Posted: 7/28/2025
The CourseLeaf Project is nearing the upcoming release of the CourseLeaf course approval form, which will replace the eCourse system. We anticipate that the course approval form will go live and be available for use on August 27th, 2025. As we continue preparing for the release of the form, this date is subject to change. As part of...
Posted: 6/13/2022
One hundred thirty four years ago in May 1888, Vincent Van Gogh painted "Landscape under a Stormy Sky" depicting gray clouds on the horizon above a verdant green field. Over the past five years at UC San Diego we've flipped Vincent's logic and used process landscapes to brighten the skies and horizon of our campuswide...
Posted: 4/14/2022
SIS Project Change Lead Sara Danford sat down with IT Services’ The Current podcast to talk about her role on the project. Give it a listen to learn more about what it means to be a change lead, the current state of the SIS Project, lessons learned and what Sara’s looking forward to on the...
Posted: 3/16/2021
The ESR program, in collaboration with IT Services, has improved how we serve the university during major incidents - unplanned interruptions or reductions in service quality, which have a significant impact on business and end users. Now available for use, the Major Incident Management process leverages the university’s...
Posted: 2/11/2021
The Kuali Research application was released to campus in January 2020. To mark the occasion, IT Services' The Current Podcast caught up with project Change Lead Nicole Joyce to check in on: users' change journey prioritizing configuration over customization the role of process improvement lessons learned and what comes...
Posted: 1/14/2021
Get to know UC San Diego’s team of process improvement experts. Lean Bench Managers Prachi Raheja and Shawn Munro recently joined IT Services' The Current podcast to discuss the program’s origins and purpose, and the contributions it has made to ESR. Prachi and Shawn appear starting at 1:47. Prefer reading the...
Posted: 10/13/2020
In early 2020 UC San Diego launched the Services & Support Portal, which serves as a centralized place for students, faculty, staff and community members to get help in the following categories: Budget & Finance; Information Technology; Payroll, Academic Personnel...
Posted: 9/9/2020
For UC San Diego students - whether undergraduate, graduate, professional or Extension - the Student Information System (SIS) is the most important behind-the-scenes software system in their academic lives. It's behind-the-scenes in the sense that students do not interact with it on a daily basis, but most important in the sense that the...
Posted: 8/17/2020
It’s hard to believe that the July 1 release of the Financial Information System (FIS) marked the third year of our ESR journey. The launch of 17 new systems, to date, started with a vision and a PowerPoint deck. I’d like to personally thank the hundreds of staff members who have contributed to the ESR projects as...
Posted: 6/10/2020
Hi y’all! My name is Katie and I’m the Business Process Lead for the Student Information System (SIS) project. My day job is in the Division of Biological Sciences where I am a Technical Project Manager with a background in user experience design. As part of the Biology Computer Services business unit, I lead a great team of...
Posted: 6/9/2020
In March, as the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the shift to remote classes, on-campus residents were given the option of voiding their housing contracts and receiving housing credits. Approximately 9,500 students took this option.For Student Financial Solutions (SFS), applying credits is a manual, student-by-student process. While we were...
Posted: 5/19/2020
A business-focused initiative, Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) introduces a lot of change to UC San Diego as projects reengineer how we do business. So, as complex processes are streamlined and systems are retired, replaced and/or upgraded, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the people we are asking to adopt universitywide change....
Posted: 5/8/2020
As University Registrar, I’m responsible for supporting the instructional mission of the university by providing core enrollment services to students, faculty, colleges and academic departments in the areas of academic records, class scheduling and registration. It’s a job I take seriously, but also...
Posted: 2/18/2020
As we all know, UC San Diego has the distinction of being recognized as a top-tier academic institution. This has been remarkably achieved despite core business systems that have not kept pace with our organization’s growth and evolution. The time for this to change has come so that the legacy of UC San Diego’s global...
Posted: 2/13/2020
UC San Diego’s Lean Bench, a team of Lean Six Sigma experts, has completed another successful year of bringing process improvement to Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR). The group recently met to recognize accomplishments of its 2019 cohort and welcome new members for 2020. Over the past year, the...
Posted: 11/18/2019
Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) means change for UC San Diego. Big change – in terms of how we work, access data and connect systems. The people helping individuals and departments work through change are Say-Ho Tan, Jessica Pohle and Angela Carpenter from the ESR Continuity Planning...
Posted: 3/18/2019
In times of change, it makes sense for employees to look first to their management for information, support, and advice. What happens, though, if a manager isn’t prepared to guide their staff through change related to a new program or...
