The UMass Lowell Student Information System (SiS) will be unavailable from 5pm on Friday July 15th through Sunday July 17th @  5pm for planned system maintenance.  Please plan accordingly.

The spring semester has been unprecedented for the campus, with record-breaking snowfall in New England forcing the cancellation of more than seven class days.

Due to the sequence of the storms, Monday and Tuesday schedules have been disproportionately affected by cancellations. Faculty and students alike are feeling the loss of these regularly scheduled classes.

Please note that Tuesday, Feb. 17 (the day after Presidents Day) is a Monday schedule.

Many faculty members have already taken steps to adjust course calendars and taken advantage of campus technology to make up for lost meeting time. But, given the total number of class days missed, we want to offer additional means of making up time.

To ensure that classrooms are available for this use, we have identified the following Saturdays asoptional dates available for faculty and students to make up lost class, lab and meeting time:

• Saturday,
  Feb. 28 ‘ Monday class schedule
• Saturday,
  March 7 ‘ Tuesday class schedule
• Saturday,
  April 25 ‘ Tuesday class schedule
• Saturday,
  May 2 ‘ Monday class schedule

Faculty will confirm any intended use of make-up dates with the Registrar’s Office, and classrooms and labs will be scheduled according to the normal schedule for the specified day of the week.

Faculty will clearly communicate with students about any classes or labs to be held on those specific dates and students are encouraged to check with faculty to confirm any scheduled dates.

We ask that faculty electing to use make-up days work closely with students who have conflicts such as work commitments or religious observances that would prevent their attendance to ensure that they are not disadvantaged by these calendar adjustments. We recommend that faculty not schedule examinations or quizzes on the Saturday make-up days.

Courses offered through Online and Continuing Education already have three make-up dates built into the calendar: Friday, Feb. 20; Friday, March 27; and Friday, April 10.

We hope that these opportunities to conduct critically important coursework will allow students to reach the intended learning goals for each class and we thank both faculty and students for their patience and flexibility as we adapt to this unprecedented weather pattern. We also thank the committed staff in facilities operations and other areas who have taken on the enormous task of returning the campus to normal following multiple heavy snow events.

Regards,
Ahmed Abdelal, Provost

Over the weekend the Student Dashboardswere upgraded to Summit’s Oracle 11g environment. This upgrade is mostly technical in nature however you will notice a few changes to prompts, navigation and general formatting. This upgrade puts us in a position to utilize new technology and features enabling us to roll out enhancements in the near future.

Below is important information you should be aware of regarding the upgrade.

Logging in for the First Time?

‘ New URL ‘ If you log into Summit from the iSiS, e*mpac, or HR Direct pages, no action is required as the login buttons have been updated. If you have saved the Summit URL as a favorite, please use the new URL to access SUMMIT. For more information on updating saved bookmarks please see Summit Upgrade – updating your bookmarks.pdf

‘ Home Page ‘you will notice the home page has changed. To access your dashboards use the ‘Dashboard’ drop down list found at the top mid right

A list of your available dashboards will appear, click on the dashboard you would like to access, note Student dashboards are listed under CSW Reports, Finance dashboards are listed under FDM Reports, and HR dashboards are listed under HCM Reports.

You do have the ability to save a default dashboard and bypass the home page, see detailed instructions — Summit 11G Setting a Default Dashbaord.pdf

What’s New?

• Filters ‘ now include the ability to access a search function to find criteria based upon text entered. Clicking the More/Search’ Box will open a pop-up window which allows you to search for the criteria.
• Apply Button ‘ this button replaces the ‘GO’ button, use this button to retrieve your data.
• Reset Button ‘ this button replaces the ‘Clear Filter’ button, use this button to clear your filter criteria.
• Return to Summary link ‘ this now appears as a link rather than a button and can be found at the top and bottom of most Activity pages.
• Export Link – replaces the Download/Print option on individual widgets, accessing this link will give you the option to download to PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, Web, or to download data only.

NOTICE: Planned Maintenance Production Outage ‘ Saturday September 22nd.

During the morning of Saturday, September 22, a maintenance event will occur in the Production South Street Shrewsbury Data Center. This event will result in multiple services being offline as noted below. This is an expansion of a normal monthly maintenance window. It has been expanded due to the amount of work required and the estimated time to complete
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WHAT: All services housed in the production South Street Data Center will be unavailable.

WHEN: Saturday September 22, 2012 from 4:00 am until 12 noon.

WHY: Primarily UITS will be upgrading data storage software and introducing new equipment into the data center. These changes will provide enhanced performance and reliability for the applications in the data center.

IMPACT to SA Supported applications: From 4:00 am until noon on Saturday September 22, services in the Production, South Street, data center will be unavailable. This includes:

‘SA Production PeopleSoft (iSiS)
‘Parent Access (UShare)
‘u.achieve, u.select
‘R25 (BookIt)
‘RMS (Housing Gateway)
‘eMill
‘SharePoint(Workspaces)
‘E-mail to umassp.edu. We will not be able to respond to any e-mails for part or all of this downtime window.

