Students can order their own audits via the web, but the audits obtained by that method are based solely upon the information they have on file in the student records system.
Students may want or need audits showing what things would look like IF they changed some information concerning the degree program they are following--their major or catalog year, for example. To accomplish this, students need to have someone run an audit for them. This is also true if a student simply wants a general education audit--showing no major information at all.
To order audits using different information than what is on file for a student, the MnSCU student records system (ISRS) is used. There is a report screen that allows users to enter virtually whatever parameters they wish to obtain an audit for a student. In doing this you are not changing any of the student's actual information on file in the records system.
In order to generate an audit in this way, you need access to the student records system, which you can get by sending a request to Marcius Brock (email: Marcius.Brock@mnsu.edu). You also need access to the DARS report screen, which you can get by sending a request to David Reinen (email: David.Reinen@mnsu.edu). The final item you need is to have your printer made capable of printing reports from the student records system. This ability is gained by contacting Bill Scherer (email: William.Scherer@mnsu.edu), a MnSCU computer administrator housed in the IT area in the library, to have him set up a print queue for your printer (providing a copy of the printer test page is usually helpful).
After you have signed into the student records system, you should see the main ISRS screen.
By double-clicking on the MnSCU Reports Menu entry in the lower right column the report list should appear.
You can either enter the number of the report (DA0001CP) in the report number field and retrieve or you can scroll down the list to find the report and press the select button on the right side of the screen. The DARS report ordering screen should appear.
There are at most four fields you will need to fill in on this screen.
In addition, the printer information area will need to be filled in. The printer queue value is something you will get from Bill Scherer. The form ID should be filled in as HP16P.
Not all of the above four items always need to be filled in. If you only fill in the student's tech ID and the COM table value, the audit produced will be the same as what the student would obtain on their own via the web.
By filling in the catalog year field you can determine what catalog will be used for the audit. For example, to use the 2002-2003 catalog, you would enter 20033. Sometimes the MnSCU representation of terms seems non-intuitive. For example, the 2002-2003 academic year would be as follows:
The degree program field is the most difficult to fill in. The difficulty arises from the fact that numbers must be used to represent majors and minors, rather than names. Every major, minor, and concentration has a unique four-digit number assigned to it in the records system. A Management major is assigned the value of 0451, its Human Resource concentration is assigned 0457, and a Mathematics minor is assigned 0025. The list of codes changes slightly from year to year as programs are added, deleted, or modified on campus. A list of all of these codes is available online.
All degree program values being with the code for the degree itself (BS, BA, BFA, etc.) expressed as four characters. For example (the underscore used here is meant to show that spaces are typed to make the value four characters long):
These four characters are followed by four digits representing the major.
These four digits are followed (if applicable) by four digits representing the concentration for the major.
Finally, to represent a minor you add a / followed by the four digits for that minor.
Of course, you do not have to enter the value for the minor, if you are only concerned with investigating a particular major. However, many majors require a concentration and so would have to be represented by the full eight digits. In other words, you could not simply enter BS__0451 and get an audit.
Once you have filled in the information you wish and the necessary printer information, simply store or save. The audit should be produced and printed.
General Education audits contain no reference to any major or minor, but are often helpful early in a student's career. To run a general education audit you use either GEBS (general education for a BS degree) or GEBA (general education for a BA degree) for the value in the degree program area of the ordering screen.
