Student Success

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Integrated Course Scheduling for Departments (Ad Astra)

Program Status: At Risk

The Ad Astra Course Scheduling software uses data to optimize and streamline scheduling, offering real-time insights and creating efficiencies by eliminating manual and time-consuming processes. This software will provide staff and academic units with dynamic data and improved digital tools to support class scheduling. The system offers real-time class registration monitoring for academic programs, identifying courses that need additional sections or courses to consider for cancellation, making it easier for departments to meet student needs and demands.

Accomplished

  • The project team worked with 3 departments to pilot the Fall 26 term draft processing in Essential Scheduling.
  • Registration Monitoring is now available university-wide to help manage Fall 2026 registration.
  • Completed communication plan for academic leaders and department schedulers to understand the functionality and insights available through registration monitoring.
  • Completed a series of training sessions in late May.  Training provided users with the opportunity to monitor fall registration in real time.
  • Hosted an open house event to celebrate the launch of registration monitoring and demonstrate the tool.

In Progress

  • Working to identify and resolve ingest inconsistency in Registration Monitoring features.
  • OIT is working with Ellucian Student Information System (SIS) to identify and escalate ongoing defects. These defects put this project at risk.

Project Health

  • At Risk: Course Data Validation errors jeopardize the usability of this software. Current product defects with Ellucian impact further testing and implementation. 
  • PSU’s CIO has escalated this issue with the vendor and is awaiting a more specific timeline on defect resolution. 
  • Ad Astra is providing a test environment to facilitate faster testing once the Ellucian defects are resolved.

Project Team

Executive Sponsors: Ryan Bass, Shelly Chabon
Leads: Nicolle DuPont, Karenna Wait
Project Managers: Pamela Bock (OSS), Francesca Leaf (OIT)
Team: Adam Lutzow, Tuyet Nguyen, Michael Mitchell, JD Knapp, Katherine Barich, Andrea Garrity (Ad Hoc), Francesca Leaf, Matayla Lewis, Loni Elliott
Collaborators: Academic Scheduling Specialists