work with students as they begin/continue their medical careers.
• Athletics, FA-IT, and OIT are working through an error with the NCAA Compliance Assistant software that started with a system upgrade on May 1, 2023. This upgrade introduced many changes including the reporting to PeopleSoft, and is impacting work done in multiple offices. For now, a manual workaround has been identified, however we are determining if that workaround meets all team needs.
• Fiscal Unit
• The Fiscal Unit welcomes our newest team member, Bounmee Yang, to the team! Bounmee serves as a Finance Professional 4 supervisor. Bounmee’s first day was August 21, and we are thrilled to have him on board!
• Here is the fall aid and credit balance disbursement schedule:
• Monday, August 21: Medical School initial financial aid disbursement.
• Wednesday, August 23: 1st batch of credit balances run for direct deposit.
• Friday, August 25: 1st batch of credit balances run for checks.
• Monday, August 28: All other TC careers initial financial aid disbursement 
• Wednesday, August 30: 1st batch of credit balances run for direct deposit and parent checks.
• Friday, September 1: 1st batch of credit balances run for checks.

ASR-IT

• Application Development
• Planning for Q4 prioritization is underway!
• The team has been focused on the upcoming Drupal 10 upgrade:
• Both classroom.umn.edu and all campus One Stop sites are affected.
• The One Stop Kiosk underwent a long-overdue upgrade. There were no functional changes, but this paves the way to reduce our tech debt for this application.
• We’re poised to begin addressing tech debt for the Tuition and Fee Management System (TFMS), which needs a few upgrades to stay in compliance. 
• The team will participate in Campus Codefest August 17 and 18.
• Our custom Class scheduling distribution summary (CSDS) application has been moved to Tableau with the help of Ian Whitney and the Student Data Analytics team. This allows us to decommission several things in our portfolio.
• Campus Community/Shared Data/Student Financials IT
• Fall preparation activities are taking up most of the team’s time (tuition setup for all campuses and other start of term readiness items).
• Participated in PI Planning with OIT.
• Completed a project to export certain fee data into the Common Data Layer.
• Continued to work with OIT on Proposed Changes to Email Offerings.
• Tools 8.59.19 CPU testing and Financials Image testing.
• Financial Aid IT
• Fall preparation activities are in full swing (Packaging/Repackaging, SAP evaluations, Disbursements) for all campuses.
• FAFSA Simplification/Student Aid Index activities.
• One Term Exceptions with OSF/SDP.
• OSF/Admissions AY start-up discussion.
• NCAA CAi upgrade analysis and assistance
• PeopleTools 8.59.19 CPU testing
• Student Records
• Participated in PI Planning with OIT.
• Continued to work with OIT on Proposed Changes to Email Offerings.
• Tools 8.59.19 CPU testing.
• Preparing for Coursedog launch.
• Working with the Learning Abroad Center to see if we can assist with automating any of their business processes.
• Summer term grading.
• 13 credit exemption retirement.
• Student Data and Analytics
• Admission Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) 
• On track for end of September launch admissions trackbook dashboard
• Building 3 more dimensions 
• Build RPD and testing
• Retention Priority
• Training fall 2023 to spring 2024 campus and cohort specific models 
• Delivered Class Scheduling Distribution Summary (CSDS) Dashboard to OCM
• Ongoing Enhancements
• Waiver dashboard (Tuition Attribution)
• Partnering with OIT HR to recruit a new SDA team manager (see notes above). Ingrid Nuttall will be leading the search with OIT HR supporting the hiring committee with the hiring process.

