SIS for Department Users

Student Records Data in SISAdmin

Academic Actions

Probations, suspensions, and similar actions taken by a dean’s office relative to the student’s academic performance are recorded here. Each school defines its own rules as to which actions are entered onto a student’s record, and how long the notation remains on the student’s record. The Comment field is sometimes used to indicate the effective period of that Action or the date the Action was taken. The Display on Transcript settings indicate whether or not a particular Academic Action record will print on the student’s official transcript; typically these are ‘Yes’ on suspensions and expulsions, and ‘No’ on probations but can be overridden by the dean’s office on a case by case basis

Address

Students can and should update their own addresses and phone numbers at WebSTAC, and are prompted at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters to provide current Local address information. Deans’ offices and several other administrative areas also have the ability to enter and change student address information through SISAdmin.

The Home address should be a permanent address valid during vacation and break periods. The Local address record should reflect the student’s residence address while in school. For students who live on campus, address information is loaded annually (each fall) into SISAdmin from StarRez. Parent 1 (and Parent 2, where appropriate) address information should be present for all undergraduate day division students. Some graduate students also provide such information. Graduate students and evening students are encouraged to enter Emergency Contact information in addition to Local residence and Home addresses. When a student files his/her Intent to Graduate (ITG) they are asked to provide a Diploma Mailing Address (also called the Post-Graduation address). The Study Away address record can be used when the student is away from campus for a semester. A student can also use WebSTAC to add a Business, Temporary, Alternate, or Other address as appropriate. The HRMS Campus Address comes from HRMS for students who are also employees of the university.

Note: At WebSTAC, students are not permitted to delete a Local or Home address, though some may remove enough meaningful information so as to make the address useless. Previously logged addresses for a student are therefore available through SISAdmin for all address types.

Admin Codes

Various user-defined administrative codes are used to support specific purposes and store data not located elsewhere in SIS, e.g., Personal Email address. This is also where the Dean’s Flag field that previously fed the old SIS-1 system is located.

Advisor List

This screen which advisors have been “linked” to the student by his/her dean’s office, enabling the advisor to access the student’s record through WebFAC. Note the various types of advisors; Faculty Advisors will be associated with a Major Program record for that student.

Class Schedule

Course registrations for a given student in any semester can be maintained using this window.

Students may be added, dropped, or placed on a waitlist for specific courses. Drop-down list boxes provide valid grading options for that course and student (C = Credit, P = Pass/Fail, A = Audit, S = UC Special Audit). If a requested section and/or lab is full, deans’ offices have the ability to place the student at the top or bottom of the waitlist, or to force an Add to enroll the student over the class limit (presumably with the instructor’s or department’s permission).

Students dropped from a course will have a Drop Code on that course record. Drops with a ‘W’ are typically used when the course is dropped after the end of the drop/add period in that semester for that division; these drops will print on an official WU transcript. Drops with a ‘D’ are those dropped during the drop/add period and will not print on an official transcript, but will show in SIS as evidence that the student as enrolled in that class/section/lab at one point. If the effective date of the drop is to be something other than the date on which the drop action is taken, the Dean’s Office can specify a drop date. Both the effective date of the drop (“Drop Date”) and the actual system date of the drop action (“Notification Date”) are reflected on the drop record for that course in SISAdmin. A drop with a code of ‘R’ indicates an Operator Delete which is only used to remove an erroneous course entry, e.g., wrong course number used by mistake; Operator Deletes are purged every night and no drop record is seen in SISAdmin.

Midterm and final grades are entered into SIS during each grading period by the course instructor using WebFac/EGrades. Grades can also be entered manually by the dean’s offices. Grade changes require documentation containing the instructor’s signature.

Demographics

Most demographic information is entered into SIS when the student is admitted to WU, and will in most cases remain static. All student records contain the following data: gender, race/ethnicity (Not Reported being a valid race type), birth date, and birthplace. Students under the age of 18 are noted as a MINOR on the title bar of their SIS record.

Student race and ethnicity is self-reported, and a student can report affiliation with more than one race/ethnicity. All international students, i.e., those without U.S. citizenship, Permanent Resident, or Resident Alien status, should always have Visa Type detail in SIS indicating their current visa status (F1, F2, J1, etc.), and the new Nonresident Alien box should be checked as well as any appropriate items for their ethnicity.

