NSAC E-Bulletin

Please forward your submissions to the NSAC E-Bulletin to Stephanie Rogers (news@nsac.ca) by Friday at 3:00 p.m. for inclusion in the next week's edition.

August 25th 2003 - Week 143

United Way Campaign - Volunteer Still Needed
NSAC President Dr. Philip Hicks is very anxious to find an enthusiastic volunteer for the 2003-2004 United Way Campaign. For the last several years, the NSAC has consistently been one of the United Way’s valued supporters and Dr. Hicks hopes to continue this tradition. The 2003-2004 Campaign will be a bit different this year with one campaign to include the entire campus with co-coordinators; one for the Department and one for NSAC. If you are interested in learning more about this volunteer opportunity please contact Dr. Hicks at phicks@nsac.ns.ca or by phone at your earliest convenience. (902) 893-6720

Introductory Studies Program
It has been determined that students who successfully complete courses in CS89, MP90 and MP85 (Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry) in the Introductory Studies Program at NSAC satisfy the admission requirements at Dalhousie University as well as NSAC. These students now have the opportunity to continue their studies either NSAC or Dalhousie University.

The Great Centennial Theme and Logo Contest
NSAC will celebrate 100 years of service in 2005. Through excellence in Education, Research and Extension, NSAC has had a major impact on the agricultural industry in the Atlantic Region and beyond.
Planning is underway for centennial celebrations. In preparation for the big day, we need a theme phrase and appropriate logo that can be used on promotional material, memorabilia, correspondence etc. This is your chance to put your creative thinking to the test. The Great Centennial Theme and Logo Contest is designed to give you a chance to come up with a theme and a logo concept design that will be used during our centennial.

Here's what you need to do to enter:
• Send in theme wording along with a sketch or concept for the design of a logo to the Development and Alumni Relations office, NSAC no later than September 30, 2003.
• Entries should be no more that three pages in length including explanation and justification of the concept.
• A committee will review the entries and make a selection. Entries will be judged on:
• degree of representation of the history and service of NSAC
• originality
• design elements that allow the logo and theme to be used in a variety of sizes and on various media.
• The winning concept theme and logo may be further refined or slightly altered at the discretion of the committee.
• The winner will be announced and the theme and logo will unveiled by the president at Autumn Assembly, October 22, 2003.
• All entries to the contest become the property of NSAC.
If you have any questions please contact the Development and Alumni Relations office, (902) 893-6721 or jjordon@nsac.ns.ca

Twilight Tour: Cropping Systems Research at the NSAC
Hosted by the Cropping Systems Research Program

Time: August 27th/03 (Wed), 6:00 PM.
Meeting place: Truro AgriTECH Park Cropping Systems Research Centre Building.
Directions: From Main str in Truro take Pictou Road. After the RCMP station go left into Innovation Road. At the first stop sign go right into Research Drive, the Cropping Systems Research Centre Building is at the end of Research drive.

Everybody is welcome. For more information please contact Dr. Valtcho Jeliazkov at NSAC: Ph: (902) 893 7859 Fax: (902) 897 9762, e-mail:vjeliazkov@nsac.ns.ca

Graduate Student Receives Honours
Graduate student Sandra Cantle has won a 4th place award during the graduate presentation competition. The competition took place during the America Potato Association Annual meeting in Spokane Washington, August 10-14, 2003. Sandra's presentation is based on her M.Sc. thesis research entitled "Identification of cinnamic acid 4-hydroxylase in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) and its relationship to after-cooking darkening". There were total five awards to five graduate students that participated the meeting.

Student Information System Update
The implementation of the new campus-wide Student Information System, Datatel’s Colleague/Benefactor system, is progressing rapidly. After signing the contract with Datatel in March, the project team has worked extremely hard to meet a number of significant milestones. Here are a few of the major highlights:

April
- SIS Project Charter developed.
- SIS Project Team Organization developed and implemented - includes a Steering Committee, a Core Project Team, a Technical Team, a Stakeholders Group, and several Functional Teams (i.e. Recruitment, Continuing Education, Registration and Student Records, Student Services, Alumni Development, etc.)

May
- SIS Project Management Training - Project Leader, Wayne Paquet, and Project Manager, Andy Kenny, visit Datatel Headquarters in Washington
- SIS Discovery Interviews - Datatel Project Manager Diane Morris visits NSAC Campus to do a needs assessment of NSAC stakeholders

June
- initial install of SIS Hardware and Software by joint NSAC and Datatel team
- SIS Training and Configuration Lab setup in Cox Room 254

July
- Andy Kenny joins the NSAC team as the Registry Database Systems Administrator. Andy will remain in his role as the SIS Project Manager. Great news for our SIS project.
- Andy Kenny and Wayne Paquet take SIS technical training in Washington and San Francisco
- Datatel training on Core and Student modules at the NSAC

August
- Datatel Recruitment and Admissions training at the NSAC
- SIS Project Team configuration meetings

This has been an incredibly busy period as we worked towards learning the foundations of this mission critical software. The next few months include several implementation workshops, as we continue to learn and begin to configure this massive system that contains several thousand files and tens of thousands of fields.

Again, this is a cumulative effort of a number of offices and individuals across campus. The time commitment is enormous, with over a thousand hours of staff time dedicated to the project in the past four months alone. Although the cost is high, there will be fantastic benefits to faculty, students and staff in the years ahead. Some of these include:

- to give students, faculty and staff easier access to information
- to improve our ability to communicate effectively with prospective clients, current students, and alumni
- to deliver remote/web based student registration
- to fully integrate student financial accounts in real-time
- to allow students to view their financial accounts and to pay tuition/fees via the web
- to improve effectiveness in meeting federal and provincial reporting requirements (e.g. ESIS reporting)
- to integrate NSAC’s current disparate record keeping systems
- to facilitate campus decision making through the usage of improved reporting and enrollment management tools
- to move from a legacy system to a state of the art Student Information System that is fully supported by a mainstream vendor who is continually improving their product

Marketing Tip
Just think how many hundreds of e-mails are sent from this campus every day! Let's use this to help promote NSAC and our Website! By simply adding a professional signature to your e-mails you can help to further NSAC's image as a high quality teaching and research university. Include all of your pertinent contact information and also include: Visit our Website at: www.nsac.ns.ca with the web address as a hyperlink to our site so all the email recipient needs to do is click! Here is an example...

Susan Michel
Marketing Coordinator
Nova Scotia Agricultural College
P.O. Box 550
Truro, NS Canada B2N5E3
Ph: 902-893-6527 Fax: 902-897-9399
Visit our Website at: www.nsac.ns.ca
If you have any Marketing Tips please email them to Susan Michel at smichel@nsac.ns.ca

Orientation 2003-2004
The Orientation team is gearing up for a busy week beginning Sunday, August 31, with an international students’ reception. Residences will open for all first year students on Tuesday, September 2 with a full slate of events schedules throughout the week. Highlights include participation in the Riverbreeze Corn Maze, “Rams on the Loose” orienteering downtown Truro, Shinerama and Adopt-A-Highway program.

For a full schedule of events and how you can participate please contact Mary Anne Lorette at mlorette@nsac.ns.ca or by phone at 4423