2015 Staff Resource Guide: New Graduate & Professional International Student

There have been several major changes in the process and support for new international students.
Information in the guide includes:

• International Student Pre-Arrival and Arrival Information
• New International Student Registration
• Course Registration Guidelines: First Semester International Students
• Minnesota English Language Program Credit Courses
• English Language Requirements and Support
• Students with Personal Difficulties and Mental Health Issues
• Articles and Resources 
• Contact Information

The entire guide can be found here.

Appropriate Use agreement required July 1

Wednesday, July 1, all employees will be presented with the University’s Appropriate Use agreement for data reporting when logging into MyU. This is a replacement of the prior annual UM Reports agreement. Employees must acknowledge and agree to the Appropriate Use agreement to have access to the MyU portal.

Reverse Transfer available July 1

The National Student Clearinghouse’s Reverse Transfer service is the first national automated solution for exchanging reverse transfer student data. Through reverse transfer as many as two million eligible students could be awarded associate degrees. The new course credit exchange “highway” will facilitate the awarding of reverse transfer degrees by allowing institutions to exchange data in the same way with all of their partner degree granting institutions via the Clearinghouse. It doesn’t matter if the student transferred to another associate degree granting or bachelor’s level institution first, attending public or private institutions, or transferred across state lines. If eligible, the student is awarded an associate degree. The Reverse Transfer service is free to institutions and students. To learn more, visit the Reverse Transfer website via the National Student Clearinghouse.

Proposed changes to current FERPA language

The “discussion draft” of a new bill was recently released to Congress calling for a review and possible amendments to the current FERPA language. Essentially, the bill would clarify the definition of a student’s “educational record” and ban the use of such information for marketing or advertising. It would also impose new contracting requirements on states and local education agencies and allow for fines of up to $500,000 to be levied on educational service providers that improverly share student information. The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), along with members of the University of Minnesota and other educational associations, are providing feedback on the proposed changes. We do not anticipate that any changes will be approved through Congress this session, but we will keep you informed if we hear of any developments.

Payment plan options for students

Turning on the payment plan option for students is not as simple as it seems on the surface. There no switch that gets flipped on or off each term, and, like much in life, there are many processes and decisions that need to happen before making these options available to students.
So, how does it work?

First, the Board of Regents need to set and approve tuition rates, which are typically approved during their June meeting. However, this presumes that the Minnesota State Legislature has already determined the University's state allocation. The Regents can’t set tuition rates before this allocation is determined, because tuition rate increases (or freezes) are tied directly to legislative decisions.

After the rates are set it takes three to four weeks for Student Finance-Information Technology to set up tuition and fees in PeopleSoft and another week to test whether or not it's working correctly. Behind the scenes, the Office of Student Finance (OSF) implements multiple payment plans for students with the hope that eventually the best single-plan option can be selected. Once the PeopleSoft tuition and fees are verified, OSF can begin to run tuition calculations for students who have enrolled for the upcoming term. After the tuition calculations have run, the delivered version of PeopleSoft's payment plan can be 'turned on' allowing students to select and enroll in the payment plan​.

However, OSF wants to avoid unnecessarily assessing students the $20 enrollment fee if their financial aid would cover ​all of ​their tuition and fees. For that reason, it's important that the payment plan not be available for students until after​ the first major​ financial aid disbursement date. This is especially true this term, because this is the first time students aren’t automatically enrolled in the payment plan option and need to proactively enroll themselves. Aid is disbursed to students approximately ten days before the start of the semester, so the payment plan will become available in the very short window between disbursement and the start of the semester.

One Stop changing model to enhance student support efforts

One Stop is making additions to their service model in an effort to continue to meet the changing needs of students, parents, faculty and staff by providing additional community support to ensure student success. One Stop Counselors will be prepared to engage and interact with students concerning their financial lives and success, and issues concerning degree progress goals.

One Stop counselors have developed curriculum, advising standards, and learning outcomes for one-on-one financial wellness counseling sessions with students. These counseling sessions are designed to empower students to examine their financial lives, and realize the impact that financial education can have on student success measures, such as academic degree progress and timely graduation. All One Stop Counselors are now required to have their certification as a Personal Financial Manager.

Additionally, One Stop Counselors will work collaboratively with the UMN Student Degree Progress Team, collegiate staff, and faculty to engage current and former students on their degree progress goals by developing success plans that will assist the institution with increasing retention and graduation goals.

