Every fall, thousands of Pitt students complete an application for graduation, hoping for a sign-off from their academic advisor. Making a graduation eligibility determination requires a lot more effort than most people realize. Each student has a complex and unique path to graduation, which can make the determination quite complicated. So, the Academic Records Team in the School of Computing and Information (SCI) approached Pitt Information Technology to help make the process faster and easier.

The Current Process

Confirming eligibility for graduating students had been a manual process with a tight timeline. First, the Registrar’s Office sends a bulk Academic Advising Report to each school, a massive PDF file with the academic records of each student who has applied for graduation. These PDFs must be combined with departmental records and data from other systems. Finally, each students’ progress needs to be evaluated individually to determine if they’ve met all the requirements.

At SCI, this difficult process was coordinated by Brandi Belleau, Director of Academic Records. Belleau heard many stories of people coming in at 6:30 a.m. during winter break and gathering around a conference table with an enormous stack of folders.

Dashboard to the Rescue

Belleau knew there had to be a better way and began talking with Pitt IT. She had several requirements that were non-negotiable for a Degree Audit Dashboard. First, it needed to use the same data reports that Pitt already uses. Second, the data needed to be live, so that any new information was immediately reflected. Third, the data needed to be visualized at the group and individual level to easily identify those who were eligible to graduate and those whose application needed further investigation. Finally, the report needed to be sortable on many criteria for maximum usability.

"We need to throw away the ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ mentality. Just because something wasn’t possible before doesn’t mean it’s not possible now."

Pitt IT began working closely with Belleau and the Registrar’s Office to create a single dashboard for undergraduate SCI programs. The Dashboard pulls active students’ progress into a single view that can be filtered by everything from missing requirements to academic advisors.

A Whole New World

The Degree Audit Dashboard has truly changed the game for reviewing graduation requirements in SCI. Instead of the process taking 15+ frantic days, it now takes about a week … and they hope to cut it down to just a few days with further tweaks. Moreover, the dashboard enables advisors to help students identify and schedule classes they still need, so they can schedule accordingly to graduate on time.

Belleau encourages departments to move beyond frustration and reach out to find a better way. “We need to throw away the ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ mentality. Just because something wasn’t possible before doesn’t mean it’s not possible now,” she says. If you are interested in adopting a Degree Audit Dashboard for your school, contact Pitt IT to see how we can help!