New Degree Advice Service

IS&T and Enrollment Services are nearing completion of the Degree Advice Upgrade Project. Degree Advice is an advising tool available to students and their advisors via the Student and Faculty Staff Links. It provides a snapshot of the student’s progress-to-date toward degree completion and is a useful reminder of coursework still needed at a given point in time. It also allows students and staff to simulate other scenarios should the student want to change academic direction through the product’s “What If” capability.

In addition to providing an upgrade to an existing service, this project provided an opportunity to replace custom developed software and functionality with common interfaces that align with the One-BU vision. Significant performance improvements were made resulting in faster generation of student audits. Undergraduate schools and colleges and current graduate school clients of Degree Advice formed a working group to standardize the service and make decisions regarding shared functionality.

Phase One of the project focused on upgrading and standardizing the service for the existing Degree Advice clients including; CAS, CFA, MET Undergraduate, SAR, SED Undergraduate, SMG, SPH and STH. This phase is on schedule to be completed by the beginning of April. Phase Two will begin immediately after Phase One. It expands the offering of these services to remaining undergraduate schools and colleges and interested graduate schools. The completion date of Phase Two is being determined.

This project was a joint effort between ENSA, the Schools and Colleges and multiple groups within IS&T including, Architecture, Development, Applications Management and Data Security, managed by the PMO. This highly collaborative effort allowed the project to successfully meet every implementation date throughout Phase One.