Operations & Strategic Initiatives

• Project management for the Coursedog & Chatbot projects are in-progress. 
• Coursedog is in the final phases and preparing for an August 21 “go-live”.
• Chatbot implementation is in the testing phase, which is scheduled to continue through August 18.
• The four training courses we developed for Coursedog authors and approvers were recently launched.
• The OSI Project Team continues to provide oversight and guidance for WorkflowGen process transitions. For more information, see the WFG Retirement Status Update.
• Jadu work is ramping up again as we take on WFG transition initiatives, new development requests, and make updates to existing processes. 
• A new Jadu work intake process was implemented last month. 
• We are currently working on a new Jadu backlog, prioritization, and status dashboard for ASR staff to view to get key highlights on our work. We expect this to roll out this fall with additional project team resources. 
• A new ASR project intake and prioritization process is being developed and reviewed before it is implemented for all-ASR use.
• We’ve been working with OSF to update financial aid notices (FANs) for 2023-2024, which were sent out last week to students, and to update the One Stop website for any FAFSA simplification changes.
• We updated tuition & fees on the One Stop website for 2023-2024.
• The DORS support website was recently redesigned to attract new users, highlight the benefits of using DORS, and to make getting started easier.
• We are working with the Office of Information Technology, University Content Management, the ASR Application Development team, and website stakeholders on the Drupal 10 upgrade.
• Frank is back!

One Stop Student Services

• One Stop Student Services, University Veterans Services, Graduate Student Services & Progress, Student Account Assistance, and Third Party Billing will be closed 8 a.m.-1 p.m. on Thursday, July 27 for the ASR Picnic. This includes phone, email, and in-person services at all three One Stop Student Services locations, Student Account Assistance, and Third Party Billing. 
• All services will resume at 1 p.m. on July 27, except for the West Bank and St. Paul One Stop locations, which will remain closed the entire day.
• The details of this closure are being communicated to both staff and students across multiple platforms, including RAC, GPCN, and AAN. Please share this information with others as needed.
• The Financial Wellness Committee is attending the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance (HEFWA) Summit hosted at the University of Oregon July 15-18. This professional development opportunity has been great for collaboration and networking as we continue to grow our Financial Wellness offerings. Ralph Daby and Erin Anderson will lead a session titled “Connecting Underrepresented Student Populations with Financial Wellness.” 
• The One Stop chatbot project has entered its testing phase. Counselors are working with the project team to build up the bot’s brain in preparation for the October launch date.
• Is summer over already? New student orientation is almost complete! One Stop counselors have met with new students and families and have provided two presentations daily throughout June and July. Next week is the final full week of on campus orientation. Welcome to the Class of 2027!

Office of the Registrar

• OTR has been busy implementing an interim staffing structure to support continuity and promote professional development over the next year. The high level org chart is available on the ASR intranet, but below are some highlights. Please continue to use otr@umn.edu as the primary point of contact or for necessary student referrals. 
• Colleen Harms has been promoted to Interim Associate Director overseeing a combined unit of Service Operations and Records & Enrollment.
• Matt Duggan has been promoted to Interim Assistant Director overseeing the service operations team. 
• Theresa Nelson has been promoted to a management position overseeing the Graduate Education Records team.
• Josemy Morales has been promoted to Service Operations manager overseeing the OTR student workers. 
• In addition to adopting a new staffing structure and new allocations of work, OTR has also been busy with ongoing end of term processing including:
• 6970 undergraduate degrees posted system-wide for spring 2023
• 1552 graduate degrees posted system-wide for May 2023 (210 Twin Cities graduate term-based degrees)
• 813 professional degrees posted for spring 2023
• Over 9700 diplomas sent since May 1!
• The Destiny One Registration System (DORS) team will officially join OTR as of July 1. 
• The Duluth campus went live with GPAS which now closes out the GPAS implementation! 
• OTR staff have also been engaging in professional development. The APAS and TES teams (Stephanie Sutton, Amanda Grimm, Kathryn Kvam, Laura Butchko and Chris Smith) recently attended the CollegeSource conference in San Diego. James Harms and Amber Cellotti attended AACRAO Hill Day and the AACRAO Leadership Meeting in DC respectively. 
• We want to give the biggest kudos to all OTR staff for their ongoing support and flexibility during this interim period!

