By LYDIA EARHART

lee003@latech.edu

 

The Bulldog Online Student System has extended hours beginning this week.

The new extended hours during the week will be 7:45 a.m. to noon, 12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. the following morning. Students can party all weekend with B.O.S.S. beginning at 9 p.m. on Friday night to 7 a.m. Monday morning.

“Technology is happening so fast that you have to run just to keep up with it,” Bob Vento, the university registrar, said. 

“[Extending the hours] was a committee decision,” Vento said.

“We have been working on this issue since we first instituted B.O.S.S. about 5 years ago.”

Vento said B.O.S.S. is a Web portal that allows students and faculty to get to the mainframe using the Internet to access the student information systems.

“Students can use B.O.S.S. to obtain their records, and faculty can get to their items,” Vento said. “It has the added really nice feature of Web registration.”

Vento said when Tech first instituted the system, the main frame machine and some of the supporting hardware and software required them to bring it down to run batch jobs and do backups.

“The new hardware and software allows us to process those jobs more rapidly for more reliability and capability for the machines to do the job that they needed to do,” Vento said.

Vento said he has also worked with the a committee to extend B.O.S.S hours.

“For the past year, in conjunction with the Student Government Association and with the committee members who represent financial aid, the Comptroller, the Computing Center and Registrar have been examining when we could change the hours to provide more availability and how much we were going to do,” he said.   

Vento said extending the hours represents the first step in the change from the committee.

“In this instance, it was a student need, and that is what we have been working toward,” Vento said.

“We want to improve performance and support for our students,” he added.

Vento said a lot of people have been very instrumental in providing these extended hours.

Lindsay Mencacci, the president of SGA and a senior biology major, said she is glad to see B.O.S.S. extend its hours.

“All of the faculty and staff have worked hard to improve the quality of B.O.S.S.,” Mencacci said.

“The hours will make it easier for students to obtain information through their computers at home without having to wait around for the system to come up,” she said.

Ashley Shelton, a senior human resources major, said extending the hours for B.O.S.S. will be more convenient for her.

“Usually by the time I get off of work, it is not running,” Shelton said.

“I will use B.O.S.S. more frequently now that the hours are more accommodating.”