Process Improvements for Academic Systems and Student Support

View policy, process, and project updates below.

Completed

  • Identity Preferences – In an effort to ensure Charlotte feels like a home away from home, students, faculty, and staff can share their identity preferences with the campus community. This information can be added/updated/removed at any time using Banner Self-Service (accessible via MyCharlotte). This new functionality went into effect in March 2022.
  • Academic Forgiveness Processing (post census) – Academic Forgiveness is an opportunity for students to start fresh after being away from Charlotte for two or more years. The process of applying for academic forgiveness begins after registration add/drop, and previously took several days to finish each term. A new automated solution has reduced this process time from days to minutes. New functionality went into effect in January 2025.
  • Grade Change (596) – The previous grade change process that received faculty grade changes, records the rationale for the change, and updates Banner reached its end of life. A new process was developed to ensure this functionality continues, can grow as our needs change, and extends into the future. New ProcessMaker functionality went live in August 2025.
  • Optimized Classroom Scheduling – General-purpose classrooms were transitioned from departmental ownership to the Office of the Registrar. Utilizing an optimization model, this new classroom scheduling approach addresses the need to increase utilization rates while meeting the needs of faculty and students. This transition began during the course scheduling window for Spring 2025.
  • Transfer Credit Solution, Automation, and Database Cleanup (594) – This project has moved Charlotte from manual data entry to automatically processing transcript data, regardless of the delivery medium. The current solution requires hours of data entry per student. Our new solution allows us to articulate a transcript in minutes. The solution scrapes transcript data and queues it for a quick review and articulation. Results are pushed to Banner. In addition to the new solution, a lot of time and effort has also been devoted to organizing and cleaning our transfer articulation database of courses. New functionality went into effect in March 2025.

In Progress

  • Grade Replacement (597) – The current automated grade replacement process has reached its end of life. A new automated grade replacement process is underway, utilizing ProcessMaker. This change will ensure grade replacement automation continues, and the baseline functionality that supports this process has a longer shelf life. – In production, but a few enhancements are still in development; Estimated completion: April 3, 2026
  • Student Program Change (589) – We are redeveloping our process for students to request curricular changes and providing additional automation. The current process whereby an advisor requests on behalf of the student, submits the request via PDF, and the Office of the Registrar updates Banner is outdated. We anticipate a redesign that will allow students to submit requests referencing curricular programs at Charlotte. Those requests will be vetted within the solution and, upon approval, updated in Banner. – [Ranked #9 for Academic Affairs] OneIT has delayed this project to Spring 2026
  • New Rounds for Readmissions: Slate (719) – The Readmissions Office, as part of the Registrar, is requesting the addition of a new round “RA” to be built into Slate. This will allow a separate application to be built from the undergraduate application, but will require some modifications to banner exports, automations, application logic, etc. – Estimated completion: March 2, 2026
  • Cleanup & Update Banner Source/Background Institution Code Validation STVSBGI Table (713) – Institutional Research & the Office of the Registrar have requested that the Banner Source/Background Institution Code Validation (STVSBGI) Table be updated to remove duplicate records. Cleaning up this table will assist with the ongoing transfer articulation project and produce cleaner data on degrees and institutions in student and staff records. This table has a lot of child records, so the updates must be made carefully, considering other systems that also consume this data. – Estimated completion: 6/30/2026

Proposed

  • System/Regional Campuses with the Same Courses: Cloning (737) – When institutions have multiple regional campuses that offer the same courses, updating each institution is a resource-intensive effort and subject to inconsistencies. This project will focus on identifying a primary campus where transfer courses and their equivalents are maintained, so they can receive updates and be replicated across the related regional campuses. This will ensure transfer credit is consistent across all campuses and reduce the time required to update all campuses within that region or system. We currently have five cloning events in production, but the need is more with the ability to expand as needed in the future. We have identified a growing list of over 200 institutional cloning needs. [Ranked #13 for Academic Affairs]
  • Full and Partial Withdrawal Requests (733) – The proposed solution would allow students to submit term withdrawal requests after drop/add ends and individual course withdrawals after the withdrawal deadline (60% of the term). There are many scenarios and nuances that currently follow different paths to resolution. The solution would provide guidance and considerations for the student before finalizing. The solution will provide for the collection, communication, and updating of information among academic departments, students, and our student information system. [FY26 Deferred]
  • Credit by Exam (732) – The current routing of a paper request form used to capture the intent, confirm payment, and award credit by exam is resource-intensive. The current process creates anxiety among the students, the academic department, and the processing teams. The request would determine if credit has already been awarded, verify the payment, and automatically update Banner after completion. Credit by exam is offered in several academic departments; therefore, multiple partners will need to be involved in developing this solution. [FY26 Deferred]
  • Transfer Credit Advisor Improvement (731) – Update our transfer credit advisor, the public-facing transfer equivalency lookup resource, to provide additional information. [Ranked #14 for Academic Affairs]
    • Display many-to-many and many-to-one equivalencies. These do not currently appear in the TCA
    • Create a means to display researched non-equivalencies. This is not currently displayed, leaving end-users not knowing if it has been reviewed
    • Create a parameter search for ‘credit for prior learning’
    • Create a parameter search by country and U.S. province
    • Display institutional credit hours at the time the student took the course. Currently, we only display Charlotte’s equivalent credit hours
    • Display only the latest course equivalency. Currently, we display all variations of credit over time 
  • Multi-System Approver Management (740) – The University needs a more automated and secure solution to maintain approver roles across various systems. The current manual process is inefficient and prone to error because it relies on individual departments to submit requests in a timely manner and on the Office of the Registrar to interpret them and perform manual updates across multiple systems. Many academic decisions that require timely adjudication by the appropriate approvers within these systems directly affect business offices, academic departments, and students’ educational outcomes. A more efficient, effective, and secure role-based approver management solution is requested. [FY26 Deferred]
  • Automated Prerequisite/Registration Error Drop (744) – This project will allow the university to identify students who have not successfully completed their in-progress course(s), enabling them to obtain the skills and college support necessary to succeed in future courses. In addition to identifying this group of students, Banner can automatically drop students who receive registration error messages. Currently, the drop process is 100% manual, which can lead to human error, delays in communicating with students, advisors, and partner offices, and extensive time and labor to complete the task. This project would automate and streamline the process, providing an efficient, organized solution that supports effective progress toward degree completion. [FY26 Deferred]
  • Curriculog to Banner (749) – Reconciling Curriculog course proposals in Banner is currently 100% manual. There have been discussions about automating the process for close to a decade to no avail. As the University expands and new Federal/State policies are implemented, the need for a technology solution to streamline the process becomes even more imperative. The volume of approved course proposals has increased; however, the time and personnel have not. Integrating Banner and Curriculog will help efficiently process proposals and alleviate the bottleneck that slows the catalog editor’s process. Academic departments that rely on accelerated processing to build course sections for the upcoming term also benefit from this integration. [FY26 Deferred]

Definitions

  • Banner – Charlotte’s student information system or record source for all things Charlotte
  • Banner Self-Service – The end-user-facing portal that allows interaction with Banner
  • Curriculog – Charlotte’s system for program and course curriculum changes, additions, and deletions