The five-year, universitywide project to upgrade and replace Temple’s aging administrative systems reached its first major milestone in April. Project Enterprise (or ERP) launched fsaAtlas, the system used by the Office of International Services to manage international student information, on April 29.

Led by Jeff Bazin, lead software developer for Computer Services, and Martyn Miller, director of Internal Services, fsaAtlas enables Temple to store all of its international student information in a single database on one server and ensures that the Office of International Services maintains compliance with the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which is required of U.S. educational institutions that host foreign students and exchange visitors.

Also as part of the transition to Project Enterprise, electronic grading went live on April 21, enabling all faculty members who turned in grades this spring to do so online. Through the new web-based electronic grading system, accessed via TUportal, instructors of undergraduate and non-professional graduate courses submitted their grades on time in record numbers. A tutorial developed by Computer Services’ Myra Taksa, director, and Gail Gallo, assistant director, as well as training sessions throughout April, helped prepare faculty for the transition from paper grade reporting.

The multimedia tutorial, available at www.temple.edu/cs/training/egrades, exemplifies the kinds of online support materials that will accompany system rollouts, said Associate Vice President of Computer Services Barbara Dolhansky, an executive steering committee member and project director for the ERP initiative.


The next major project to be implemented will be an upgrade to TUportal, scheduled

to be in place for the fall semester. At first, students, faculty and staff members will see only subtle changes to the look and feel of the portal, which they will continue to access from http://tuportal.temple.edu. Over time, as more Enterprise systems go live, TUportal will become the gateway to a new online purchasing, financial, human resources, registration and financial aid systems, announcements, news, events and more.

“The TUportal will be the face for all the new functionality,” said Anthony Lower, Computer Services’ applications systems manager and functional lead for the portal section of Project Enterprise.

Behind the scenes, a data standards committee has been formed and is meeting weekly to define rules and guidelines for the shared data the various systems will use. They will draft guidelines for how the data should be organized in order to ensure that the Enterprise systems integrate effectively and produce information that is “clean, usable and reliable,” Dolhansky said.

To stay informed about the progress of the implementation, visit the Project Enterprise web site at www.temple.edu/enterprise.

—By Betsy Winter Hall

For the Temple Times