CSUN's new online web registration system is expected to have a busy debut in the weeks ahead. The university is projecting a student enrollment for the fall exceeding 30,000, which would be its highest level in a decade. The university also has already received an all-time high of nearly 25,000 applications from prospective new students seeking admission for the fall.

University officials said the new system, a so-called web service portal, should reduce student lines in the Admissions and Records Office, make students' class registration process each semester quicker and easier, and open a new era of web-based communication on campus.

"In a sense, this is e-commerce for us. This is the business we do," said Spero Bowman, CSUN's chief information officer and head of Information Technology Resources, which developed the new system. "This is personalizing technology to make life more convenient and effective."

The new system's most important feature will be to bring web-based class registration to the campus. CSUN officials said they expect web registration to quickly overtake the current telephone-based touch-tone registration (TTR) system, although that will remain in place for students without computers or who have special needs.

"When students are coming to this institution, they expect to be able to do these kinds of things online," said Lorraine Newlon, CSUN's director of admissions and records. "I expect we will have a massive switch-over [from TTR]. To me, I think web registration is going to be easier to use, period. It should be very well received by students."

CSUN went live with the system earlier this month, in time for this week's beginning of the main registration period for the fall 2001 semester. The new CSUN Web Service Portal will operate from the web address of my.csun.edu, where students can log-in with their seven-digit ID and four-digit PIN numbers.

The resulting, personalized web page will incorporate links to a wide array of information customized for each student, including their current and prior class schedules and grades, financial aid award information, and campus payments status. Students also will be able to print unofficial transcripts, and pay registration and parking fees via credit card.

"CSUN for a long time has been a technological leader. That just hasn't been very visible to students," said Bob Stark, ITR's director of application development, who led the ITR team that developed the new system during the past 18 months. "Now we're trying to roll out some of that technology for the benefit of students."

In one example regarding registration, the current TTR system requires students to register for one class as a time, and they can stay on the system for only 10 minutes at a time because of limited phone lines. The new web registration system will enable students to pick their entire schedule with a mouse click, and will not have a time limit.

When students register online, they also will be able to mouse click to individual class descriptions from the university catalog, click a class location listing to get a map showing the building on campus, and even the professor's web page, if available. The new web system also will show class footnotes, important details about specific classes.

Another new feature of the Web Service Portal will be students' ability to update their personal information online such as mailing address, e-mail address and phone number. Until now, such changes required a visit to the Admissions and Records Office, where one survey showed about 60 percent of students waiting in line wanted to make such changes.

Another new feature of the system, likely to get even greater use in the years ahead, is the ability to direct customized messages to individual students on their "My CSUN" web page. Those could include items such as reminders for campus appointments, to declare majors for students who have not done so, and even writing proficiency exam results.