A Web-based advising application, developed by members of the information technology staff and the Office of Academic Advising and Graduation Certification in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been named winner of a national outstanding advising technology award.
The award was given by the National Academic Advising Association for the SARA (Student Advising and Registration Assistant) program, which was developed and has been maintained by Michael Brewer of the Franklin College and Jason Orrill, now with UGA’s Enterprise Information Technology Services.
The honor will be presented at the association’s annual national conference in Las Vegas in October.
The award is part of the national group’s 2005 National Awards Program for Academic Advising.
“We are very proud that NACADA has recognized the collaborative efforts that Michael Brewer, the other information technology staff and the Office of Academic Advising and Graduation Certification have put into the development of the SARA system,” says Franklin College senior academic adviser Leigh Holland, who nominated SARA for the award. “Through everyone’s efforts, SARA has been finely tuned to meet the needs of our office by allowing us to create and maintain the data required for successful interactions between staff and students from orientation all the way through to graduation.”
Orrill designed most of the graphics and colors of SARA as well as three subsections of the site. Brewer designed the main database and programmed a large part of the site’s code, including maintenance programming of Orrill’s code since he left the Franklin IT group several years ago.