Center for Information Technology Services

SURFS Adds New Services for Students
CITS is working with the Graduate School and the School of Nursing to implement Web-based Admissions processing. This new SURFS (Student UseR Friendly System) feature will allow students to apply for admission directly from each school's web page. Once an application is completed via SURFS, the application will be stored in the Student Information Management System and be ready for the individual school to review and decide whether the student is eligible for admission. Online-applying students will also be able to track the status of their applications by going to the same link within each school's web page. This tracking feature will enable each student to see what Requirements items have been received by the Admissions Offices as well as the decision status of his/her online application. Nursing is expected to go live around March 1st, 2004 and the Graduate School sometime after that.

CITS is also working with the Financial Aid Office to better serve students via SURFS. Not only will students be able to see their Financial Aid awards on the Web, they will also be able to accept all or part of their awards online. In addition, students can view messages that may pertain to and offer assistance in satisfying an outstanding requirement on their Financial Aid records. This operation will expedite the Financial Aid process for students by ruling out the time it takes for letters to be mailed, received, and processed. You can expect to see this new functionality in place sometime in May, in time for the 2004/2005 Aid Year.

The Office of Records and Registration is also involved in increasing the self-service functionality of SURFS. Students will soon be able to change their Mailing, Permanent, Business and Campus Addresses as well as their Emergency Contact Information and specific email addresses. This enhancement will eliminate the time lag between when a student requests these types of data changes and the time that a staff member enters the data in the system. It will also potentially free up staff around the campus from having to make data changes based on paper forms they receive.

Technology Tips
Buzz Merrick

Password Pickle
Are you one of the many UMB employees who have access to multiple software packages that each requires you to change your password on a regular basis? A frequent complaint of end users is that these dates never seem to mesh. Here's a tip that will allow you to manage your password-changing troubles simply and easily: Instead of changing each of your passwords on the date a particular system prompts you to do so, one at a time, change all your passwords at the same time!

Not all users understand that they can change their passwords anytime within the window of opportunity offered by a certain software package - not just at the specific time the system gives you a "password about to expire" message.

Let's say you have access to eUMB, SIMS and FAS, and eUMB sends you a message telling you to change your password. Go ahead and change your password as prompted, then close eUMB. Then open up FAS and change that password. Once you've changed your FAS password, close FAS, open SIMS and change that password. Voila! No more need to write reminders on your calendar so that you remember when to change your passwords; you're done--most likely for the next 90 days!

Remember that different packages have different password standards, so make sure you change your password in accordance with the requirements of the particular software package in question. Remember also that in order to effectively change a password, you may only need to change some letters from upper case to lower case, or choose a different number or special character (1, 2, 3, !, @, #, $, %, etc.).

It's that easy. I think you'll agree that your password predicament is not such a pickle after all-or at least perhaps it's a sweet pickle, not a sour one!