To track admissions and monitor the progress of its students, the Graduate School recently implemented its new Graduate Education Management System, which also improves the security of student information.
“We spent last semester building this system from scratch to benefit graduate programs across the entire university,” said Maureen Grasso, dean of the Graduate School. “It will dramatically improve our ability to provide graduate programs and prospective students with current and accurate information.”
GEMS collects student information beginning with applications sent to the Graduate School and synchronizes admissions information with the university’s Information Management System.
The result is up-to-date information sharing among departments, administration and students. The initial phase of GEMS focuses on the graduate admissions process.
“Once GEMS is completed, it will be able to handle confirmation of completion of graduate degree requirements, student data queries and accept advisory committee selections,” said Krista Haynes, director of graduate student services.
The development of GEMS has been a joint effort between Enterprise Information Technology Services and the Graduate School. GEMS assigns each prospective student a unique applicant identification number, instead of a Social Security number. EITS plans to expand the technology and apply it to other student information systems.