The Semester of Entry and Enrollment Status fields reflect the entry cohort in which the student was admitted. For all undergraduate day division students, this information is established by Undergraduate Admissions and is used by several offices to track undergraduate retention.

The Anticipated Degree Date field should reflect the graduating class with which the student is associated and can be updated as necessary by the student’s dean’s office. The Student Expected Graduation field is reported by the student at WebSTAC. The Frozen Cohort value is administratively set by the University Registrar for undergraduate degree seeking day division students, and is used for cohort assignment during the controlled registration periods, and general cohort tracking. Read more about Frozen Cohort.

The Semester of Entry field is the default for most Degree Audits; however, the DA Catalog Year field can be used to override it. Most DA Catalog Year fields will remain blank. The DA Catalog Year field can also be found in the Major Program window.

Date of Death information is noted on a student’s record by the Office of the University Registrar in the event of a student death. The University Registrar also removes all postal and email address information from the student’s SIS record, and adds a full FERPA Restriction (Information Hold) and special Milestone notation. Inquiries should be referred to the Office of the University Registrar.

E-mail Address

For students in most divisions, WU e-mail addresses are assigned and loaded into SIS by the University. The e-mail address is a critical means of communicating with students for many WU faculty and administrators. As a result, in some divisions of the University students are not able to change this address at WebSTAC, whereas in other divisions they are. The WU e-mail addresses in SIS are the local server addresses assigned by the schools and not the University E-mail (@wustl.edu) addresses.

Note the big ‘E’ icon on your tool bar when you have a student record open; it’s a quick way to fire off an e-mail note to that student.

FERPA Restrictions

The Federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA, also known as the Buckley Amendment) gives all students the right to withhold addresses, phone numbers, and any other pieces of what would otherwise be considered public (“directory”) information from the public domain. This window displays any such restrictions the student has placed on their records from WebSTAC. The I:X on the title bar of any student window in SISAdmin is a general indicator that a restriction exists.

WU personnel who have a legitimate need to know this and other information on the student’s record, are not denied access but are also not free to share this information with individuals or agencies outside the WU community (this includes other students) if the student has blocked that information.

GPA

The GPA window contains three screens of data, accessed by window tabs. The Summary tab lists unit and GPA totals for all semesters of WU enrollment. The Detail tab displays current and cumulative unit and GPA information for each semester. The third tab shows a bar graph of the non-cumulative GPA’s by semester for that student.

“Analyzer” is the name of the process by which grade point averages and earned unit totals are calculated. Analyzer is triggered by either MP changes or final grade changes on the student’s record, and when triggered recalculates automatically in a nightly batch process. Analyzer rules vary by and are defined by each academic division. The student’s prime division determines which set of rules are applied when calculating GPA and cumulative unit totals.

The Analyzer process also presumes graduate, evening, and undergraduate coursework to be separate bodies of work, and will group semesters accordingly. The student who, for example, earns an undergraduate degree, then a graduate degree, and then returns again to take evening coursework will have three distinct sets of GPA and cumulative unit calculations. An Analyzer Override may be applied to a particular student by the Office of the University Registrar to force the inclusion or exclusion of certain semesters’ coursework in the student’s GPA upon request by the student’s school.

High School

The SIS high school record contains information about the high school which the student attended. CEEB codes are used to identify most U.S. high schools and should be used whenever possible. The shadow-box data fields indicate those which can be used to search for a particular high school. A student can have only one high school record in SIS.

Holds

Holds placed on a student’s record in SIS will prevent that student from being able to register for classes or add/drop at WebSTAC and will block the release of an official transcript. Holds are placed and released by a variety of offices and are the sole responsibility of that office. The Comments field may be used to provide contact or reference information regarding the resolution of the Hold. Administrative users may not release a Hold placed by another office, even temporarily, without permission from that other office.

The H:1 indicator on the title bar of a student window in SISAdmin tells you that a Hold exists for that student. The numerical value indicates the number of Holds the student currently has. H:0 indicates there are no Holds.

Honors

The Honors record in SIS can contain a variety of notations entered by deans’ offices or by the Office of the University Registrar. The Display on Transcript settings will default to ‘Yes’ on all Honors except those with codes that are numbered 8xxx or 9xxx, but can be overridden by the dean’s office on a case by case basis.

