WHOSE MY ADVISOR ANYWAYS AUTOMATING ADVISOR ASSIGNMENTS NERUG

WHOSE MY ADVISOR ANYWAYS? AUTOMATING ADVISOR ASSIGNMENTS ‘- NERUG Alliance 2019 Session 9137 Joe Rizzo 1

Your Presenter • Joe Rizzo • Assistant Director, HUB & Student Systems Support • Office of the Registrar ‘- • jdrizzo@buffalo. edu • 10+ years working at UB • 7 years working with People. Soft in Functional Analyst role • Module Support: Campus Community, Academic Advising, Student Records 2

University at Buffalo (UB) • Founded 1846 • Largest institution in State University of New York (SUNY) system • 31, 503 students ‘- • 21, 607 undergraduate students • 9, 896 graduate students 3

People. Soft @ UB • System branded as HUB • Went live with HUB in 2011 • Version 9. 2 PUM 14 ‘- • People. Tools 8. 56. 18 • Going live with Fluid Student Center this weekend 4

The Problem • UB conducts an annual advising self-study • Major finding: students don’t know who their academic advisor is • Advising Directory is available, but hard to follow due to complex rules • Some units assign advisors on the Student Advisor page • Manual process • No batch upload • Requires cleanup • Some students see ‘None Assigned’ in their Advisor box ‘- 6

The Goal • Show every undergraduate student their advising unit, including campus location and phone number in their HUB Student Center • Include individual advisor, if applicable • ‘Develop an automated process to handle advisor assignments • Flexible • Easy to maintain • Scalable to other careers • Get campus buy-in on the project including individual advisors 8

Complex Advising Structure • UB has 13 college and schools • Professional advising office in each school • Some college/schools assign individual advisors • Faculty advising in some schools for upper class students ‘- • Advising also handled by other offices for special populations • Athletics • Honors • Educational Opportunity Program • Access to College Excellence Program • Daniel Acker Scholars Program • Exploratory and Pre-Professional Advising Center • Some special populations do not see advisors in their college/schools 9

THE CUSTOMIZATION ‘- 10

Customization Overview • Custom process to assign advisors on the Student Advisor page used to assign advisors based on configuration pages • Process runs two times per day, each morning and evening • Formed project group of Office of the Registrar, Student Success & Retention and Enterprise Application Services ‘- • Configuration is managed by Student Success & Retention • Started process by mapping out all business rules of current advising structure, then developed configuration options based on rules 11

Customization Overview • Process generates view of all advisor assignments based on current configuration rules • Compare is done between generated view and current assignments in the system ‘- • Updates are made to assignments, add advisors that need to be added, remove outdated advisor assignments • Runs for all active students 12

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page • Created custom page and tables to store configuration • Need to create one row for each advisor or committee • Page allows for multiple ways of assigning students to an advisor or committee on each row ‘- • Options for assignment • Program • Plan • Sub Plan • Student Group • PS Query 13

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page ‘- 14

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page ‘- 15

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page ‘- 16

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page ‘- 17

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page ‘- 18

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page ‘- 19

Advisor Assignment Configuration Page • Methods to assign Advisors or Committees • Program • Plan • Sub Plan • Student Group • PS Query • ‘- Advisors/Committees can have multiple methods assigned on their record (ie. Plan & PS Query combinations) 20

PS Query • PS Queries are used in the most complex assignment requirements • Custom bind record was created • Most typically used for assigning advisors by plan and last name (i. e. advisor Jane Smith sees Business Administration students whose last names start with A, C, H, K, R) ‘- 21

PS Query ‘- 22

PS Query ‘- 23

Priority vs Threshold • Each advisor assignment rule has priority and threshold • Used for complex rules • Some advising units see special population students, others special populations only see their dedicated advisor ‘- • Priority is required, threshold is optional 24

Priority vs Threshold ‘- 25

Priority vs Threshold • If a Threshold is equal to or higher than the Priorities of other assignments, the assignment with the threshold is not done • If a Threshold is blank or lower than the Priorities of other assignments, the assignment with the threshold is done committee advisor priority threshold ‘- assigned AAP 20 CAS 20 10 X AAP 20 30 CAS 20 10 X 12345678 X 26

Advisors to Retain • Some advising units continue to assign advisor manually • Needed to maintain some advisors for special populations, they see students regardless of majors • Wanted process to clean up individual assignments when no longer required ‘- 27

Advisor to Retain • Developed custom page to enter IDs of advisors who should be retained regardless of other rules • Process updates assigned advisor to latest program/plan record for display purposes ‘- • Any advisors not in this table are cleared during program/plan update 28

The Result • 25, 600 active students with advisor assignments • 47, 100 advisor assignments on active students • 126 advisor assignment rules for advisor/committees ‘- • 360 rows inside of advisor assignment rules • 14 advisors to retain 29

Reports • Emailed to advisors each morning with new students assigned from the last 24 hours ‘- 30

Advisor Data Availability • Data warehouse • Advisor data integrated with many views • OBIEE (canned reports) • Advising notes and appointment scheduling system • System has functionality to only allow students to schedule appointments with their assigned advisor ‘- 31

NEW ENHANCEMENTS ‘- 32

Delivered Fluid Advisor Page ‘- 33

Delivered Fluid Advisor Page • Problems: • Displays staff photos • Program/Plan information for students can be confusing • Does not show plan information, if not populated on Student Advisor page ‘- • Does not display advising committees 34

Customized Fluid Advisor Page ‘- 35

Customized Fluid Advisor Page • Changes: • Removed staff photos • Changed Program/Plan title to Advising Office • Additions: • Links to advising notes and appointment scheduling system • Added Advising Offices section that contains committee assignments • • • ‘- Advising Office Name with hyperlink to website Full campus address Phone number 36

Advisor Descriptions • Custom page and table • Replaces Program/Plan information on Advisors row if populated • Helps students identify which advisor belongs to which office ‘- 37

Committee Information • Customization to Committees page • Allows students to see full office name rather than three or four character code ‘- • Shows full campus address and phone number including area code 38

QUESTIONS? ‘- Joe Rizzo jdrizzo@buffalo. edu 39