Yesterday afternoon, at approximately 4:45 PM,the University Information Technology Services (UITS) data center experienced a software failure at the storage level oftheir infrastructure. Unfortunately, although they designedtheir systems to be redundant and able to withstand this type of event, that wasn’t the case in this situation. Although roughly half ofthe (redundant) servers were not directly impacted, users could still not access many of our applications.UITS escalated tothe vendor immediately and their technical team was fully engaged to resolve the situation. Systems were starting to come up around 9:00 PM, that process continued for 1-2 hours. UITS and our Lowell campus resources will review this event thoroughly and will incorporate changes to systems and operationsas appropriate.

All IT groups sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and disruption this event caused.

If you have suggestions on how Lowell can better manage these outages, please email our Administrative Systems Integration team at asi@uml.edu

Deadlines for Changes in Course Registrations
FALL Semester 2012

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Please note that undergraduate students in both day and Continuing Education must
use a permission number to add into a course after September 11, 2012*. Graduate students
may add courses through September 18, 2012.

Waitlist ends September 11, 2012

The waitlist function for all courses (Graduate, Undergraduate, Continuing Studies) will end September 11, 2012. Undergraduate students in both day and Continuing Education must use a permission number to add into a course from September 12, 2012 to September 18, 2012. All students must use a permission number to add into a closed course.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

• This is the last day to add into courses with permission number for undergraduate students
• This is the last day to change course status to pass/no credit ‘ undergraduate students
• This is the last day to drop courses and not pay tuition and fees ‘ all students
• This is the last day to change course status to audit ‘ all students
• This is the last day for graduate students to add a course with or without permission number

What a Permission Number will do:

• A permission number will allow a student to register or add into a course if the student does not have the pre-requisite course listed on their ISIS transcript.
• A permission number will allow an Undergraduate student to register for a Graduate course.
• A permission number will allow an Undergraduate student to register for a closed Undergraduate course if that course is numbered 300 or above (Jr/Sr level course).
• A permission number will allow a student to register for a Continuing Education(evening or online) course if that course is closed
• A permission number will allow a Graduate student to register for a graduate level course (courses at the 500 or above level) if that course is closed.

How to Obtain a Permission Number:

Undergraduate students in the College of Fine Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of Sciences must see the department chairperson to obtain a permission number. Undergraduate students in the College of Management and School of Health and Environment must go to the Office of the Dean of the College to obtain a permission number.

Graduate students taking graduate courses may obtain a permission number from the instructor or department chairperson of the course. Please note students taking the Graduate Autism courses and need a permission number must contact Dr. Richard_Siegel@uml.edu to obtain a permission number.

Students taking Online or Continuing Studies courses may obtain a permission number from the instructor or department chairperson of the course.

What a Permission Number will not do:

• A permission number will not allow a student to register or add an undergraduate daytime freshmen/sophomore level (100 ‘ 200 ) course that is filled. An academic petition, found at: http://www.uml.edu/registrar/docs/academicpetition.pdf with the signature of the instructor and the College Dean and presented to the Registrar’s Office during the add/drop period will allow a student into a closed freshmen/sophomore level undergraduate course.
• A permission number will not allow a student to register or add into a course if the student has a service indicator (hold) flag. Probationary holds will not prevent students from registering.
• A permission number will not allow a student to register or add into a course beyond
  the academic calendar dates.
• A permission number will not allow a student to register or add into a course if the student is not enrolled in the co-requisite course.
• A permission number will not allow someone to register if they are not an active student
  at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

______________________________________________________________________________
If a student is not on the class roster as enrolled they are not registered and will not receive credit or grades for the course. Please check your schedules and be sure to withdraw from any courses that you were not intending to enroll in.

*See the academic calendar for courses starting March 2013.

Best wishes for a successful Fall 2012 semester.

Patricia A. Duff
Registrar
University of Massachusetts Lowell
883 Broadway Street
Lowell, MA 01854

There isnew functionalityin iSiS which will allow users to integrate schedules into their online calendars such as Outlook. This will allow the following:

• Studentsare able todownload their class schedule in ical file format from the student service center >my class schedule page
• Facultyare able to download their schedule in ical format from the Faculty Center >My Schedule page.

Unfortunatelythis functionality is not supported with Outlook Web that Lowell Student’s use, but is supported by Microsoft Outlook (Windows) and other calendar solutions that students could be using. The ‘HELP’ documentation notes this andusersshould go to their specific software for detailed import instructions.

See the following notice from the Registrar regarding grading:

IMPORTANT REMINDER TO ALL FACULTY

Please remember to ‘approve’ your grade sheet

After the grades are entered for your course, you must change the status to ‘approved’ and save again in order for the grades to be posted. Please follow the instructions below to enter grades.

• Go to the Faculty Center in iSiS
• Choose the grade roster for the course
• Enter grades for the entire class
• Click save
• Change approval status to Approved
• Click save.

Once you have done the above, a pop up message will appear stating that you have successfully submitted grades.

An email will also be sent to your University of Massachusetts Lowell email account stating you have successfully submitted grades.

If you are having any problems, please call Patricia Duff or Mai Nguyen.

The last day to enter grades for courses offered though Continuing Education is 48 hours after the last class/final exam. The last day to enter grades for all other courses is May 21, 2012 at 5:00pm.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Patricia A. Duff

Registrar

RELATED LINKS: See Video on Entering Grades