Office of Classroom Management

• Classroom Technical Services (CTS) has officially kicked off the Summer Life Cycle 23 Installation Extravaganza! So far, CTS technicians have been able to set the pace at an extremely high bar. They’ve not only tackled the LES 140 suite and a Departmental install, but they also knocked out all of the projector upgrades in Bruininks and Kolthoff Halls (aside from the one room with the leak). Phase II installations of Bruininks 220 & 230 and Armory 116 & 202 are complete, and the upgrade of the first ever ALC at the U, Keller 2-260, is almost finished along with the Phase II of Tate 110. 
• The most exciting part of all of this is, unlike last year, we actually have all of the equipment we need to do the work. With that supply-chain obstacle finally in the rear-view mirror, we can kick it into high gear and have an install season for the record books.
• Summer classroom projects are underway. We are wrapping up “Furniture Frenzy” deliveries (over 1,500 pieces of furniture!), and now are working on all the details that happen after the furniture arrives. These include things like asset stickering, new room pictures, layout updates, room search updates, etc. We are coordinating card reader installs and updates, lighting updates, and will start going through our service spaces to continue clean-out work and reshuffling of attic stock efforts started last summer.
• On the Scheduling side, we are processing summer 2023 cancellations, finalizing fall 2023 room assignments, and getting ready to batch schedule spring 2024 classes. The final exam schedule for fall 2023 and spring 2024 will soon be published for students and instructors, and the CCS Class Schedule Build production calendar for summer 2024 - spring 2025 is now available for scheduler review. 
• In addition to the CTS organizational alignment referenced above, OCM has been working to further align the Scheduling, Operations, Customer Service and Planning units to better support cross functional work across teams. Work duties are being right-sized, and teams are being developed with an emphasis on collaboration. With these changes, there will be some reporting line changes that will be effective June 20.

Office of Student Finance

• The Office of Student Finance (OSF) has been working hard to package and prepare for financial aid disbursement for summer 2023. We are thankful for our wonderful partners across ASR that have assisted in this process. As a quick reminder, the timing of the disbursement and refund dates for summer 2023 are the following:
• MED-First batch financial aid disbursement was May 1, 2023. All other careers (DENT, GRAD, LAW, PHAR, UGRD, VMED)-First batch financial aid disbursement is Monday night, June 5, 2023. 
• First batch credit balance run for direct deposit & parent checks is Wednesday morning, June 7, 2023 and first batch credit run for student checks is Friday morning, June 9, 2023.
• Financial aid disbursements for aidyr23 money (fall, spring, and summer) continue on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings until mid-August 2023. 
• Credit balance runs continue for aidyr23 money (fall, spring, and summer) in the wee morning hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for student/parent direct deposits & parent checks and Friday mornings for student checks until mid-August 2023.
• Worth noting is that aid for summer is only intended to cover specific periods of enrollment, and not necessarily the entire summer. For example, a student taking one class for 4 weeks would have their cost of attendance only reflect 4 weeks of housing and food, etc. Not the 3 months of summer.
• Census date for summer 2023 is June 19. Students enrolling after this date may need to submit a financial aid late enrollment appeal to receive financial aid. 
• Preparation continues for the fall 2023 financial aid packaging process. As the University awaits the decision by the Board of Regents on tuition and fee rates, OSF and ASR-IT stand ready to produce financial aid packages and disburse financial aid to students. As of right now, financial aid packages are set to send to students during the week of July 17, 2023. As we get closer to this date, we will share updates.
• As you may have heard, the state of Minnesota has announced 2 new financial aid programs that will impact our students. As OSF receives details about these programs, we will share them with our ASR partners.
• North Star Promise Program: Beginning in fall 2024, eligible Minnesota residents with a family adjusted gross income (AGI) below $80,000 will have tuition and fees covered by this new grant. This is a last-dollar in program, meaning all state, federal, and institutional gift aid must be counted first prior to awarding North Star promise funds to students. 
• American Indian Scholars Program: Beginning in fall 2023, Minnesota residents who are enrolled members or citizens of a federally recognized American Indian Tribe or Canadian First Nation, and anyone who is an enrolled member or citizen of a Minnesota tribal nation will be eligible to have tuition and fees covered. This is a first-dollar in program, meaning this program will cover those tuition and fees. 
• Shout out to the following OSF members who received milestone awards for their service to the financial aid world. These awards were presented at the 2023 MAFAA Conference:Nate Rosckes (20 years of service)
• Ali Facklam (10 years of service)
• Nichole Andersen (10 years of service)
• Angelina Vang (5 years of service)

