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By late spring of next semester, all university students will be conducting their registration, finances and records management within MaineStreet, which will replace WebDSIS.
“What Mainestreet is going to do is empower you to take care of your own stuff,” said Peggy Crawford, director of the financial aid department. The whole focus of the change is to give students “real-time, 24/7 access” to a more dynamic program than WebDSIS.
The initial system will be fully implemented some time in the late spring of 2008, but additional features will be added within the next two to three years.
With the new MaineStreet, students will be able to choose classes from UMaine, as well as other state universities, Crawford said. In addition, students will have greater access to their financial aid information and their grades.
MaineStreet uses a program called The Gradebook, which will allows students to compare their grades to other students in their class, and will post grades faster than WebDSIS can, according to Tammy Light, the director of the Office of Student Records.
The MaineStreet program, also known as PeopleSoft, is utilized by over 400 universities across the nation.
Already several parts of the MaineStreet system have been implemented; the MaineStreet portal is where work-study students and people within the university payroll go to change their personal information, Meisner said.
Training and communication coordinators throughout seven Maine universities are working closely together to ensure every part of MaineStreet is properly implemented and that university’s staff is trained to use it, Meisner said. UMaine is slowly finishing the process of transferring its student records from WebDSIS to the new MaineStreet.
Light expects the program would “have some growing pains,” but also said “I think it’s going to be a good tool for us.”
Bangor Daily News