The recent addition of the Student Services Center on the MyBGSU web portal is just a small part of a much larger project that’s been around since before most current students even attended the University. ‘It’s just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Cindy Fuller, communications coordinator for the Office of the Chief Information Officer. The BG@100 project, so named for its anticipated completion date on the centennial of the University, was created in 2003 to implement a new software, PeopleSoft, to integrate the separate departmental information systems into a cohesive, interconnected network. The change to PeopleSoft involves nearly all aspects of University information systems including admissions, bursar, financial aid, housing and registration, said Christopher Cox, registrar and co-director of BG@100. ‘From a student’s perspective, the big benefit is going to be that PeopleSoft is all one system where current administrative systems are all different systems.’ According to Cox, the old systems required a labor-intensive transfer of data from one system to another that makes the systems unavailable to students at night and can cause delays in the release of registration holds and other administrative actions. ‘To get data from one system to the other entails a lot of work at night to port data from one system to the other so the next step in the process could take place,’ Cox said. But with PeopleSoft, the days of delays and nightly outages are over. ‘Now we’re all working off the same data in the same system,’ Cox said. ‘If the Bursar releases a hold, a student can just walk to the nearest computer and register.’ And Fuller said all MyBGSU services will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to streamlining information transfer between departments, the BG@100 project is also trying to make information more easily accessible to students and faculty. While students in the past have had to download a pdf document to find out when their registration time was available, now that information will be available online as part of the new Student Services Center. ‘We push the data right to [students]; no longer do they need to work the grid to try and figure out where they fit in,’ Cox said. With the BG@100 project nearing its anticipated completion date, Fuller said the program is moving into the final stage: implementation. ‘The first phase of the project was the Human Resources, then the financial, then the student,’ she said. Cox said the BG@100 program asked students to test the new registration system before launching. Feedback has been good, he said. ‘So far we’ve had over 2,700 students register for summer using the new system,’ Cox said. ‘The response has been very positive.’ Freshman Abdulaziz Alqahtani thought the updates were for the better. ‘[The Student Services Center] is good,’ he said. ‘New things are always better than old and people here like to change.’ However some students weren’t so keen on the February changes to the Student Services Center on the MyBGSU web portal. Joshua Sengstock, a junior, said he noticed the changes but didn’t feel they were very helpful. ‘I wouldn’t say that the changes have been horrible, but I’d say [the MyBGSU web portal] is still difficult to navigate,’ he said. ‘I was just glad that I could still get to where I knew.’ Senior Katie Hoskinson said she doesn’t use MyBGSU very often, but wasn’t impressed by the new interface. ‘I guess they probably changed it so it could be more helpful,’ she said. ‘But I think it’s kind of convoluted and there’s a million words everywhere. I know how to get to the one thing I need to get to and that’s about it. Everything else is kind of superfluous.’ In anticipation of any problems students may have with the Student Service Center, the BG@100 project elected to include the question marks to the left of each function which, if clicked, provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to use each function. ‘The students can preview the tutorials so they don’t have to just jump in,’ Cox said. Although now nearing completion, the system change was a monumental task. To sucessfully change over to PeopleSoft, the BG@100 project had to convert data from the old systems into the PeopleSoft system. The records of over 250,000 students and five million people enrolled since 1940 were converted. ‘[The conversion] was incredibly huge, and it took the work of this whole project office and about half the campus to complete it,’ Cox said. He said PeopleSoft will be fully implemented by July. Should students have any questions or concerns, the BG@100 project provides a free hotline to help students with the new process. The number is 419-372-4444.