SLU working on software glitches Aug 28 2000 12:00AM By By CRAIG MALISOW Daily Star Staff Writer Southeastern Louisiana University enrollment and financial aid faculty have been working overtime to correct glitches in the university's new administrative software program that canceled hundreds of student loans and left some professors scratching their heads at how many students were actually enrolled in their classes.

Like many universities across the country, SLU has experienced problems with a PeopleSoft program that has exceeded reasonably expected first-year problems, faculty and staff said Friday.

Beatrice Baldwin, assistant vice president of Academic Affairs, and Stephen Soutullo, interim director of Academic Services, said this morning that things are starting to fall into place.

"It's quite an adjustment for everyone," Soutullo said of the software conversion, "but ultimately, we've been through these kinds of changes several times over the last 20 years, and it's no different than any of those."

"Overall, I've been very pleased," Baldwin said of the adjustment to the software.

The university began its upgrade from the former Legacy system to the Web-based PeopleSoft system last year. The five-year cost of purchasing and implementing the software is roughly $2 million, Baldwin said.

Along with an Oracle-related database, the PeopleSoft program is meant to improve student services and upgrade the university's human resources and financial departments. Last week's registration period was the first full semester under the new program.

Other sources who requested to remain anonymous out of concern for their jobs said that last week's registration was a "nightmare."

Although registration was supposed to end Thursday, SLU officials extended it through Friday so students, staff and faculty could clear up any misunderstandings the system may have caused.

Confusion over the new system led to the cancellation or suspension of many student loans, which prevented many of those students from registering for classes.

Confusion also resulted in many ineligible students being able to register for higher-level courses without any prerequisites. Some professors said they were unable to post summer semester grades on the new system or access an accurate class count.

Along with the usual first-week confusion the university experiences every year, these problems led to longer lines in financial aid and enrollment offices and tied up departmental phone lines for hours, sources said.

An enrollment services reorganization that resulted in the resignations of four long-time employees may have exacerbated the problem, sources said.

Yet even in a staff shortage, enrollment services employees who worked nights and weekends throughout the summer continued their overtime last week to make sure students were able to take the classes they registered for and received their loans.

Problems that other universities have encountered with the PeopleSoft program have been cited in numerous reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education over the past year or two.

Seven of the eight universities in the Big Ten Conference that use the PeopleSoft program sent a joint letter last January to the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company listing their grievances.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 28, 2000

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 28, 2000.