Latin honors (Summa Cum Laude, etc.) awarded at graduation are entered into the SIS Honors record by the Office of Student Records to ensure coordination with the student’s diploma and the Commencement program.

Major Program

The Major Program (MP) record in SIS reflects the programs of study a student has pursued at WU, past, present, and future. Each MP record contains specific information about that program and about the student’s status in that program (Open, Finished, or Closed). Schools may admit a student that is not a candidate for a WU degree or certificate; such unclassified students are referred to as SNCD, or Student Not Candidate for a Degree, and are given an SNCD MP record.

The various programs of study offered at WU are defined and approved by the governing body of each school and its dean. The Office of the University Registrar must be notified in writing, with documentation, of all new majors and minors approved by the schools, and of programs no longer being offered. New degrees must be submitted in writing to the Provost for approval, who will in turn notify the University Registrar for the necessary MP setup in SIS.

Students pursuing more than one course of study at any given time will have a “prime” major program and others referred to as “joint”. All current students must have one and only one open prime MP record, and an open prime must be present in SIS in order to register that student for classes in any semester. The student’s prime MP also establishes their prime division, which in turn is used for a variety of purposes in SIS and elsewhere within the University, including the assessment of tuition charges and the allocation of tuition income back to the schools. The student’s prime division is a reflection of ownership on that student’s records, and so the prime school has the ability in SIS to update those records and is responsible for maintaining all current MP information on its students, including the declared majors and minors within that school as well as joint programs being pursued by the student in other WU schools.

Interdivisional Transfers are those students transferring within the University from one school to another. Because the “ownership” of the student’s record changes with the change in school, all interdivisional transfers require the approval of the dean’s offices of both schools. Undergraduate day division transfers are facilitated by the SIS IDT process, which is initiated by the student at WebSTAC and managed by the schools through WebAdmin. Graduate and evening division students who wish to change schools must contact their school registrar who will initiate a paper Interdivision Transfer form; paper IDT form must be signed by both schools and submitted to the Office of the University Registrar for changes to the student’s record in SIS.

Note: students not currently enrolled (no open MP) and not on Leave of Absence may be admitted to a new school or division within the University without written approval from the former school, and a new MP record may be created in SIS by the new school.

All prime division changes must be complete prior to the end of the 4th week of the effective semester.

The Major Program Maintenance tab on the MP window is where MP records can be added or changed. The Admit Semester on an MP is that semester in which the student begins that particular course of study. The Termination Semester on an MP should be the last semester in which the student was pursuing that particular program. A Faculty Advisor or Special Advisor can be linked to that student and MP by clicking on the Name button in the Faculty Advisor block and selecting the advisor from the available list. Linked advisors have access to their advisees’ academic records at WebFAC.

The Program Completion Detail area in the lower portion of the MP Maintenance tab is where schools may indicate that requirements have been completed for a specific major, minor or degree. The status of Pending is typically used when the student is currently enrolled in the courses necessary for the completion of that program. The Latin Honors flag here reflects a recommendation made by the school or department of the honor to be awarded.

All degree records in SIS are maintained by the Office of the University Registrar. It is the responsibility of each school to evaluate each of the students enrolled in their programs of study and certify that all requirements have been met by the date of the degree. The Intent to Graduate must be submitted by the student to the Office of the University Registrar by the published deadline date to initiate the degree process. The schools are subsequently provided with a series of working lists of degree candidates from which additions and deletions can be made. All degrees awarded by Washington University require approval from the Board of Trustees or the Chancellor. Deletions received by the Office of the University Registrar after the degree date are not acceptable.

Note: the student’s Unofficial Transcript (also the SISAdmin Internal Record and Composite report) notes that a degree is ‘Anticipated’ until the Board approves the final degree list and the University Registrar notes that degree has been officially conferred.

Milestones

Special notations may be entered on a student’s record using a Milestone. Leave of Absence (medical or other) should be noted with a Milestone in the semester(s) for which that leave was granted.

The Loss of Student Status milestone (msn 0099) should be used for any student who withdraws during an academic term for which some coursework has already been completed. This can/should also be used for any student who completes a sub-semester or mini-term course and then withdraws. The comment field on this record should contain the date the student withdrew from the University.

Milestones can also be used to provide course topic information on things like Independent Study or Research. Type the dept number of the course (F20, etc.) in the Action Type field (replacing “MSN”), and the Action ID field becomes a Course Number field – put the course number here. This detail will print on an official transcript.

