Joe Morrow, a Web applications programmer for the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, still is steamed that a site he created to help students in the school track their degree progress has not been put online by the Office of the Registrar.
NUtopia, created by Morrow after two years of work with administrators and students, would have provided an alternative to CAESAR for McCormick students who wanted to determine the number of credits necessary for graduation. The Web site was suggested by a group of industrial engineering students as part of a class project, he said.
“They decided to solve the problem of online degree auditing for McCormick students because there wasn’t one,” Morrow said. “We coded all the requirements for (engineering) degrees. It gives the students grade data and generates a check-off sheet in which you can log on the Web site and check your progress.”
But NUtopia was shut down by the registrar after being online for only four days.
“We lost our access to the registrar’s course data,” Morrow said. “Without that information, it doesn’t make sense to show your degree progress. That’s when the decision was made not to support NUtopia anymore.”
University Registrar Suzanne Anderson could not be reached for comment, but Morrow said he has had conflicts with the office since his project was initiated.
“It was nothing surprising, since we had been fighting for the data access all along,” Morrow said. “Being shut off at the end was the last straw.”
McCormick Associate Dean Stephen Carr declined comment about the Web site.
Jason Crystal, a McCormick freshman who tested out NUtopia, said the Web site was helpful in recommending required and elective classes to McCormick students.
“The Web site would list classes to fulfill different themes,” Crystal said. “It was easier (than CAESAR) to find (information) on NUtopia, where you could find other classes and get course recommendations.”
Crystal said he liked the Web site’s user-friendly format.
“The interface was a lot more straightforward than CAESAR,” Crystal said. “But NUtopia was as easy to use, if not easier than CAESAR. I can’t imagine why it would be shut down. It was useful and didn’t do any harm.”
Morrow said he has not received any explanation about the site’s shutdown.
“I think it’s kind of a shame,” Morrow said. “It’s a really big system and the student programmers and McCormick administration put a lot of effort into a system that was useful for students.”