ASR-IT

• App Dev
• Cassie Simpson joined our team on April 27. Welcome, Cassie!
• So far this quarter we’ve delivered stories for the following:
• College Actionable
• Room search
• SDP
• TFMS
• We’ve replaced a manual process updating SSL Certificates, which expire every year, to a fully automated one to update forty certificates. Industry standards for this continually change. Next year certificate expiration will go from one year to 90 days. Having this automated will save the team lots of time.
• We’re also working with Sara Cokl and Kristen Clements on the Projects team to incorporate feedback from our product owner retrospective. We have a new intake form, and we’ve streamlined the process to make planning easier.
• Quarter three planning is also underway! Product Owners are submitting stories for the next planning meeting.
• Student Data
• After having a strong and robust search pool, we hired a new Business Intelligence Developer who will be starting in June! 
• The Course Section and Student Modality dashboard is available on the EM Hub under the Curriculum and Courses tab. 
• The newly updated Class Scheduling Distribution Summary will launch in early June 2023. 
• This next quarter includes a range of fun and exciting projects:
• Admissions EDW/UM analytics building a new trackbook on the admissions funnel throughout the system
• Retention Priority modeling in preparation for Fall 2023 
• Supporting the systemwide re-enrollment pilot effort that is situated with the Systemwide Enrollment Management Council
• Continuing support for building a Coursedog data mart
• Ongoing curricular analytics to support general chemistry
• Ongoing maintenance of existing subject areas and reports for tuition, GPAS and other student reporting
• Destiny One
• The DORS team fully tested the newest Version 2023.1 Destiny One core feature pack, which is now deployed to the Production instance. 
• We are working with the vendor, Modern Campus, on several product enhancements (change requests).This work includes finalizing and approving requirements, testing delivered changes, and approval of changes for delivery to the Production instance. 
• IAM leadership attended the April Destiny One governance meeting to provide information and answer questions related to the new identity tool and proposed changes to email and Google workspace offerings. Working sessions will be conducted with IAM and the Destiny One user community to reimagine Destiny One accounts, and how learners access the system when the new identity tool is ready for implementation. 
• SF IT
• Preparations for tuition calc setup for new year (tasks that don’t require the Regents approval of the Annual Budget.) 
• Tested the most recent security updates (CPU) from Oracle, which has been deferred to when the next updates are delivered in late July.
• Working with OIT, U Services, and EDMR on Common Data Layer deliverable to replace x.500 feeds.
• Email for life retirement analysis.
• Reviewing RFP responses for epayment services.
• SR IT
• Busy with end of of term processes, such as grading
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for Coursedog
• Email for life retirement analysis
• Continued security work
• 13 Credit Exemption retirement
• Reporting work for Tuition Attribution and Humphrey by the Numbers 
• FA IT
• Summer ‘23 Disbursements are happening.
• AY24 tasks in full swing for all campuses. 
• Oracle updates were put into production on May 21 to fix items that were part of Image 28, which went in last month. 
• Tested the most recent security updates (CPU) from Oracle, which are deferred until the next updates are delivered in late July.

ASR Operations and Strategic Initiatives

• Project management for the Coursedog & Chatbot projects are in-progress. 
• Coursedog will be beginning user acceptance testing next week. 
• Chatbot implementation by the vendor is complete and we will kick-off the ASR portion of the project on May 16th.
• Training courses are being developed for Coursedog authors and approvers.
• The OSI Project Team is providing some oversight and guidance for WorkflowGen process transitions. For more information, see the WFG Retirement Transition Guide.
• A new work intake and prioritization process for Jadu e-forms and workflow work is in development.
• We’ve been working with OSF to review, update, and test financial aid communications for the 23-24 aid year.
• We finished creating the 2022 ASR Annual Report, which includes profiles for each unit and additional information about ASR’s organizational structure, technology, budget/ROI, and ASR and MPACT.
• We’ve established a monthly writer working group meeting for the content writers across all campuses. These meetings are a great opportunity for writers to hear about new initiatives, upcoming projects, and to share resources. 
• We are also creating an internal content maintenance calendar that will live on the content management website. This document will help align all writers on content-specific dates, reminders, and deadlines. 
• The development of a new content strategy training presentation is underway. Geared toward new hires, this presentation will examine the importance of our content strategy, and why it should be at the forefront of our content decisions.