Posted: 2/15/2019
UC San Diego’s team of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) experts is back for another year of process improvement on Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) projects. Lean Bench members work closely with subject matter experts to map out current state processes, analyze problems by measuring key data points, then identify opportunities...
Posted: 1/15/2019
This is shaping up to be a big year for Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR). Several systems will come online, others will continue the journey through vendor selection and configuration, while others are just now kicking off. With ESR systems in mind, it’s worth considering how the...
Posted: 12/20/2018
It’s been a busy first year for the UC San Diego Lean Bench, a team of Lean Six Sigma experts tasked with implementing process improvement efforts for Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) projects and other campuswide initiatives. On the ESR front, Lean Bench has engaged with the Space...
Posted: 12/20/2018
Last year UC San Diego received more than $1.2 billion in awarded research funding. This funding is supported by a trend of increasing applications submitted to our sponsors each year. During the first quarter of FY19, the number of proposals submitted by UC San Diego researchers increased by 38% over the same period from FY18! During the last...
Posted: 12/13/2018
Online Data Panel Q&A Session Thursday, December 13, 2018 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. As the Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) program reviews and updates our major campus business systems (finance, student, HR, research, facilities, etc.), the way we access data will be changing. Visit esr.ucsd.edu/data to learn more about...
Posted: 11/29/2018
The Way You Get Data is Changing As the Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) program reviews and updates our major campus business systems (finance, student, HR, research, facilities, etc.), the way we access data is also changing. The wide variety of applications that rely on data that is currently accessed through tools like IFIS, the...
Posted: 9/20/2018
“Expert sourcing” – relying on UC San Diego talent – lies at the heart of our approach to Enterprise Systems Renewal. As the program works to reshape the way UC San Diego does business, our diverse set of contributors, project team members, subject matter experts (SMEs) and change champions is making an...
Posted: 8/20/2018
Jenna Lucius and Cindy Palmer work on APNext Interfolio. UC San Diego is growing more rapidly than ever. No one would dispute that the campus is undergoing a radical and exciting transformation. In order to support the expected growth of student enrollment in the coming years, now more than ever, we have to work smarter and more...
Posted: 7/20/2018
Imagine a project where staff from across campus are engaged from start to finish to address the technology, process, business and people needs. Imagine UC San Diego as a highly change-ablecommunity. That's our vision, and the Enterprise Systems Renewal program (ESR) is a good test for fulfilling this vision. ESR affects nearly...
Posted: 6/20/2018
If you know anything about Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR), you know we’re changing business processes and replacing the collection of aging systems we use to run the university.The changes will be deeper still. They’ll go to the heart of how IT and the rest of the university work together. A key example is the difference...
Posted: 6/20/2018
Your favorite apps and software programs are probably simple and intuitive, yet powerful. They can communicate with each other and share data. Compare those with the applications you use at work. Not quite the same. Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) exists to fix that. How We Got...
Posted: 6/20/2018
In an effort as big as the Enterprise Systems Renewal program, and with so many moving parts, some work is hard the way astrophysics is hard. Some is hard the way digging a well is hard. ESR isn’t quite that extreme on either side, but to succeed we’re going to need very smart people to participate....
Posted: 6/20/2018
The Enterprise Systems Renewal program represents a fundamental shift in our use of and relationship to technology systems and infrastructure. Data will be more easily accessible as we become a data-driven enterprise. New services will come on line much faster. ESR's guiding principles for architecture,...
Posted: 6/20/2018
Imagine your department or workflow was slowed down by functional silos, multiple hand-offs, unacceptable delays and backlogs. Or that you are working on a process that is mission critical to the success of your department but needs continuous tinkering. Now imagine you could tap into a group of experts from the campus...
Posted: 6/20/2018
It’s no secret that UC San Diego has historically avoided conducting Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for high-value goods and services. The RFP process has been cumbersome due to the requirements to demonstrate fair competition among potential bidders, so avoiding it was understandable. “More is...
Posted: 6/15/2018
Have you ever seen a Formula 1 pitstop? In a matter of seconds, the pit crew changes the tires, gasses up and sends the driver back onto the course. Races can be won and lost in the pits. A pit stop is also the ultimate expression of process improvement: no wasted motion, precise sequences, everything happening in harmony. The team has analyzed...
Posted: 4/27/2018
UC San Diego has launched a focused effort which, over the next several years, will renew most of the business processes the university uses today. The program, titled “Enterprise Systems Renewal” (ESR), will affect just about all major systems in use, from core accounting, to human resources, to payroll, to student...