1. Spring Pre-registration Online--Night Owls' Delight!
In November, students wishing to select their Spring 2001 courses in
the middle of the night were empowered to do so--provided, of course, that
they had met with their advisors first! The Web for Student product
went live on November 6th, , and registration ran through November
22nd with students registering in priority order by class. Lehigh
students registered from their residence hall computers, their advisors'
offices, from public sites and also from corporations such as IBM, Lucent,
Rodale, and Air Products. Some also registered from as far away as
Italy, the UK, and Australia.
2. Web for Faculty Live!
Another exciting milestone of the LEWIS Project this fall is the availability
of the Banner Web for Faculty product. This Web interface allows
faculty to get course rosters for their classes, to create mailing labels
and/or e-mail address lists for their students, and to see the academic
records for their advisees--all from the comfort of their office!
It is also possible to post grades online. Next semester there will be
the added functionality of being able to create an electronic grade book
and assigning a certain percentage of the grade to each of a number of
required papers or exams. The system then will calculate the final
grade automatically. Web for Faculty can be linked to from the Registrar's
Office home page from the Lehigh home page.
Documentation about how to use both Web for Faculty and Web for Student
can also be found at the Registrar's Web site at: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inrgs/bannerweb.htm.
General updates appear on the LEWIS Web page.
3. Academic History--A Million Lines and More!
On the technical side, a landmark achievement was the recent conversion
from the SRS system to Banner of all of the student records (grades, etc.)
going back to 1981. This was a monumental effort and was successful
due to the hard work and team effort of the following individuals: John
Early, Phil Lawrence, Jean Nonnemaker, Mary Louise Powers, and Ron Wagner.
4. Banner Response Time--Possible Remedy
Some Banner users have been experiencing problems with their PC hanging
or response time becoming very slow. If this sounds familiar,
the problem may be that you have too many Banner forms opened. You
may not realize it, but when you choose a new form from the options on
the left panel of a form, the first form remains open. If you continue
to choose forms from the options pane, the result is that you have many
forms open without realizing it. Because Banner layers the forms directly
on top of each other, there is no indication that more than one form is
open. If you use the Direct Access option from the File pull down menu
at the top of the page, the same situation will result.
Try to get into the habit of closing a form before opening another.
Or, if you are working through one record and must go from form to form
to complete your work, exit all forms when you are finished with that particular
record. Click on the red exit icon and, if you have other forms
open, they will appear as you close the overlaying forms.
5. BUG in Pennsylvania
In late November, the following individuals attended all or part of
the first Pennsylvania Banner Users Group (PABUG): Bruce Correll and several
of his staff, Jane Frounfelker, Joe Hardenberg, Phil Lawrence, Kathy Miller,
Jean Nonnemaker, Manny Pena, Mary Louise Powers, Javier Rivera, Bob Siegfried,
Tom Smull, and Leslie Snow. The two day meeting was held in Harrisburg
and involved presentations from SCT and Banner users (including Lehigh)
and was felt to be very successful and worthwhile.
If you have comments or questions on this newsletter or about communication
about LEWIS, contact Jean Farrington at jwf3@lehigh.edu