Reporting Structure

The Systems Development Office reports to the Assistant Vice President for University Management Systems.

Systems Development Mission Statement
Systems Development provides the following data processing services that support administrative functions to the University community:

SIS Development

We primarily serve the faculty, staff, and students who use the Student Information System (SIS).  SIS  is used by the 4 campuses of the CU system.  It provides an integrated infrastructure which is the foundation for developing more integrated student services among the campuses. SIS encompasses Admissions, Records, Registrations, Degree Audit, Financial Aid, and Tuition Billing and Receivables (BRS) modules or subsystems.

SIS was implemented at CU in spring 1988.  It was designed to be a system for expert users in key business administrative offices, and generally reflects University organizational structure and business practices of that period.  Since that time, many modifications have been made to the system to grow with the University and changes on the campuses.  This level of customization makes it difficult and costly to receive modifications from the vendor; yet it is well tailored to CU’s processes. However, some changes cannot be made in the current system, resulting in departmental workarounds and shadow systems.   In 1999 a major effort was funded to expand SIS web based services to students, faculty and academic administrators, and to implement a new BRS.

 

Nearly 2900 users have access to on-line screens on SIS, across various level of the organization, including faculty, staff in academic units, and staff in key administrative business units. 

 

Service Level Expectations (SLE)

 

Service level agreements state that the mainframe production system will be up from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. In fact, SIS is often available for many hours beyond the specified SLE agreements.  The system is brought down approximately 1 hour each week day evening for data base back-up.  The mainframe is brought down on weekends throughout the year for data base administrator hardware and software maintenance. 

 

Web-enabled services allow faculty, staff and students to have access to SIS data from 7 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday, and on Sunday, from 11 a.m. to midnight.  Campus offices may set management controls to further limit system availability to users.   Currently we have just under 500 faculty and staff (included the overall user number above) with authorized SIS web operator access. 

 

SIS Planning Documents

 

SIS Three Year Plan 

 

SIS Governance Structure

The Director of Systems Development works closely with SIS Governance to set strategic direction and provide progress reports on the student information system.  In addition, there are five functional working groups that meet monthly, and which include multi-campus representation:

·         Each SIS module team (Admissions/Records/Registrations, Financial Aid, Student Financials - Billing and Receivables) meets to discuss operational issues and priorities for each of the SIS subsystems. 

·         A Degree Audit group meets to discuss campus issues related to course equivalencies and degree audit;

·         A SIS Data Access Advisory group made up of data stewards and institutional research directors meets with the Director of Systems Development to discuss issues of data security and confidentiality, implementation of a University-wide Data Access Policy, and development of SIS data queries.

Contact Information:

UMS Systems Development Office
Campus Box 50
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0050
FAX: (303) 492-9981

Location: 4780 Pearl East Circle, Boulder, CO 80301 (Staff are located on the second and third floors.)  Please sign in at the Reception Desk.

Directions:  We are located in the Pearl Street East Business Park at the southeast corner of Foothills (47th Street) and Pearl parkways. Exit the Foothills Parkway at Pearl and continue east. UMS occupies a dark brown brick three-story building just east of the Marriott Courtyard Hotel on the corner of Foothills and Pearl.

 

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This page was last updated on June 23, 2006
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