The University has devoted millions of dollars and countless hours to implementing Banner - an integrated online computing system - but students will only experience a few changes stemming from the program when they pre-register for their courses online in April 2007.
Various University offices have been working to tailor Banner to their specific needs since Brown purchased the program from SunGard, a software and IT services company, in October 2003. Once Banner is fully operational, it will replace computing systems that administrators across the University turn to on a daily basis.
Some of the first students to use Banner will be applicants to the class of 2011. The system went live in the Office of Admission on Monday, just in time for early decision applications. When students apply online, their information will go straight into Banner's database.
But applicants will likely be unaware that anything has changed.
"From the student perspective, nothing will change," said Dean of Admission Jim Miller '73 told The Herald earlier this month. "The transition will be transparent," he said.
Senior Associate Director of Admission Annie Cappuccino, who helped customize Banner for the admissions office, agreed. Administrators, rather than students, will be aware of the systems upgrade because they handle administrative records.
The office has begun training staff members, whom Miller expects will learn how to navigate the new system in "a matter of days and weeks." Still, he said, the change is enormous for an office that had relied on the same system for 18 years.
"To understand the full use (of Banner) may take one year," Miller said.
A simplified system
Banner's implementation will mean "no more paper flying around all over place," according to Associate Registrar Robert Fitzgerald. Long lines in University Hall during pre-registration will also be a thing of the past. Students will be able to change personal information, such as their permanent address, online, according to Registrar Michael Pesta.
When the Office of Financial Aid and the Bursar's Office go live over the next year, students will be able to view their aid packages and bills online as well. Those studying abroad will be able to pre-register for classes, although students taking a leave of absence from the University will not, Pesta said.
Along with the ease and control of the new system, however, comes more responsibility for students. For instance, there will be added risk for students who give out their usernames and passwords, Pesta said.
"It's like your (ATM pin number). Anyone could drop your classes, change your classes or view your academic record," he said. Student information will be in a database that will be accessible by several departments. However, there will be some limitations to what various offices can view.
"You assign screens to those who should see them," he added. Associate deans, for example, will have access to students' academic records, but an administrator in the financial aid office won't, Dunbar explained.
Banner is in part designed to make professors' lives easier, Pesta said. The new system will allow the University to enforce rules such as necessary prerequisites and caps on courses.
Ongoing work
University administrators and Computing and Information Services staff have been customizing the program since Spring 2004, which is "fairly typical" for most universities replacing entire computing systems, according to Fitzgerald. Converting information to make it compatible with Banner is the biggest part of the project, according to Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar.
The process is "tedious," Dunbar said, because personal information and academic history - a large bulk of the information that must be translated - is so varied. Great attention must be paid to something as simple as a student's permanent address.
"The rules have to be absolutely clear and applied absolutely consistently," she said.
Registrar Michael Pesta reiterated the time-consuming nature of this aspect of the upgrade.
To make sure a student doesn't end up with an A in a class instead of a C, and to prevent many other such mistakes, CIS staff and others working on the project created a "crosswalk table," as Pesta calls it. The table serves as a dictionary that translates information from Legacy, the old system used in the registrar's office, into information compatible with Banner.
The conversion method must be evaluated several times before being tested, and then, if successful, applied to the actual data. The registrar's office ran the first test of conversions of student data in the first week of August, according to Fitzgerald and Pesta. "Everything went well," Fitzgerald said. "We were quite surprised," especially since student data is "the most complex issue."
Though computers do the actual converting, sometimes staff members will perform "eyeball checks" to "verify that all the data came over to Banner completely and correctly," Pesta said.
Conversion of information for courses began over the summer, Fitzgerald said. By January, all student information will be in the system. By April, all course information will be completed as well, except for academic history, which will be converted over the summer.
As technical as the process may seem, the implementation of Banner is "not just a tech project," said John Styer, director of applications development for CIS.
Administrators must make decisions about how Banner is customized because "they really know the way things operate at Brown," Styer said.
Even after each component of Banner goes live, additional work will need to be completed.
"As we encounter each new phase of the (registrar's office) world, there may be things we haven't thought about," Dunbar said.