One Stop Student Services

• Financial Wellness
• We’ve been busy conducting outreach presentations for campus stakeholders. We have collaborated with the Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence (MCAE), Carlson School of Management Undergraduate Business Board, the Asian Pacific American Resource Center (APARC), Athletics, and the Wallin Scholarship Group! 
• We are wrapping up our busy outreach season, and looking ahead to the 2023 Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance (HEFWA) Summit in July. The summit is hosted by the University of Oregon in Eugene. 
• Graduate Student Services and Progress (GSSP)
• GSSP is quickly approaching the busiest time for degree clearances. The team is currently focused on advising students and departments on graduation steps. 
• The GSSP Coordinator search is currently underway, and we hope to have the position filled very soon. 
• One Stop’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee
• We’re in the midst of facilitating an April Booster series for One Stop, GSSP, and UVS. The Booster series are small group discussions focused on DEI themes. This installment is centered on best practices for supporting students and their families who are new to the University, and have little knowledge of the University/financial aid complexities. 
• UMR One Stop
• UMR One Stop welcomes Caleb Smith (see below)! 
• UMR One Stop has also been presenting to prospective and incoming students and preparing for New Raptor Advising & Registration (NRAR).
• Student Account Assistance
• Fall registration has started, which means a jump in contacts from students with past due balances and requests for hold appeals.
• With the end of spring term approaching, graduating students were sent electronic invites to complete their Loan Exit Counseling. This results in a lot of calls and emails from students asking if this is a necessary process, and from others who are not actually graduating but haven’t changed their EGT.
• New Student Orientation
• One Stop preparations are underway for summer orientation. One Stop will be presenting a general One Stop information session as part of Parent and Family orientation and delivering a breakout session—Managing College Costs—for students and families. Students and families are encouraged to visit One Stop as part of the first-day resource fair, or whenever is convenient while they are visiting campus. New student and transfer orientation begins June 1!

Office of the Registrar

Spring is in the air, and that means the team is gearing up for a busy end of term filled with degree clearances, support to our college contacts, and getting ready to get those diplomas out the door. In addition to these critical processes, we have some other news to share.

• Beginning July 2023, the Destiny One Registration System (DORS) team will transition from reporting to ASR-IT to OTR. This means Sandy Nelson (manager), Erik Bremer, Nathan Carlson, Brian Knutson, Theresa Anderson, and Darcy Fastner will be joining the team (Sandy will report to Ingrid Nutall). We are very excited to welcome them to OTR and look forward to shaping new connections together.
• Amber Cellotti and Karsyn Zetah will be working with college contacts and OUE leadership to revamp the change of college process for Twin Cities students. We cannot wait to do this work.
• The GPAS team has finished building and validating all degree audits for Graduate Education on the Duluth campus! The team is in the final stages of a multi-year degree audit implementation and is ahead of schedule!
• In late August, OTR completed an upgrade of our transcript and diploma ordering system through Parchment. This upgrade ushered in the end of over two years of work and involved partners in One Stop Student Services, ASR-IT, and the Office of Information Technology.
• Work is underway to complete a statement of work to migrate our uAchieve (i.e., undergraduate degree audit) infrastructure to the Cloud. This change will not result in end-user changes but is an essential step towards better support for our system and our ability to adopt new functionality released by our vendor.

Office of Classroom Management

Operations-Service and Planning Teams

• Spring has sprung? Time was spent during spring break to prep rooms ahead of a very active summer. This involves removing furniture with OCM ID stickers and making site visits. These visits will determine where instructor and ADA furniture changes will be made on proposed student furniture replacements in Vincent, Ford, Hanson and in select rooms in Folwell, Akerman, Rapson, and Murphy.

