To the Editor:
 
For over a decade, Vanderbilt students have faced difficulties navigating OASIS, our university’s cumbersome, complex and often frustrating system for course enrollment. Many students continue to voice displeasure with systems overloads, expiring wait lists and bumped courses. Unfortunately, calls for reform of our outdated system have yielded few results. Due to the highly integrated nature of the Vanderbilt IT network, creating a new course enrollment system requires patches for student records, financial aid, Medical Center, student employment and university billing databases to communicate with the central system. Building a unique model for Vanderbilt requires time and substantial financial resources, two elements that can be fleeting in times of economic scarcity.

Despite the challenges of replacing the system, university administrators agree that the archaic OASIS model for course enrollment is unacceptable for a top tier institution such as ours. Hearing the concerns of Vanderbilt Student Government representatives, the Vanderbilt’s Enrollment Management Systems division has committed significant financial, employee and time resources towards developing a new model. Under the leadership of Cheng Khoo, the University Registrar, and Lori Shipley, the Director of Enrollment Management and Information Systems, Vanderbilt is on track to introduce an OASIS replacement in Spring 2010 that will massively improve the course enrollment experience.

The new system looks to provide a host of exciting functions, including advanced course search filters by instructor and time of day, a shopping cart for “tagging” courses of interest with quick views of course availability, and “drop if enroll” capability to allow for students to drop a course only if they find a seat off the wait list in a more desirable one. Also, wait lists will no longer require updates every 24 hours, as students will only lose their wait list seat if they gain enrollment, are removed by the university registrar, or remove themselves. Although the improvement is overdue, it will tremendously improve the course enrollment experience upon implementation.

Until next spring, VSG is committed to easing student navigation on the current system. Over the past several days, we have been collaborating with the registrar’s office to develop strategies for easing navigation on OASIS and educate students about ways they can improve their experiences in the coming add/drop period. The capacity level of OASIS is extremely limited — VSG has learned from the university registrar that the system can only serve 250 users at one time. In order to reduce overloads on OASIS during the next week, we encourage you to practice these strategies:
 
1. Seek out the university course catalog to find your class meeting rooms. By logging into OASIS to find out where your chemistry section is meeting, you are preventing other students from making changes to their schedule.

2. "Log-off" the system once you have completed actions on OASIS. Simply closing the window does not automatically take you off the system and limits other students from accessing OASIS.
 
3. If you are not updating your position on wait lists, focus your time on OASIS on non-peak hours in the afternoon or evening. Try to avoid unnecessary browsing for courses during the add/drop period, as many students are attempting to gain access to the system at one time during the first week of classes.
 
By following these simple steps to reduce congestion, students can make OASIS more accessible for everyone and reduce overloads within the system. Until the improved course enrollment system is introduced, VSG plans to keep students informed of progress in the implementation timeline and updates in the functionality of the replacement model. As always, we welcome student questions about our efforts and look forward to hearing your thoughts, concerns, and suggestions for improving the undergraduate experience at Vanderbilt.

Wyatt Smith
Student Body President
Vanderbilt Student Government