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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 2004)
GradWeb updates formerly arduous Graduate School tracking methods Created by two University staff members, GradWeb has eliminated the need for an extended paper trail By Caron Alarab News Reporter When it comes to unique and in novative software creation, two heads are better than one. For two University staff members, 30 years of institutional knowledge and three years of software engineer ing experience combined to make "GradWeb," the First software pro gram designed specifically for gradu ate school business. GradWeb, which has been in use at the University for more than two years, has transformed student records management at the Graduate School, saving thousands of dollars in administrative costs. "GradWeb has positively changed the way the Graduate School does business," Toby Deemer, assistant dean of the Graduate School and co creator of the program, said in an e mail interview. Before GradWeb, all Graduate School business practices required a paper trail on interactions among stu dents, department staff, faculty, Grad uate School staff and the Office of the Registrar. The University had 23 forms to track and record the progress of each graduate student from admis sion through to the application for his or her degree. Every form had to be copied, filed with the Graduate School and sent both to departments and to students. "The Graduate School printed 45,000 pieces of paper each year and none of our processes were online," Deemer said. Today, only two forms remain while everything else is done electron ically. Through GradWeb's six interac tive modules, or features, the program has cut the need to print, mail and process more than 30,000 forms an nually, while just one of the modules has saved 300 administrative hours each year. "The University of Oregon takes great pride in the effective use of tech nology to do business, and it seemed to us in the Graduate School that the time had come to change the way we did business," Deemer said. During the summer of 2000, Deemer came up with the idea for GradWeb when she decided to plan her retirement and realized her insti tutional knowledge would be leaving with her. "I began to design a plan to pres ent to the dean of the Graduate School that would construct a method to transfer my knowledge and experience into a clear and trans parent format," she said. "Web tech nology was, at that point in time, providing excellent service for the ex change of information." She recruited former graduate stu dent and software designer Asif Suria, and together they created GradWeb. "We searched the Web sites of oth er graduate schools and did not find a fully integrated system that sup ported the business practices of grad uate education," Deemer said. "It was at this point we decided to con struct our own." Since the creation of GradWeb, Deemer and Suria have entered into a licensing agreement with the Univer sity and formed Eugene Software So lutions to help market it. Suria, who is president of Eugene Software Solutions, once worked at the Graduate School as a graduate teaching fellow. He said when he called Deemer in early 2001 in search of an opportunity to return to campus, he liked her idea and decided to move back to Eugene from San Francisco. "Working with Toby on GradWeb has been a very enriching experience," Suria said in an e-mail interview. "She Lauren Wimer Photographer Graduate School staff member Jered Nagel uses the University’s new GradWeb software, which allows graduate students to complete several tasks, such as applying for admission and filling out surveys, online. has a vast amount of knowledge of graduate school practices and an ex cellent way of working with people." Currently, GradWeb allows interac tion between students, the Graduate School and departments to be han dled electronically with automatic e mail notifications sent to all parties. By creating a record of interactions, such as applications for admission and advanced degrees, GradWeb cre ates virtually error-proof permanent student records, Deemer said. Political Science graduate coordi nator Ilene Proudfoot said she finds GradWeb quick, easy and efficient. "Because there is less paperwork, there's less of a chance of documents getting lost," she said. "I can also keep a nice track of students' records." During the 2003 calendar year, 312,794 pages were accessed on GradWeb, which includes individual usage directly related to Graduate School business, Deemer said. Last year, GradWeb processed 1377 ap plications for graduate degrees, showing a 30 percent increase from the year before. Since last December, the first month of the admission application cycle, Deemer said she's already seen a 15 percent increase in online pro cessing compared to December 2002. She added that a number of other universities are extremely impressed by the GradWeb modules and "have shown a real interest in having some thing similar for themselves." Since GradWeb's completion, Deemer said the biggest challenge has been "keeping our excitement from spilling over and trying to do too much all at once." From a technical point of view, Suria also said two big challenges were migrating more than 10 years of