Monday, July 29, 2002

Feedback from Steering Committee meeting
The Steering Committee meeting last week focused on discussions about Series 25, reporting strategies, lag payroll, course numbering and the need to freeze org for Banner so the Finance Team can load the approved budget.

New trainer for the Student Core Team
SCT trainer, Elliott Hawkey, was assigned as the new trainer for the Student Core Team.

Report Strategy group report
The Report Strategy group met last week to discussion the over-arching work to be done and to identify sub-groups to work on issues.  The Report Strategy Group will work on a Charter draft and bring it to LIMT for input and approval. The group meets every other week and with various groups at  other times.

Finance Update
The budget team is correcting crosswalks in preparation for loading the approved budget and journal entry approval queues are working.  Current orgs are loaded with changes reflected up to last week.  Users will be able to view budgets and work on them, but budget transfers will be disabled until the Budget Office has completed its correction work.  Finance and Human Resources trainers will be on campus August 12 through 14 to work with both teams on position budgeting.  The  Funded Projects Team is entering grants into the Lane database.  Six hundred purchase orders are out in the new system and working well.  The team discovered that the same person cannot be in the same approval queue at more than one level.  The Finance team is looking into the issue.  An announcement about loading the budget will be placed in the Daily.

Human Resources Update
The Human Resources team has loaded 130 people into TEST and will run scenarios next week.  A parallel payroll is planned for November.  A sub-team is meeting with departments to answer questions about the lag payroll.  The team feels the departmental meetings are working very well.  The classified union is pleased about the plan to issue “To Whom It May Concern” letters for staff to provide to creditors about the new payroll system.  The payroll issue will be a discussion item at the next LASR Update.  HR will develop a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) to be placed on the LASR Web site and in the Daily.  Questions may be sent to Linda DeWitt with a copy to Georgia Nissen.  The LASR Project Office will facilitate getting the information to the appropriate site.  Another meeting is scheduled with the faculty union to negotiate the lag pay system.  The faculty union agrees to the semi-monthly pay, however, have concerns about implementing a lag pay system.  Both classified and management staff  support the lay pay system.

Feedback from meeting with Cheryl Roberts
Members of the Student Core Team met with Cheryl Roberts to discuss implementation of Series 25 and the plan for a college-wide course numbering system.  The following issues have been raised about using the same three letters of the subject code to number credit-free and credit courses:

• Using the credit subject codes preceded by an “X” for extended learning offerings may imply that all courses have gone through similar course development and approval processes; 
• Marketing, advertising and providing understandable information for the customer (student may register for the wrong course) are of great concern, especially to extended learning;
• Different parts of the college may compete for students; and
• Parallel naming structures may suggest duplication of course offerings.  This may especially be an issue for computer, business, art, health and language courses.

The Extended Learning area suggested the technical fee charged to all students be renamed.   Extended Learning students who take a non-technical class will question why they are charged the fee.  LIMT suggested taking the issue to ET as it is outside of the LASR project.