GSSP staffing change

Stacia Madsen has accepted the position of lead business analyst for the Academic Advisement module, effective immediately.

Stacia's skills and knowledge of graduate education will make for an easy transition to her new role. She is still located in 160 Williamson Hall.

Staff, students, faculty and others can continue to contact GSSP through established communication channels.

Commenting On & Grading Student Writing: A Workshop for Teaching Assistants

The Center for Writing will provide a pre-fall workshop for graduate student teaching assistants:

Commenting On & Grading Student Writing: A Workshop for Teaching Assistants
Monday, August 25
12:30-4 p.m.
STSS 312
FREE
Beverages and snacks provided

Important information related to registration:

• Registration is required: http://z.umn.edu/2014taworkshop


• Registrants are expected to attend the full session


• TAs must register themselves, and


• A letter of participation will be provided for those who complete the workshop.

Brief description: In this interactive workshop, teaching assistants new to grading and commenting will have opportunities to become familiar with strategies and resources supporting effective and efficient practices.

Participants will...

• become familiar with the attributes of MINIMAL marking


• practice commenting on a diverse sampling of student writing


• recognize the functions of comments in provoking revision


• discuss methods for identifying and using fair grading criteria and for working with criteria supplied by others


• practice assigning grades to an array of of student writing from social sciences


• sciences, humanities, in accordance with the discipline in which they will be teaching


• learn strategies recommended by experienced TAs

Co-facilitated by Center for Writing staff and experienced TAs from disciplines including Mechanical Engineering, American Studies, and Writing Studies.

Please forward this message to any interested graduate student TAs.

Looking forward to a lively workshop!

Service outage Wednesday, May 7

Core PeopleSoft applications (HR, Student, and Finance) may experience intermittent disruption for approximately two hours on Wednesday, May 7 between 5-7 p.m. During this time, database administrators will prepare the databases for a copy of the data from the PeopleSoft applications to use during the upcoming testing phases for the Enterprise Systems Upgrade Program (ESUP). The timing of this snapshot is critical, as ESUP must use payroll information from a particular stage in the payroll process to ensure accuracy during testing.

ESUP has worked closely with IT's service owners to minimize disruption across the University. More information will be available on the University's system status page.

Milestone Changes

Recently, you may have noticed changes to several milestones. Three milestones have had a name change, three are new, and two have been retired. They are:



If you have any questions, please contact gssp@umn.edu.

Graduate degree clearance and reporting changes

In anticipation of the PeopleSoft 9.0 upgrade, new business processes are being established for Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP). These changes will impact reporting and GSSP business process, but will have no impact to students.

Degree Clearance
Effective Thursday, May 1, Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP) will discontinue degree clearance in the PeopleSoft (PS) Graduate School custom tables. The following data will be affected:

- Degree program GPA (GSSP enters cumulative GPA unless below 2.80 for master's)
- Application month/year
- Completion month/year
- Major credits
- Minor credits
- Thesis type
- Doct. time start (term)
- Doct. time end (term)

Moving forward, a student's GPA and major/minor credits will no longer be captured in PeopleSoft.

The following reports will be impacted:

- Degree Applicants GRD version (190)
- Degree Applicants report (195)
- Degree Award (279)
- Graduate Education Student Profile (98)
- Graduate Student Report for Majors/Minors (Go32) (525)

Staff now have access to a student's application month/year and degree completion month/year in PeopleSoft. This information can be found Records and Enrollment>Career and Program Information>Student Program/Plan click on student attributes tab.

If you have a questions about reporting, please contact Ingrid Nuttall at ingridn@umn.edu.

Time to Degree
Doctoral start/end time will be captured in PeopleSoft milestones (0800, "Time to Degree"). In addition, master's/PBac/Specialist Certificate time to degree will also be captured. This information can be found Records and Enrollment>Enroll Students>Student Milestones.

Plan Type
Master's plan type A, B, or C has been converted into a "Sub-Plan." This information can be found by going to Records & Enrollment>Career & Program Information>Student Sub-Plan>(information towards bottom of page).

This graph outlines where you can find the following information (a larger image can be found here):


Thank you for your cooperation with this effort. Please contact us at gssp@umn.edu with any questions.

Graduate non-degree registration changes

The current graduate non-degree registration form has been updated to a commentable PDF, and a cover sheet and checklist has been added. Designated signers are encouraged to read through the form carefully. All required information must be filled out or the form will be returned to the student/signer for completion. The list of designated signers has been updated online to about 350 people. It will continue to be updated about three times per year before open registration occurs.

Billing due date changes for fall 2014

Beginning fall 2014, billing due dates for tuition and fees will change. Students will be billed approximately two weeks earlier than in previous years. Billing dates for fall 2014 are currently available on the One Stop website. Spring dates will be determined soon. Students will be notified of the change prior to the end of the spring 2014 semester.

This change will bring the University in line with current industry standards and allow billing to be more consistent across all system campuses.

Students will be notified of this change before the end of spring semester.