New student degree progress tool will be made available in MyU

On October 23, the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities and Rochester campuses will launch a new tool in the MyU: Academics > Degree Progress tab to help undergraduate students better understand their degree progress and plan for timely graduation. This tool utilizes data from APAS to calculate a student's progress of completion within their degree program. Students will receive recommendations, based on their individual progress, to help guide them toward four-year degree completion (for fall NHS admits) and timely completion (for other admit types).

An interpretation guide for this new tool will be made available in the Advisor Toolkit. At launch, only students will have access to this tool.

If you have additional questions, please contact the Student Degree Progress team.

New One Stop website brown bag session

ASR staff are invited to bring their lunches to a brown bag session that will tour the new One Stop website.

When: Tuesday, October 18 from 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Where: Fraser B20

PeopleSoft HR will be unavailable October 15 &16

The PeopleSoft HR will be unavailable beginning Saturday, October 15 at 6 p.m. until Sunday, October 16, 12 p.m.

The Human Resources Management System (HRMS) group will be installing an important PeopleSoft update to improve the system, add new features, and fix bugs. Some of the improvements are in recruiting solutions, position and appointment entry, time and absence management, and other areas.  

Specific Impacts and Schedule Changes:

• Saturday, October 15, 6 p.m.: The PeopleSoft HR system will become unavailable. This includes job search capabilities and HR self-service functions.  HR information will not be available on MyU tabs My Time, My Pay, My Benefits, Manager Info and My Info. Also, HRMS queries will not be available in the Reporting Center.
• Sunday, October 16, 12 p.m.: The PeopleSoft HR system will come back online according to the normal maintenance schedule.
• Data warehouse tables and PSSNAP will not be refreshed on Sunday October 16 at 12 a.m. and will resume on Monday October 17 at 12 a.m.

Please plan your work around those hours and hopefully this extended down time will not cause an inconvenience.

For more information on the project, ServiceNow users can reference CHG0039071. During the weekend, updates will be available on the University’s Service Status page.

Milk and cookie breaks for the Community Fund Drive

One, two, three, four, we declare a PENNY WAR - with a twist!

From October 14-31, 2016 ASR will engage in a Penny War to raise money for the Community Fund Drive!

In a penny war, two or more groups compete to win a fundraising competition. This year instead of competing by building or department, ASR's Community Fund Drive Penny War will involve several ASR staff members’ pets that have been featured in News and Notes. ASR staff will have the opportunity to 'vote' for their favorite pet, each penny being a vote. If you're not familiar with how a Penny War works here's the low down: the value of pennies collected count positively toward the point total, while the value of other coins or dollar bills are subtracted from the point total. All funds ASR collects will be given to the U of MN Foundation to be added to the Completion Fund Scholarship.

Our featured pets for the Penny War are: Tonks; Bears; Snickers and Meep; and Newman.

To encourage ASR staff to participate, there will be three different Milk and Cookie breaks throughout the month of October. These breaks are scheduled for: October 14 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. in 160B Williamson Hall; October 18 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. in 312 Bruininks Hall; and October 26 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. in 220-D Fraser. Come for a cookie, meet ASR staff who work in different buildings, and bring your pennies (or other bills to sabotage). Staff are encouraged to attend any and all of the milk and cookie breaks if their schedule allows.

Collection jars with photos of the ASR pets will be available in these buildings: Fraser, Bruininks, and Williamson.

Early FAFSA submission stats

Starting this year, students and families could submit their Free Application for Student Financial Aid (FAFSA) starting on October 1 instead of January 1. Most of the OSF staff thought there would just be a trickle of FAFSAs submitted in the first few days of early submission. However, to OSF’s surprise, in the first import of FAFSA data there were 2,464 files for the Twin Cities campus (of which we were able to load 389). As a matter of practice this data is only loaded into PeopleSoft once the student has been admitted to the University. If students are never admitted, their information remains in a suspense file.

Along with having FAFSA data earlier than in years past, staff are busily working on getting all the associated financial aid packaging documents and processes updated to allow for earlier estimated financial aid awards for incoming new freshmen.

Engagement team begins review of ASR’s knowledge, skills and abilities

The Engagement team has begun a review of ASR’s knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) related to career families to assure they support our current initiatives and evolving changes in ASR’s work. We’ll start with sampling job descriptions by career family followed by interviews with staff. For more information contact: John Vollum.

Don’t forget to take the ASR Fall Staff Event survey

Thank you for participating in this year's ASR Fall Staff Event and to the Development team for all their planning and effort. If you have not done so already, take a moment to share your feedback. All responses are anonymous. Your input is valuable!