Committee on Academic Policy and Procedures

Meeting Notes September 13, 2017 - 9 A.M.

401 Hale Library

Attending

Pfaff (KSIS/Reg), McCammant (AG), Washburn (AG), Last (AR), Baker (AS), Niedfelt (BA), Cunningham (BA), Griffin (ED), Fund (EN), Sanders (POLY), Andrews (HE), Schlender (GR), Burkholder (GC), Blankley (ADM), Nielson (REG), Cooper (REG), Dandaneau (PROV), Blake (ISO), Letourneau (ISO), Wilson (ISO), Gould (iTAC), Draper (ITS)

ITS Update (Draper)

  • Dr. Gary Pratt named new CIO
  • Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) search – the position has been re-advertised and the search committee is awaiting another round of applications
  • Maintenance – Data Center and Network - Maintenance is performed between midnight and 6 am whenever possible. As ITS manages budget cuts, some of our technical support contracts have been resized to business hour coverage, which means some maintenance is done during working hours. Firewall restructuring continues. The new border firewall was installed in August. The core firewalls have been replaced by the hand-me-down old border firewalls. The old core firewalls have now become backups for the Hale Data Center firewalls. We experienced an outage in the Data Center due to electrical connection error (installed by an outside vendor). The sudden loss of power impacted our systems such that systems did not recover well and took up to 6 hours to fully recover.
  • Compromised accounts stats and prevention strategies

2017
(Jan – Sept 8)

2016

Change

Compromised accounts

3,352

1,246

169%

Total phishing scams processed

5,518

2,655

108%

Unduplicated phishing scams

881

  • Change to K-State LISTSERV whitelisting policy – ITS maintains an Approved or Safe Sender whitelist. A whitelist is a list of email addresses, domains, and IP addresses which will not be blocked by K-State’s spam filters. CHANGE - LISTSERV emails will go through the Spam check in Office 365, and will not be whitelisted, except for a business need. The goal is to reduce K-State’s exposure to spam and allow the spam protections in Office 365 to do their job. There is a form to request the exception.
  • Update on K-State white pages (people search); security concerns – Discussion with FSCOT and the Student Technology Committee (STC). Options are being presented and feedback collected. Draper will forward options to the list.
  • New printer contract – Printer contract changing and Minolta-Konica printers are available outside the ITS Help Desk (Hale)

Midterm grade reporting (Dandaneau)

These grades are important to identify students that are struggling or may need help in a course. Should we try to identify these types of students earlier than midterm? How would we identify them? An alert? Via some type of assessment? There is a push to modify how and when we do our current midterm reporting in an effort to identify students earlier. May completely replace the current process. One thought is to identify specific gateway classes, ones that are key predictors of identifying struggling students. Idea is to utilize Canvas and SCC to make communication with and identification by advisors smoother. Nielson asked if a change in this process and its impact to students have been considered. Who is behind this change? Dandaneau and Stephanie Bannister have discussed if keeping the midterm grade reporting AND an earlier identification process would be efficient, probably not. Baker asked if midterm grade reporting is used outside of internal needs at K-State? We think it is internal. Cunninham stated that the timing of the current process is basically too late because tutors are no longer available, can’t move around classes, etc. Nielson asked if this type of a change a trend? Yes! We are behind the curve with our current timing and process. Burkholder shared that 10 days in is the ideal time to identify students. McCammant shared they have heard from their AG instructors that the current timing is not ideal for transfer students. Discussions are ongoing.

Advising survey changes for Fall 2017 (Dandaneau/Blake)

Participation rate is 90%+. Took a look this summer at enhancing to make sure we get more substantive information without slowing down the student or impacting the participation rates. Should still be required prior to enrolling. Changed to transferring the student out to a qualtrics survey that would allow more flexibility in design. Will allow for more comments, reworded some questions, etc. Will be live this semester with this new format for all students. Automatic processes will be in place to remove enrollment holds right away. Will download this information and create reporting dashboards, very similar to the internship data was compiled. Cunningham – will advisors still have access to individual responses? Blake – yes, probably a link to the dashboard data. Survey hold will be applied Oct 9th. Washburn – will the clarification between the academic coaching advisor and advisor within their academic unit? Blake – student will pick a name. McCammant – a problem they have had is that the academic coaches have told their students to pick them, not their advisor of record. Dandaneau – believes that that trend is switching back to selecting the advisor of record, Stephanie Banniser and Scott Voos are on board with this.

Registrar’s Office updates (Pfaff)

  • Upcoming dates – http://www.k-state.edu/registrar/calendar/
  • Ferpa Self Assessment – Cooper went out on 6th of September. 4558 notifications sent, 22% completion rate so far. A reminder will go out in a few months.

Undergraduate Admissions (Blankley)

  • Application Terms Available – Fall 2017 through Spring 2019
  • Spring 2018 Matriculations – Begin 9/18 for readmits, distance and high school students. Those that register for November O&E will be matriculated starting 11/11. Any early matriculation requests go through Alma Hidalgo with NSS.
  • Enrollment Permit Survey – Will be distributed electronically to enrollment managers within each academic unit, college and department. Questions are designed to streamline the data provided and combine some other forms. 1 summarized response per area will be requested.

Projects recently completed

  • KSIS Upgrade to PeopleTools 8.55 and Campus Solutions (Blake) – Essentially done, have one remaining test environment to upgrade. Project has been closed out.
  • Gender Identity – Incoming Students (Blankley)
    • Changes are complete. This change helped K-State be named one of the Top 25 LGBTQ-friendly Colleges & Universities. This review includes 300+ campuses. http://campuspride.org/Top25

Current Projects

  • PUM 6 (Blake) – Working to get installed in dev environment.
  • Point and Click Student Holds Integration (Blake) – Additional immunization requirements coming from KBOR and KSU policy. MMR vaccinations, in addition to TB. This is the system that replaced the Lafene system, Cerner. Working on integration between P&C and KSIS. TB holds and MMR holds. No adds, no drops.
  • Elastic search (Letourneau) – search engine delivered with upgrade. Once working correctly there will be a search window available again. Will also allow for students to utilize when enrolling.
  • Student Data Warehouse (Letourneau) – Slow paced progress. Working on master data extract.
  • Military Affiliation (Blankley) – waiting for PUM 6 availability in development to utilize new functionality that could significantly reduce the need for a complete custom modification to KSIS. Anticipate a communication campaign to current students to review and provide this information, in early spring.
  • Curriculog (Pfaff) – This fall rolling out to all colleges for curriculum and course approvals. Many trainings going on right now. Training sessions are also available as recorded sessions and can attend via Zoom.
  • SCC Campus (Dandaneau, Cunningham) – SCC summit meeting coming up. Cunningham reported that use of and feedback is great. Monday a new appointment center will rollout, updated to make it look more like outlook.

KSIS Steering Committee meeting Sept 20th (Wilson/Blake)

  • Review and prioritize proposed projects (35+)
  • Assessing/scoping new projects:
    • KSIS Task Force & University Academic Records Group – Automate Student Program/Plan Changes
    • K-State Polytechnic – Talon Integration
    • Global Campus – Student Confirmation eMails
    • K-State Athletics – Teamworks Integration

Update: Cleaning up access to systems (Gould)

Beth Alloway and Nancy Becker in iTAC are reviewing access and getting access updated. Will send reminders to remaining 36 for their departmental review.

Other

Diana Blake’s upcoming retirement; ISO managers retreat Oct. 13th (Wilson) – Blake retiring at the end of the year. The ISO manager retreat will be utilized to review their current structure and decide what to do with Diana’s position.