Pitt gets software upgrade

Students will soon notice a change in their home page at my.pitt.edu, and one major change… Students will soon notice a change in their home page at my.pitt.edu, and one major change could revolutionize the way students choose their classes.

PeopleSoft 8.9 – upgraded from the current 8.0 – will go into effect in May. Students will be able to bookmark pages, order transcripts and change their name and address online.

In about a year and a half, another feature of this upgrade will go into effect and allow students to register themselves for classes online.

“There are three criteria we’ll be using to register the students,” Registrar Samuel Conte said. “Academic program, academic level and cumulative GPA or number of credits will all play a role in how quickly students register and which classes they will be allowed into.”

The criteria that will be used will be up to the academic departments or individual professors.

This means that students may be assigned a certain time to go online and register for courses. It may also mean that students with a higher GPA or higher number of credits will be allowed to register before other students in the same major.

Although Pitt is ahead of similar-size schools like Ohio State, it trails other universities in online registration. Conte said administrators wanted to wait until after students had a student portal online and there were no bugs in the system before implementing online registration.

However, Pitt is still very far behind Penn State, which has had an online registration system for 13 years.

“Students today just expect it because they are so used to using the computer,” Penn State Senior Associate Registrar Karen Duncan said. “It’s part of freshman orientation, and students are given a student access code to log into their portal and register for classes.”

West Virginia University’s Director of Admissions and Records Cheng Khoo said their online student registration has been in effect for about the last 10 years. Advisers give their students pin numbers after they meet, and only then can students register themselves.

Students and universities alike agree that the adviser role is an important one and will not diminish with upgrades in the system.

“I think it’s better to have an adviser play a large role,” junior history major James Northway said. “Online registration would put a lot more responsibility on students and make it easier for them to make mistakes.”

Nathan Winning, a chemical engineering major, said the system would make his registration process a lot easier because he’s usually in class when registration opens. By the time he gets to the chemical engineering office, some of his classes are already full.

“I’d like to go online, because then I could schedule when I have the time,” he said.

Other universities have also found a way to deal with the issue of closed or restricted courses.

“There are certain courses that have holds on them based on whether or not students can register a course,” Duncan said. “For example, business courses are in very high demand so the College of Business puts course controls on to say you have to be a business major to register in this course.

“It’s not to limit students or control behavior,” Duncan noted. “It’s to make sure students who need the courses are first in them.”

This would be an effective plan for junior Lauren Beres.

As a biology major, Beres has to schedule her labs the minute registration begins, and she’s waited outside her adviser’s office at 5 a.m. on more than one occasion.

“The people there at 5 a.m. are the ones that absolutely need the classes to graduate,” she said. “If they don’t get those classes, they won’t graduate, so whatever allows us to do that I’m for.”

While the current system may change with the new upgrades, the role of the adviser will ultimately remain the same. But maybe students like Winning will get the classes they want and students like Beres may get to sleep in a little later.