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FAQs for Faculty and Staff

Administrative and Fiscal

  1. What is the timeline for conversion?
  2. What will be the short-term costs to the campus to convert?
  3. How will conversion be paid for?
  4. What assistance will divisions, colleges, departments, and faculty receive? (Resources, release time, etc.)
  5. Will existing systems be able to handle semesters? (e.g., PeopleSoft, Blackboard, etc.)
  6. Will there be any impact on FTES targets?
  7. How will the university handle compensation for work on the semester conversion project?

1. What is the timeline for conversion?

This current year (2013-14) will be spent planning for the conversion. Next year, 2014-15, the departments will convert (or revise, depending on its choice) their degree programs. This must be completed by the end of fall 2015. All curricular decisions must be concluded no later than spring 2016 and the catalog finalized so that individual roadmaps can be prepared for each student in progress. The first term under semesters will be Fall 2018.

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2. What will be the short-term costs to the campus to convert?

Short-term costs will probably be in the range of 5-7 million dollars not including the cost of revisions to software (e.g. PeopleSoft), which should be converted by the Chancellor’s Office. The following are actual or estimated costs from other Universities that have converted recently (Source RIT report by Mayberry):

  • University of Minnesota: $3.7 - $4M
  • Ohio State University: $3.7 – $4.2M
  • Ohio University: $4.6M
  • Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT): $4.6M - $5.4M

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3. How will conversion be paid for?

A substantial amount of the cost of conversion will be provided by the Chancellor’s Office as a special allocation. The University will support the remaining cost of conversion out of reserve funds. In particular, the Chancellor’s Office will support only “conversion” actions, those that translate existing curricula, policies, and processes into a semester structure, but not “revision” actions, those that take advantage of this opportunity to rethink curricula, policies, and processes.

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4. What assistance will divisions, colleges, departments, and faculty receive? (Resources, release time, etc.)

A formula will be used to allocate funds to each office to support conversion. The formula developed by Academic Affairs will take into account whether an academic department is merely converting its courses or using the opportunity to do a revision of its curriculum, and if the department has a heavy service or general education load. Some faculty will likely be provided funds to develop the semester curriculum. Senate committees will likely be provided some additional funds to review proposed new curricula for the whole campus. In all cases, it is likely that the funds may be used for assigned time and/or stipends as best fits the tasks. A draft of the fomula.

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5. Will existing systems be able to handle semesters? (e.g., PeopleSoft, Blackboard, etc.)

Yes, the current student administration system, Oracle/PeopleSoft, is capable of handling the semester calendar. In fact, this system is used by most of the CSU campuses that are on a semester calendar. There is, however, one caveat to this. As in any conversion process, IT resources will be devoted to developing applications or modifying existing applications to support the change. Significant changes will have to be made in the three modules of PeopleSoft: Student Records, Student Financials and Human Resources. Additional data storage will be needed from the CSU Chancellor’s Office CMS Unit to host the extra databases to support calendar conversion activities.

Other systems that Cal Poly Pomona uses, the Data Warehouse and Blackboard, can also handle a semester calendar. SOURCE: Cal Poly Pomona Chief Information Officer

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6. Will there be any impact on FTES targets?

Yes and No. The campus FTES target is an annualized target so no changes will be necessitated by conversion per se. Many campuses see a decline in enrollment in the first years following conversion. One issue that should be discussed with the Chancellor’s Office is whether the campus will be ‘held harmless’ if this occurs.

School/System % Net Decline Duration
Georgia system 11.8% 1 year
Utah system 5.8% temporary
Northeastern 0%
Minnesota ~5% 1 year

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7. How will the university handle compensation for work on the semester conversion project?

Many units across the university will be involved in making our conversion to a semester calendar a success.  The extent of that involvement will vary greatly. Some units will be minimally affected; in other units, the transition will require significant changes to business processes.  Accordingly, questions on the impact on workload will be addressed by each unit.


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