September 21, 2015 MICHELE K. SPREEN RECORDS LEAD — CEDAR Re: SISRP-­‐2266, no upload of Excel grade books to new SIS On behalf of the Divisional Council of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, I write to express faculty concern about the new Student Information Systems (SIS) not allowing instructors to upload grade books that they have kept using Excel (i.e., abandoning the existing option that BearFacts offered to “upload an Excel file with your grades”). Many instructors use Excel to maintain their grade books and do not make use of the grade-­‐book feature in bCourses. Faculty face enough demands on their scarce time as is, without having to master yet another piece of software. Further, my colleagues and I can see no advantage arising from the abandoning of Excel grade books that would justify requiring faculty to make such an investment. Consequently, on behalf of the Divisional Council, I ask, in the strongest possible terms, that you reconsider the decision not to allow uploading of grade books kept in Excel. As a colleague who wrote me on the matter stated, “Many faculty are well served by their existing grad[e keeping] practices, whatever they are, and trying to force them away from that doesn’t seem likely to go well.” Thank you for your consideration of this request. If meeting with me on the matter would be helpful, please don’t hesitate to contact Marilyn Kwock (mkwock@berkeley.edu) about scheduling such a meeting. BENJAMIN E. HERMALIN, CHAIR BERKELEY DIVISION OF THE ACADEMIC SENATE CC: Angela Blackstone, Associate CIO Robert Jacobsen, Interim Dean Undergraduate Studies