data across different databases and platforms and ensuring accessibility across all browsers and platforms. "For the project as a whole, the biggest challenge that any new soft ware system faces is adoption by users and making sure that the software is easy to use," Suria said. Deemer said she is very proud to have been a part of the software cre ation because of the opportunity to serve the University. "I have been blessed with a long ca reer at this institution and have always worked with people that have been supportive and creative," she said. Contact the business/science/ technology reporter at caronalarab@dailyemerald.com. GRADWEB FEATURES GradWeb has made six modules available to the University community: • Application for admission online • Application for graduation (master degree candidates and doctoral degree candidates) • Surveys and exit questionnaires Three modules are specific to doctoral education: • Advancement to Candidacy • Doctoral Committee construction • Oral Defense of the dissertation SOURCE: Assistant Graduate School Dean Toby Deemer LEHNER continued from page 1 "The University and the organizations that make up the University is, as far as I'm con cerned, frankly, just another set of neighbor hoods," he said. "We'II sit down together. We'll talk about what the priorities are and what we need to do about them. Lehner said he has a strong desire to commu nicate not only with Uni versity groups but also to form partnerships with all neighborhood groups in Eugene. The city announced Lehner's appointment Dec. 19, three weeks after introducing him as its top choice in a lengthy selec tion process involving five other candidates. Lehner was part of a second re Robert M. Lehner Eugene Police Chief cruitment process that resulted after the top can didate in the first process in September dedined the position, citing family concerns about mov ing to the West Coast from Minnesota. The city's community relations director Jan Bohman said the rity initially delayed recruiting a new police department head after former Chief Jim Hill retired in Dec. 2001 because man agement wanted to first fill the then-vacant dty manager position. Although a new city manager was hired in February 2003, the police chief hiring was fur ther ddayed when the first candidate pulled out. City Manager Dennis Taylor said in a press re lease that Lehner is bright, articulate and exated about joining the city's leadership team. "He has finandal management strengths, out standing communication skills and is a proven problem-solver," Taylor said. "Mr. Lehner is the right and best fit for our department and our dty." Lehner, 48, joined the Tucson Police Depart ment in 1978 as an officer and dimbed through the ranks of detective, sergeant, lieutenant, cap tain and assistant chief. He has a master's degree in business administration from the University of Arizona. Officials said Lehner's experiences will serve him well in working on the big issues facing the Eugene police force such as staff vacancies. "We've been significantly understaffed for a while," EPD spokeswoman Pam Olshanski said. She added that the understaffing was due to a combination of factors including unanticipated call-ups to active military duty and retirements. Olshanski said the staff shortages have result ed in multiple stints of overtime and an inability to take active steps to prevent crime before it happens, which has hurt staff morale. Olshanski said Lehner also arrives at a time when the department's image in the community has been affected by recent unrelated charges against two former officers for inappropriate sex ual conduct while on the job. Lehner will also use his experience in campus police relations. While he never directly oversaw policing at the University of Arizona, he said he was "fairly close" to members of the university com muni ty, sitting down with administrators and stu dents to discuss issues of importance to them. He said he does have direct experience tack ling the problem of large parties and empha sized the need to keep parties small. "It's the bigger parties that frankly get out of control," he said. "It doesn't mean it's OK to have underage drinking but what it does mean is there is a reasonable balance somewhere be tween what is the appropriate level of enforce ment and what is the appropriate expenditure of police resources." This is just one of the issues Lehner said he hopes to discuss with students, administrators and neighborhood groups. "I know that students want a safe environ ment, " Lehner said. "Certainly their parents who send them here want a safe environment, and it's something that we will work on together to ensure that you'll have a safe educational experi ence while you're here." Contact the city/state politics reporter at nikacarlson@dailyemerald.com. Oregon Daily Emerald P.O. Box 3159, Eugene OR 97403 The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub lished daily Monday through Friday during the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.The Emerald operates inde pendently of the University with of fices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is private prop erty. The unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. 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