Tina Falkner named Office of Student Finance interim director

Tina Falkner has agreed to serve as interim director of the Office of Student Finance (OSF); Stacey Tidball will be stepping in as the interim director of Continuity and Compliance. It’s expected that these interim position will last for 3-5 months while ASR prepares and conducts a national search for a permanent OSF director.

First Financial Wellness 1:1 session held

Live Like a Student and One Stop Student Services are piloting 1:1 meetings with students to talk about financial wellness at the University of Minnesota. These sessions are designed around the needs of the specific student and can be requested through One Stop. Typical topics for these meetings include creating a spending plan, living like a student while in college, preparing for financial decisions post college life, making major purchases, credit scores, and more. These meetings are part of LLAS and One Stop's contribution to the RAoS initiative at the University of Minnesota.

Postbaccalaureate realignment proposal

The University of Minnesota is considering a realignment for supporting postbaccalaureate education. Generally the proposal works to align programs into either a traditional graduate education community or a professional degree program community. You can view the details of the proposed alternative structure on the UMN Academic Affairs and Provost website. Senior Vice Provost Karen Hanson is encouraging faculty and staff to send feedback on the proposal to provost@umn.edu.

Upgrade update

Upgraded systems launched on April 20 as scheduled. A huge thank you to all staff that made this transition successful and smooth. The ASR Training Team and business analysts are receiving many inquiries and working through them with users from across system campuses. Help lines are receiving a higher-than-average number of service requests, and things are being worked through as quickly as possible. Your patience is appreciated during this time. Many inquiries are resolved by reminding people to upgrade their browser, clear their cache, and disable pop-up blockers. Please continue to contact your normal support line with any issues or questions.

Using the new final grade entry process

As the semester continues after the launch of the Upgrade, many upgraded systems will be used for the first time. For example, in the next few weeks faculty, instructors, and their proxies will use the new final grading process. As part of the Upgrade, the University’s custom developed grade entry applications were retired and are no longer available. Faculty, instructors, and their proxies will now enter grades by utilizing the MyU: Teaching tab. Here are some highlights of the change and some helpful tips for grade entry.

Please note: the information below is intended to complement what may have been sent from colleges or departments to their teaching faculty, including processes specific to their unit.

Verify access to grade rosters

Faculty, instructors, and their proxies should verify that they have access to all of their assigned grade rosters before the last day of instruction. To do this, access your Faculty Center in the MyU: Teaching tab and view the Grade Rosters for the classes you teach. When grade rosters are created (generally about twelve days before the last day of the term), those with access will see an icon that looks like a person inside a square next to the class in Faculty Center. Click that icon to view the roster. If you do not see the grade rosters you expect, please contact your department scheduler.


Class rosters and grade entry for courses owned by the School of Public Health are available only through the School of Public Health grading system. Faculty within the Medical School and the Law School typically do not access their grade rosters electronically and should contact their administrative support if they have questions.

Uploading grades directly from Moodle

Final grades entered in Moodle can be transferred directly into the grade roster within the Faculty Center. This guide to uploading gradebooks from Moodle to the final grade roster in PeopleSoft outlines the process. Those using this option should make sure that the final grade roster has been created prior to uploading from Moodle. It is important to note that once the grades have been transferred, they still must be reviewed and approved in Faculty Center.

New “NR” grade replacing grades that are left blank

Once the grading deadline has passed, a new grading mark, NR (Not Reported), will be given to students who are not assigned a grade by their instructor. The NR will be treated like a blank grade was in the previous system (e.g., zero grade points, zero credits).

Additional resources available on One Stop Faculty website

How-to guides on entering grades, making changes to grades, and more are available in the Grades section of the One Stop Faculty website. Grading due dates, frequently asked questions, and grading and transcript policies are also available.

Tech tips

• A good first step for those encountering difficulties is to clear their browser’s cache.
• Browser type and version can affect grade entry. Those having trouble should try updating their browser or using another one. 
• Grade entry will work on mobile browsers (e.g., phones, tablets). Some pages have been designed to respond to multiple screen sizes, and some have not. Non-responsive pages should still function, but may be less aesthetically pleasing and could present anomalies. 

Scheduled outage for ECAS and PCAS

Due to the Upgrade, ECAS and and PCAS will be unavailable for viewing, submitting, or approving proposals from April 10 at 1:00 a.m. until Go Live, scheduled for April 20. During that time, the ECAS and PCAS websites will be redirected to a webpage explaining the outage. Proposals that are in process during the outage can be approved when the systems become available again.

Course information can be viewed as normal during this period.

FERPA: Are admissions files included as part of the education record?

