Degree Audit Reporting System

An automated transfer credit and degree audit evaluation system that will provide significant work savings to the campus, improved accuracy of information provided to students, and more thorough faculty and professional advising for students. SIS worked on the development of the system and integrated the DARS package from Miami University at Ohio into the Berkeley student system environment. The major product of the system is a report for an individual student, summarizing the student's progress toward graduation, and indicating both graduation requirements that have been completed and those that remain to be satisfied. The report will be made available either as a paper report or by e-mail. Encoding of graduation requirements has been completed for all departments. The Office of the Registrar has encoded graduation requirements for 125 departments. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions has encoded transfer articulation rules for 1200 transfer schools.

Work has been initiated to implement electronic data interchange (EDI) for DARS to receive transcripts for entering transfer students in electronic form and avoid having to do manual data entry for transfer courses. Berkeley is collaborating on EDI with other UC campuses and local community colleges that are large feeder schools.

The initial focus of the DARS pilot implementation is for academic departments to use the DARS report for advising and other purposes. The DARS report is available directly to students through the Bear Facts system which allows students to request their own DARS report, with the report sent to the student in electronic form using e-mail. Thus far in calendar year 2002, we have already processed more than 15,000 requests.