Legacy websites to shut down

BY Andrea Torres | THE RIDER

More than a year into UTRGV, the university continues to move forward by letting go of the websites of its legacy institutions, UT Brownsville and UT Pan American.

“We sent out an email about a month ago, informing our stakeholders of the decommissioning and asked them if there was any information that needed to be transferred to the UTRGV site to let us know,” said Patrick Gonzales, UTRGV associate vice president for Marketing and Communications.

Gonzales, who is part of a group composed of staff from Information Systems and University Marketing and Communications, said they have been working the past year and a half to inform the university community of this change and migrate the information to utrgv.edu.

The migration, which started with the creation and transfer of the colleges’ and university divisions’ websites and information, is 75 percent complete, Gonzales said.

“Once we have the colleges and the divisions, then we can go into the departments that fall under those colleges or fall under those divisions,” he said. “As you can imagine, we have hundreds of departments.”

Among the information included in these websites are the academic records of both legacy alumni and students grandfathered from UTB and UTPA.

“The termination of legacy websites does not adversely impact students’ records,” said University Registrar Sofia Montes. “Student information systems do not reside on those websites and so there’s no loss of academic records or access to them.”

UTRGV uses ASSIST, an online service where students can access their records on registration, financial aid, payment and grades, according to the university website. UTPA used ASSIST as well, but UTB used UTB Online, a service similar to ASSIST.

Active and registered students can access their academic records via ASSIST, however, an inactive student and alumni will not be able to access ASSIST because when a student graduates, that access is terminated since they have no active record, Montes said in an phone interview last Wednesday.

“Any student, whether they are legacy UTB, legacy UTPA or even previous graduates of UTRGV are still able to obtain their transcript online via a portal that resides outside of ASSIST,” Montes said.

This portal can be accessed through www.enrollment.utrgv.edu/transcript_request/. The online transcript request form does not require a login, as ASSIST does. Personal information, including name, email, physical address and phone number is required.

Students can request up to three official transcripts through this method per day, free of charge. The site also states that students who attended both UTB and UTRGV and are requesting a transcript should expect a longer processing time.

“That is less often the case, especially with UTRGV fully established, but additional time may occasionally be required so that we may access all pertinent information from the appropriate student information systems,” Montes said in an email to The Rider.

Degree Works, an electronic tool that helps students determine their degree plan progress, is not active.

“Degree Works, actually right now, is dormant because we have been updating it with new and updated courses,” Montes said. “Degree Works is going to be revived by the end of this month. That would be a good opportunity for students to kind of see a comprehensive overview of their records, both from the legacy institutions and at UTRGV.”

For more information regarding academic records, contact the Registrar’s Office at registrar@utrgv.edu or call 882-4026.

Staff and faculty interested in migrating information from the legacy websites may contact IT at 665-2020.