The short answer is, yes. They contain personally identifiable information about the student and are maintained by the institution, so they are considered an education record. As such, if a student requests access to his or her admissions file and it hasn't been destroyed (following the University's retention policy) the student has the right to view the information. The one caveat to this is letters of recommendation the student has waived the rights to see, the waiver excludes those records from student review. If the information is still maintained and the student has requested to view it, the record cannot be destroyed at that point even if according to the retention policy it could have been.

Final Student Experience Preview session scheduled

The final Student Experience Preview session is scheduled for Friday, April 17 from 12-1 p.m. in Rapson Hall, room 58. The session will include demonstrations of class registration, bill payment, and viewing financial aid. Also covered will be how MyU and the One Stop website will work together after the upgraded systems launch. This session is created for those who support students (e.g., advisers, student services staff). No RSVP required.

Job Aids for the Upgrade

The training team has published User Productivity Kits (UPK) on several topics for the Upgrade. These UPK topics provide a tour of University of Minnesota PeopleSoft processes and can be accessed from the Help button in PeopleSoft 9.0, or at asr.umn.edu/upgradetraining. If you would like a printable job aid, use the “Print It” mode of a UPK.

Voice messages to the helpline now open ServiceNow tickets

To provide better service to our users, voice messages left on the Student Records Help Desk support line (621-625-2803) now trigger ServiceNow tickets to open for the Training and Support Team, just as emails sent to srhelp@umn.edu have been doing for the last few years. Staff are reminded that they need only leave a voice message or send an email, as doing both would open duplicate ServiceNow tickets.

Change to Prelim Oral Exam (0807) milestone reporting

As we continue to make improvements to student milestones, Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP) would like to make you aware of a milestone reporting change from the Graduate Education Student Report for Majors/Minors (G032) in UM Reports.

If a student passes their prelim oral exam with reservations, GSSP staff enter the Prelim Oral Exam (0807) milestone as “Pass with reservations,” which is then indicated in the UM Report as “P-R.” Instead of adding another milestone once the reservations are resolved, GSSP staff are changing the initial milestone to “Pass (P) - reservations removed.” This method is beneficial to the student, as they will only see one milestone on their record in the new MyU portal. However, it was noticed that after the milestone is changed to “Pass (P) - reservations removed,” there is no record indicating the student completed exam reservations in the UM Report; the record in the report is blank.

To see the student’s full 0807 milestone record, view in:
PeopleSoft by following Main Menu > Records and Enrollment > Enroll Students > Student Milestones
(Pre-PeopleSoft Upgrade): UM Reports > Graduate Education Student Report for Majors/Minors (G032) > click on the student name or ID
(Post-PeopleSoft Upgrade): MyU > Key Links > Reporting Center > Student Services > Student Records > Graduate Education Student Report for Majors/Minors

Due to the reporting changes addressed above, GSSP recommends referencing the Milestones page in PeopleSoft for the most current and complete milestone data. Please view this Milestone Tutorial (UPK) to view the full milestone changes that will occur from 8.9 to 9.0 PeopleSoft.
Any questions regarding this update can be directed to gssp@umn.edu.

Upgrade - GSSP process modifications

As you know, the PeopleSoft Upgrade cutover period has been established (starting April 10 with an anticipated April 20 go-live). The Graduate Student Services and Progress (GSSP) office is working to adjust processes to accommodate system downtime and reduce delays in students' degree progress.

We want to make you aware of a website dedicated to GSSP process modifications for the cutover period. As we will be taking our automated forms (i.e., workflows) offline prior to and during the cutover period, this website will serve as the place where students and staff can access interim forms should they need to complete processes during system downtime.

This information will also be shared with students in the March 23 issue of the Graduate and Professional Student Update (GPU). As always, we appreciate your patience and understanding.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at gssp@umn.edu.

Will the Upgrade change U Catalogs, course descriptions and the Course Guide?

After consulting at length with University stakeholders, the Upgrade’s Student Team decided that the Course Guide would be retired. Faculty, instructors, and their proxies will now be able to include URLs for additional information in the U Catalog course descriptions as a replacement. These catalogs and all academic offerings will still be publicly available in the University’s online catalogs. Find more information about these changes on The Upgrade Blog.

Class Schedule for summer and fall available February 10

The class schedule will be available to view on February 10. During queued registration, students will use our current registration system and suite of related registration tools (e.g., class search). Once the upgraded systems go live, open registration and changes to enrollment will be completed in the new registration system. Resources will be provided to advisers and students during that time to help them successfully navigate the new system.