Other Credits

AP/Advanced Placement credits, transfer credits accepted by WU, and coursework taken abroad are all recorded in SIS as Other Credit records. The dean’s offices determine which credits are acceptable and exercise any limitations defined by that school on the amount of transfer and AP credit that may be applied toward a WU degree. On all transfer and study abroad work, the college or university from which those courses were transferred is also recorded.

Previous School

Undergraduate transfer students and all degree-seeking graduate students should have previous school information recorded in SIS. The location (state or country) of the institution is now a required data element on the Previous School record in SISAdmin (comes up automatically on schools selected from the CEEB list).

Scores

SAT, ACT, GRE, TOEFL and other types of test scores used for admission and placement of the student are recorded here. Most external scores are entered in batch from data files received from the various testing agencies, though dean’s offices may enter these manually as well. A test date of SELF is typically entered if the score is self-reported by the student; TRNS if the score is taken from a transcript.

Status

The Status window in SISAdmin provides a quick summary of information about a student, including his/her Student ID Card picture. Current (open) major programs are listed as well as the student’s current (or last) enrollment status.

Other Administrative Functions in SISAdmin

Checkout – Dept

The Checkout-Dept function in SISAdmin allows selected academic department users to note a student’s completion status and/or Latin Honors eligibility relative to the requirements of a specific major or minor program, and communicate that information to the dean’s office doing the degree certification on that student. Access to this function is determined by the school registrar for that program.

To see the list of students in your department who have filed an Intent to Graduate and are ready to be evaluated, click on ‘File’ (menu bar), then ‘Open’, and then select a semester (in this case, the graduation semester being evaluated) and your department.

Once the semester and department are selected, use the Open MP button to witch to a view of all of the students in your department with an open MP. There is an ITG checkbox that will show which students have an ITG on file for the selected semester. The checkbox is not editable.

The Filter option shows a subset of the selected population:

• All (Default) – shows all of the population, either those with Intent to Graduate forms on file or those with Open Major Programs.
• Undergrad All – shows those in population with undergraduate programs.
• Undergrad Deg Only – shows those in the population who have an undergraduate degree program
• Undergrad Non-Deg – shows those in the population who have a undergraduate non-degree program such as a minor, a second major, or a non-degree prime.
• Graduate All – shows those in the population who have a graduate program

Completed Status

Use the Completed Status listbox to indicate the students’ progress on fulfilling the requirements for the the program:

• Blank: Status not known
• Pending: Completion of the program is contingent upon on courses or projects in this semester. Use the Memo field to list the courses that need to be completed or to explain the nature of outstanding work. When listing courses be sure to list the full course number (e.g. L01 3426 01).
• Completed: Student has completed all of the requirements for the program of study.
• Not this Sem: Student cannot complete the program in the current semester.

Latin Honors

This feature is for use by Arts & Sciences programs only

Key Steps:

1. Determine the cohort: In the summer or when directed by College Office, indicate which students are eligible for Latin Honors by selecting ‘Candidate’ from the Latin Honors listbox. Use the Open MP population with the Undergrad Degree Only filter to work with the relevant student records. In many cases this is all that needs to be done.
2. Determine Thesis option: For students that have successfully completed the Honors Thesis requirements, check the w/Thesis checkbox. This should be done based on timelines supplied by the College Office.
3. Limit Honors: In some cases a student who is a candidate for Latin Honors will do perfunctory work on the departments Honors requirements or even fail to meet those requirements. The department retains the option to place an upper limit hon the Latin Honors with the following options:
   1. No Honors – student has failed to meet the department Honors requirements regardless of GPA and recommends that no honors be awarded.
   2. Cap at Magna Cum Laude – department recommends that Honors no higher that Magna Cum Laude be awarded regardless of GPA.
   3. Cap at Cum Laude – department recommends that Honors no higher that Cum Laude be awarded regardless of GPA.

N.B. The older options in the Latin Honors dropdown have been deprecated and can no longer be selected. But if you are viewing records of previous students you might still see the uncoded values. These are:

1. SCL – Summa Cum Laude
2. MCL – Magna Cum Laude
3. CL – Cum Laude

ITG Programs

The ITG Programs report lists by division, department or mp code, all students for whom a Degree Record has been created by the Office of Student Records in anticipation of graduation in a given term. The report shows each program of study that will be included on the degree list issued by the OUR to the school for certification. Additional information displayed here comes from both the student’s online Intent and the school/department MP Complete (checkout) record.

