MEGS: Maryland Electronic Graduate System
Training Schedule
December 3, 2009 at 10:00 AM in the Lee Building 2120
Please RSVP to Matt McLean mclean@umd.edu
MEGS Resources and Publications
SIS Resources
What Is MEGS?
MEGS, the Maryland Electronic Graduate System, is a new web-based tool for managing, tracking, organizing, and communicating with applicants to and students enrolled in Graduate Programs at the University of Maryland. Working with two of the Universities established information systems—SIS, the Student Information System, and Optix / MEAD, the scanning and digital imaging program—MEGS offers a simplified, one-stop shop interface for managing the students applying to or enrolled in your Graduate Program.
From the MEGS interface, you can enter and track departmental information, such as application materials received, applicant evaluations, notes on satisfactory progress and milestones, advising assignments, plans of study, and departmentally-awarded financial aid. MEGS’s Application Supplemental Form (ASF), a completely customizable departmental online application form, enables you receive and organize applicants’ materials—writing samples, resumes, portfolios, and letters of recommendation—online.
You can also generate numerous enrollment and applicant queries and reports using MEGS, like a list of applicants by race and gender, one showing only doctoral students who have advanced to candidacy, or even an “all-program” list.
Beyond these organizing and tracking functions, MEGS is also a communications tool: you can instantly contact via email any student or group of students in your program (like students approaching their time limits, students preparing to defend their theses or dissertations, or students preparing to graduate).
Where did it come from?
MEGS was started in Summer 2001 by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department to help them manage their 2,000 Fall applications and 300 graduate students. At the time, the department needed about 5 full time staff members to run the graduate office and handle all of the paperwork, which was often hard to keep track of, especially during the applicant reviewing process.
MEGS was built from the very beginning with a lot of faculty time and input, which allowed it to grow in functionality and reliability over its 2 years in ECE.
In the Summer of 2003, ECE expanded it to the 9 other programs in the Engineering college. Based on the success at the college level, it was offered as a pilot to a few other colleges on campus. By Fall 2006, the Dean of the Graduate School expects to make MEGS available to all Graduate Programs at the University.
How does it work?
MEGS is not a stand-alone application. It is a web-based tool that works with the systems that the University already has, in particular, SIS and Optix / MEAD. Each morning, MEGS downloads updated student records from SIS and document images from Optix / MEAD. MEGS then makes this information more accessible to the everyday user, organizing it in a simple, easy-to-use format. But MEGS also supplements the information it downloads from SIS and Optix / MEAD with information from the applicant (via the Application Supplemental Form) and with information that each program enters on its own—names of recommenders, milestones reached, petitions filed, departmental honors, fellowships, teaching and research assistantships. All of this information is combined into one web-based interface.
Since MEGS is a download from SIS and Optix / MEAD, it does not replace these systems. Enrollment Services Operations and the Registrar will still enter application data into SIS and scan documents into Optix / MEAD, and department admissions recommendations must still (at this date) be made through SIS. For day-to-day inquiry, data analysis, reporting, and maintenance, however, MEGS can be the department’s primary tool.
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