Despite recent efforts to improve the efficiency of ISIS, many students experienced delay and frustration while accessing the system on the first day of class.
Third-year College student Brandon Kemp said he spent 45 minutes trying to get onto ISIS in the Clemons computer lab before turning to fellow female students for aid.
"Go flirt with some guys who are on ISIS -- get them kicked off so I can get on," he said.
According to ITC, administrators increased system user capacity from 80 to 100 users. 100 users is the current hardware's capacity limit, said Don Reynard, director of applications and data services for ITC.
Many students, however, were greeted with a familiar ISIS salutation: "The number of users has been exceeded." Others experienced slow progress as their computers froze again and again.
After the ISIS server crash last November prevented many students from registering on time, the University shut down the system entirely and promised reform. The Registrar's Office had to restart the entire registration process by clearing enrollment and rescheduling student access times.
Following the 2002 upheaval, many students hoped for a revamped system.
"ISIS is supposed to be better and I haven't noticed an improvement," second-year College student Michelle Cloud said, after repeatedly trying to drop a class yesterday afternoon in the Clemens computer lab.
First-year College student Nicole Idoko said she understood the delay.
"I think ISIS is OK," Idoko said. "It's just this time period because everyone is changing classes."
Considering issues the system has to contend with, ISIS has performed very well, University Registrar Carol Stanley said.
"Students wait until the last second to final register or to sign up for classes," she said. "It's like everyone leaving work to get on a two lane highway at the same time."
When asked if ISIS hours of operation could be extended, Reynard said that the current system is a mainframe that has to shut down at night for interface back-up and clean-out, which requires the full nine hours that ISIS is closed each night.
"We will be changing the hardware that ISIS is running on in the near future," Reynard said. "We're seeing if there are opportunities to streamline how things currently are done both from a technological perspective and a process perspective."
Reynard added that ITC is working with Student Enrollment Services Process Owners' Group, a body consisting of administrators, faculty and a student representative, to research more efficient alternatives to ISIS.
Reynard explained that the current system enters a lock-down period over the summer which causes a surge in ISIS usage in August.
"The sheer volume of the daily processing now is exponential and we're looking at a way to even it out," he said. "It's not just a hardware issue, though, we need to change the way we do business here."
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