Please be aware that iSiS will be unavailable from 4 PM Saturday December 8th through 12 noon Sunday December 9th for scheduled system maintenance.

Attached please find the Freshmen October 2012 Newsletter from the Office of Orientation and Admissions Events. It contains great tips on the advising and registration process.

October FYR Newsletter.pdf

Attention Graduate Students:

Students completing degree requirements for a Graduate Certificate or Graduate Degree in December 2012 must submit a signed copy of the degree clearance form to the Registrar in Dugan room 101 by December 3, 2012, along with all supporting documents.

Please note that it may take a few weeks for you to meet with your advisor and obtain all signatures. Please do not wait until the last minute to request forms!

Students completing a graduate degree may download a degree clearance form for a Master/Ed.S/Doctorate* degree at: http://www.uml.edu/docs/clearance_form_tcm18-3565.pdf

Students completing a Graduate Certificate may download the Graduate Certificate Clearance Form at web site: http://www.uml.edu/docs/cert_clearance_tcm18-3563.pdf

Or you may request or pick up a copy of each form from the Registrar’s Office in Dugan room 101.

Once you have filled out the appropriate form and obtained the signature of either your Graduate degree Advisor or certificate Coordinator, please return the appropriate form to the Registrar’s Office in Dugan Hall room 101 by December 3, 2012.

*NOTE – Students completing a Thesis/Dissertation as part of their graduate degree must also submit their Thesis/Dissertation to the Lydon Library no later than December 20, 2012 for publication and binding. A copy of the signature page of the Thesis/Dissertation must be submitted to the Registrar’s Office in Dugan 101.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Sincerely,

Patricia A. Duff

Registrar

From the UML Registrar

What a Permission Number will do:

Allow a student to register or add into a course without the pre-requisite course listed on their iSiS transcript.

Allow an Undergraduate student to register for a Graduate course.

Allow a student to register for a closed Undergraduate course with enrollment limit below 15 or above 19.

Allow a student to register for a closed Continuing Education(evening or online) course.

Allow a Graduate student to register for a closed graduate level course (courses at the 500 or above level).

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 Manning School of Business 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 on campus, online or Continuing Studies courses may obtain a permission number from the instructor or department chairperson of the course. Please note graduate Business students should obtain permission numbers from Kathleen_Rourke@uml.edu and students taking the Graduate Autism courses and need a permission number must contact Dr. Richard_Siegel@uml.edu to obtain one.

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 into an undergraduate daytime course that is filled (closed) which has an enrollment limit between 15 ‘ 19. 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 undergraduate course with an enrollment limit between 15-19.

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.

The Spring 2013 and Winter 2013 Class schedules have been posted on the Registrar’s website.

http://www.uml.edu/registrar/

Attention Undergraduate Students:

Are you graduating May, 2013 or Summer 2013?

It’s time to file your graduation form (DIG) with your department. If you file by November 13, 2012 and your petition-to-graduate is approved, we can guarantee that your name will be printed in the Commencement book and, (if you satisfy all degree requirements and financial obligations) that you will receive your diploma at the commencement ceremony.

Please see your advisor to file for graduation.

Midterm Grades

Mid-term grades have been generated for Fall 2012 courses. Per the academic calendar Tuesday October 16^th is mid-semester. At least one evaluation is required in each course. The grade is submitted by the faculty to inform the student of their current grade status. Reports will be generated on Wednesday, October 24^th to notify students and advisors of poor academic progress. This is an important indicator for departments and colleges to use for planning and retention.

Three additional grades have been introduced for mid-term grading only:

Faculty may either

1) Enter grades for only a subset of students (those at risk of failing)

or

2) Entergrades for everyone listed on the mid-term grade roster.

Students who are identified as being at risk (grades of FN, IDF, D or F) will receive a letter through ISIS notifying them that they are at risk and encouraging them to speak to their instructor or advisor; Students who are identified as being at risk (grades of FN, IDF, D or F) in multiple courses, will be contacted by Student Services to provide appropriate intervention.

Mid-Term Grade Process:

1) In iSiS Faculty Self-Service ‘My Schedule’, click on the Grade roster icon circled in red below next to the grade roster you wish to enter the mid-term grades.

2) Validate that the Grade Roster type is ‘Mid-Term Grade’ roster. Enter the grade.

How to enter midterm grades for one or more (not all) students on the grade sheet:

3) Save the grade roster.

How to enter midterm grades for every student on the grade sheet:

1. Record Grades
2. SAVE
3. Mark Grade Roster ‘ Approved
4. SAVE

A confirmation popup will display below as well as an email sent to confirming the roster has been submitted correctly and students will be able to see the grades online overnight.

‘ Midterm grades will be available to the student.

‘ Midterm grades are not official and do no factor into grade point average and credits earned. Midterm grades do not appear on transcripts. They are meant to give the student an indication of his progress mid way through the semester.

‘ If the student questions a grade, or receives any grade that is less than satisfactory, he should make an appointment to talk to the professor. Midterm grades are meant as an opportunity to encourage students to open a conversation or dialogue with the professor about how things are progressing.

‘ The student may need to consider whether withdrawing from a class may be warranted. If one grade is very low, withdrawing from that class might give him/her more time to focus his/her energies on doing well in his/her other classes. Although withdrawing is not ideal, in some cases it may make success in other classes more manageable, and help him/her keep his/her GPA strong.

‘ The student may want to keep midterm information in mind as he/she considers his/her choice of classes for the following semester. He/She may need to think about whether or not to take advanced classes, or particular instructors, or learning styles.

‘ It is important to keep midterm grades in perspective. They provide valuable information to students at an important point in the semester. Students who make sure to check these grades, and who consider what they mean, know whether they are advancing smoothly or whether they may need to make some changes. Parents can help students interpret the information and put it in perspective, but then they need to step back once again to allow the student to follow through with whatever he needs to do.

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