The benefits of unifying all University System of New Hampshire (USNH) IT departments into a singular, system-wide department is already paying off.
This spring, UNH assisted Plymouth State University (PSU) in its upgrade of DegreeWorks, saving the $80,000 initially slated for the project while also creating strong working relationships between the teams involved.
DegreeWorks is a stack of software applications that helps students graduate on time by mapping out which courses they should take to receive a degree in their respective major. It also assists advisors in supporting students by providing them with detailed information about a student’s progress. Plymouth State University has leveraged DegreeWorks since 2011, while UNH has used it since 2013.
IT staff at both PSU and UNH have worked independently to manage and provide technical support for DegreeWorks. In 2019, PSU lost its primary DegreeWorks administrator, which initially left the university to rely on their vendor to help with the application upgrade.
PSU Registrar Tonya LaBrosse contacted UNH/USNH CIO Bill Poirier to ask for help after learning of the newly formed Enterprise Technology & Services, a group comprising IT staff from all USNH institutions. This arrangement enables USNH IT staff to share knowledge and develop in-house solutions that can be shared across the enterprise.
Poirier offered PSU help in the way of experienced, knowledgeable staff from UNH, who know the inner workings of DegreeWorks on a deep level.
Starting in March, IT staff from UNH and PSU collectively logged more than 300 hours to move the DegreeWorks instance at PSU from version 4.16 to 5.03 SP1, the latest version of the application stack. The teams finished the upgrade as scheduled in mid-May, with the final piece coming in the form of a service pack that fixed several application bugs. The project’s conclusion came just in time for the PSU Office of the Registrar to release grades and graduate the class of 2020.
ET&S also upgraded Degreeworks to version 5.0.1 at both Granite State College and UNH starting in spring 2019 and finishing in spring 2020.