SISAdmin Reports

Course Info

• Courses

This report lists courses offered by department for a given semester. Class meeting times, locations, and instructor name are displayed, as well as enrollment limits, current enrollment, waitlist information, and a Home/Ident indicator. Double-click on a course section from this list to drill down to a class roster.

• Dept Exam Schedule

Use this report to generate a list of courses by level with the scheduled day, date, time, and location of the final exam for each course section.

• Grade Sheet

Use this report to review or proof midterm and final grades submitted for a particular course or section. All semesters of historical grades in SIS are accessible.

• Roster

This is the class roster of all students enrolled in a particular course or section, including cross-listings.

Departments

• Students by Advisor

This report is sorted first by advisors’ last names, then by students. In addition to showing degree/major/minor, a student’s prime division, level, and anticipated degree date are displayed.

• Students by Program

Use this report to see a list of students by the degree/major/minor they are seeking together with the name of the student’s advisor. Also displayed are the students’ prime division, level, and degree year.

• Students in Department

This report generates a list of all the students who have an open MP in a given academic department. (Note: MP code dept’s and course dept codes are not necessarily the same for a given department.)

Faculty and Class Support

• Faculty/Class Support Courses

Here you can see a listing of all courses a particular faculty member is teaching in a given term, i.e. those to which s/he has been linked in wucrsl. Course enrollment and logistics are also provided. You can doubleclick on a particular section to drill down to the class roster. Instructors can be emailed directly from this report.

• Faculty/Support Courses by Dept

This version of the report lets you see all courses for a particular department, sorted by instructor. Instructors can be emailed directly from this report.

School

• Advisors

This report lets you see a list of all advisors for a school; double-click to drill down to a list of advisees.

• Grades Outstanding

This report provides the deans’ offices and academic departments with a list of those course sections for which either midterm or final grades have not yet been submitted. The Send Email tool on this report prepares an email note to the designated Course Grader in one or more selected sections.

• Students by Division

This report generates a list of all students with open MP’s in a specific division. Use the Semester Admitted field to identify students with specific MP Code admit terms. Click the Demographics Report button to include data from the students’ demographics record on citizenship, country code, visa, race, and interests.

• Students in School

Use this report to generate a list of all students with open MP’s in a given school. Click the “Use Admin Codes” box to add Dean’s Flag data (or any of the other admin codes) to your report.

Student Info

• Composite

The Composite report lets you select only those specific elements of the student’s full internal record you wish to see/print. Also available to include here are accounting, SSN, housing, and enrollment status information.

• Grades

This report of semester grades is the same as that which the student can see and print at webSTAC.

• Intent to Graduate

The ITG report lets you view and print Intent records for one or more students in a particular division or department for a selected graduation semester. Use the file Upload option to import your own pre-established list of students (by ID number) for whom you want to see/print Intents.

• Internal Record

The Internal Record displays all information on the student’s academic record in SIS.

• Schedule

The schedule report displays the student’s class schedule for a given semester with class meeting days/times, building and room locations, names of instructors, and a final exam schedule. It is the same as that which the student can see and print at webSTAC.

• Student Picture

View and/or print a larger version of the student’s ID Card photo that is displayed on the Status window.

Student Records

• Degree Summary

The Degree Summary report generates a full list by student of all degrees, majors, minors, and certificates either conferred in a given semester (if the degree date has passed) or for which the student has filed an Intent to Graduate.

Departmental Attributes in SISAdmin

Departmental Attributes were implemented in the summer of 2014. It became evident during the WUachieve project that certain departments were struggling with the organization and maintenance of their growing courses lists. Not only will departmental attributes allow for department managed organization and communication of specialized course listings, they will feed the new degree audit system, WUachieve.

More information on departmental attributes (background, discussion, examples, reports, users) can be found here:

media:Departmental Attribute Manual 1-22-16.pdf

Primary Contacts

• Marissa Kaltwasser, College of Arts & Sciences, mkaltwasser@wustl.edu, 314-935-7239
• Sue Hosack, Office of the University Registrar, sue.hosack@wustl.edu, 314-935-4268