Classroom Technical Services

• Through the fall and winter, CTS had a busy schedule of departmental technology installations. A lot of the work has been focused around adding Zoom Room appliances to conference and classroom spaces. Some of our work even received press in The Minnesota Daily! 
• Additionally, CTS is nearing completion of the technology upgrades in the Regent’s Boardroom and West Committee room. These new installations will improve online meeting formats by utilizing the newer AV over IP distribution as a more streamlined solution.

Scheduling Team

• Spring 2023 final exams have been scheduled into classrooms, and requests continue to come in past the initial deadline. 
• Classroom assignments for summer 2023 are also underway. 
• In an effort to ensure operational efficiencies in buildings across campus, OCM consolidated the class schedule into a smaller number of buildings. 
• For fall 2023, CCS (Collaborative Class Scheduling) is closed and central classroom scheduling is happening. 
• After much data cleanup, the Astra room optimization process ran successfully. There are still approximately 700 classes that require manual scheduling. Many classes are meeting in prime times (Monday-Thursday, 9:05 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), which makes finding appropriate classrooms more challenging. The team is also working through UAT scripts for the newest version of Astra in the hopes of being able to upgrade in the near future.

ASR-IT

• Application Development
• Team will be recruiting soon to replace Brittany’s position as a developer in ASR-IT.
• We’re ¾ of the way through updating 120 Oracle passwords for our systems and applications.
• We’re working on stories for Data Integrations, SDP, Roomsearch, and the One Stop Drupal sites.
• Planning for the second quarter of 2023 is underway.
• DORS
• New software release, Yeti 2023.1, deploys to Test February 28. 
• 3 new features were deployed to Test and are being reviewed for approval:
• Configurable Direct Billing Account Field
• Add Conference Number to Conference Pages 
• Display Special Request Public Description Field 
• Cut over to Cybersource from the prior payment process is scheduled for Production this week.
• Jadu
• Ryan Ceresnak, ASR & OUE Jadu Administrator, and ASR’s Jadu (e-forms and workflows) portfolio will be moving from ASR-IT to reporting through ASR Operations & Strategic Initiatives beginning next week.
• The OSF Housing/Living Arrangement Change request form went live in Jadu on Monday February 20. This was previously a PDF form for students to change their living arrangement status for financial aid purposes.
• The Jadu Dashboard project kicked off last week. Ryan is leading requirements gathering activities for OIT. This new functionality will address a significant gap identified in the Jadu system analysis conducted last year by having a custom user-facing dashboard that allows users to manage their work in the system.
• Student Data & Analytics
• Team will soon be recruiting to replace Alex Rose’s position as an IT Pro 3-Business Intelligence & Data Analysis.
• Proof Of Concept between Kafka and Databricks has been completed, which allows us to more easily bring data from one source to another for analytic purposes.
• SDA will present some of our work at the March ASR All Staff Assembly, including the Retention Priority Analysis and Curricular Analytics.
• Admissions work is continuing in the EDW as we strive to deliver the Admissions Trackbook for all campuses.
• SDA team had two presentations at the UMN Student Success Conference:
• Leveraging Data Analytics to Find Potential Leavers and Exploring How to Intervene
• Supercharge Your Intuition with Data and Analytics
• Student Financials, Campus Community, and Shared Data
• HR Image testing in partnership with HRMS BA’s
• Working with HR on legal name changes and preferred name functionality
• Email for Life analysis
• Helping OIT with information on data feeds so they can retire the x.500 from RecWell, bookstores, etc.
• CARES/HEERF and OHE reporting
• Center for Allied Health Programs moving to Pharmacy preparation
• Changes to TFMS export and the search capabilities
• Student Records
• Worked closely with CCAPS and University libraries to resolve access issues for College in the Schools students
• Email for Life Analysis
• Center for Allied Health Programs moving to Pharmacy preparation 
• Coursedog support
• Changes to National Student Clearinghouse reporting
• Preparing for Parchment Upgrade
• Preparing for fall 23 enrollment appointment setup