Student Data | News

Eastern Washington U Moves Degree Auditing to Java-Based System

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/05/10

Eastern Washington University has upgraded its degree audit reporting system to a newer, Java-based program. The 11,300-student institution, based in Cheney, WA, moved from redLantern's DARwin to u.achieve in order to address a policy change that affected how grade point averages were calculated.

The move to the new reporting system offers several advantages, according to Julie Harner, the degree audit and transfer articulation coordinator for the university. First, DARwin is COBOL-based; u.achieve is Java-based. "On the technical side, we don't have a full-blooded COBOL programmer that could easily rewrite the code that moving to DARwin 3.5.9 would require; so upgrading to u.achieve, with its Java code base, was a huge improvement."

Also, the newer application offers self-service features, allowing students and advisors to access audit information securely. A function called "Interactive Audit" allows the reporting to be shown with charts and graphs that visually illustrate a student's progress to degree completion.

"u.achieve Self Service is much more interactive, and we plan on doing tons of customizations," Harner said. "It's just much easier using this version; we are very happy and feel it was a great move on our part."

Other redLantern clients in the state include the University of Washington, also in Seattle, and Washington State University in Pullman.