Application for the 2010
University of California Larry L. Sautter Award for
Innovation in Information Technology
Project Title:
Student Challenge Assessment and Resource Allocation at
Berkeley (SCARAB)
UC Berkeley - Disabled Students’ Program
Division of Equity & Inclusion
Contact:
Randolph T. Jordan, Associate Director
Disabled Students’ Program
University of California at Berkeley
260 Cesar Chavez Center #4250
Berkeley, CA 94720-4250
rjordan@berkeley.edu
Project Leads:
Randolph T. Jordan
Disabled Students’ Program
Ed Rogers [retired 12/08]
Disabled Students’ Program
Technical Lead: Michael Sharkey
Disabled Students’ Program
Contributors:
Kim Steinbacher
Division of Equity & Inclusion
J.R. Schulden, Robert Hall, Charles James,
Vahid Nadi, and George Suennen
Application Services
Project Partners
The Disabled Students’ Program (DSP) has partnered with various campus entities to
integrate information and electronic processes. These entities include: Office of the
Registrar, Information Systems &Technology, and Berkeley Financial System. DSP
Disability Specialists and Service Coordinators have also collaborated on this project.
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Project Summary
SCARAB is an advanced, comprehensive on-line student service system that has been
designed to be accessible for users with a wide range of disabilities. By streamlining
administrative processes and operations, SCARAB improves the timeliness of service
delivery, and enables more effective monitoring and control, ensuring proper
compliance and fiscal accountability.
SCARAB is secure and provides appropriate information access to different types of
users. Our core users include: students, faculty, DSP staff (Disability Specialists,
Service Coordinators, Management and Business Operations), and service providers.
SCARAB is uniquely designed to serve students with disabilities and is interoperable
with the needs of other disabled student service programs. SCARAB case recording
and reporting features are usable by other types of student service units.
Project Description
DSP has a proven track record of developing and leveraging information technology to
effectively serve students with disabilities. For example, DSP’s on-line FileMaker Pro
system was recognized in 2001, as a best practice by the University of California and
mentioned in its publication, Future Vision: Student Services at the University of
California.
The complex and demanding world of disability accommodations demands a dynamic
and robust approach to the gathering and use of information. SCARAB embodies this
new approach, incorporating elements not previously available to large- scale users.
SCARAB is a centralized, end-to-end system designed to bring together key user
groups (students, faculty and staff) and provide them with the information that they need
to be successful. It starts with the student, then “SCARAB pulls it all together. SCARAB
brings information to the people, and people to the information” (Danny Kodmur,
Disabled Students’ Program). This leads to greater efficiencies in time, effort, and
expense. To illustrate the difference SCARAB can make, DSP has experienced a
significant increase in the number of requests for proctored exams and note-taking
services over the past three years (42%, and 39% respectively). Though staffing levels
remained constant, DSP Service Coordinators were able to effectively and efficiently
meet this need.
SCARAB has been in place for almost three years, and provides DSP with more
functionality than ever before. SCARAB integrates modern technologies such as Oracle
Databases and Java Server Faces. Its data resides in several campus Oracle data
sources, each connected and optimized for efficient retrieval of appropriate information
to achieve operational efficiencies that have a positive impact on students, faculty, and
staff.
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Students: Students can initiate DSP-related transactions at any time without waiting for
an in-person appointment. This enables them to alert DSP to their access needs as
soon as possible. On-line interaction improves the timeliness of arranging individualized
accommodations.

Application for services: Students are first asked to review, confirm and/or update
their local contact information. This information is pulled from the Registrar’s
Office Bear Facts database. Next, they disclose their primary and secondary
disabilities, if applicable. If specific disabilities are indicated (Learning Disabled,
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Psychological, or “don’t know, possible
learning”), a secondary screen appears, asking for further information. Based on
their disabilities, students are informed of documentation requirements and are
given contact information for appropriate DSP Specialists.

Request an Accommodation Letter: Students are able to request Accommodation
Letters from Disability Specialists. These letters verify that a student has a
disability, and recommend specific academic accommodations. Once the
Disability Specialist writes these letters, SCARAB generates e-mail notification to
the student’s instructor of record.

Request Auxiliary Services: Students are able to request Auxiliary Services for
each class. These services may include one or more of the following: Alternative
Media, Note-taking, Communication Access Real Time Transcription, Reader,
Sign Language Interpreting, Test Amanuensis).

Request a Reduced Course Load Letter: Students are able to request a reduced
course load letter, and type a comment for their Disability Specialist regarding
their request.

Request Cancellation: Students are able to cancel requests.

Review Status of Requests: Students are able to log in and check the status of
their service requests and official letters.

E-mail notification: Students receive SCARAB generated e-mail notification when
their requests are approved, denied, cancelled, or if a consult appointment is
required.

Verification of Services: After receiving services (i.e. note taking, lab assistance,
readers, and test amanuensis) students log in to verify them. This verification is
then routed to a DSP Manager or Service Coordinator for payment approval.
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Faculty: SCARAB generates e-mail notices for faculty* when students receive
Accommodation Letters for individual courses. Faculty can log in at any time to view the
list of students with approved accommodations.

Faculty members can designate proxies (departmental employee, or GSI).
Both faculty members and their designated proxies are able to download
Accommodation Letters.

The faculty portal displays a current listing of students enrolled in the course who
have Accommodation Letters. The listing is automatically updated against current
course enrollment records.
*E-mail notification regarding Law School Accommodation Letters are sent directly to
the Law School’s Accommodation Coordinator. This person is granted faculty access for
all Law School courses.
DSP Staff - Disability Specialists:

Intake Interview: Disability Specialists enter student responses to structured
interview questions, and document disability verification requirements.

Accommodations: The Disability Specialists determine which disability-related
accommodations are appropriate for the student and create an Accommodation
Profile within SCARAB. Accommodations are selected from a master list that
determines their content, and can be further customized and quickly modified by
the Disability Specialists.

Accommodation Letters: The Disability Specialists can view a student-initiated
request for an Accommodation Letter. SCARAB creates the accommodation
letter for the student.

Auxiliary Services: The Disability Specialists can select which Auxiliary Services
are available and appropriate to the student.

Case Recording: The Disability Specialists can enter case notes based on
student contact and follow-up action(s). This provides a centralized and written
record that is preserved for on-going and future reference.

E-mail Application within SCARAB: This provides a centralized repository of email sent to students that can be referenced.
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DSP Staff - Disability Service Coordinators:

Identify Experienced Note takers: The Disability Service Coordinators (Notetaking) can identify experienced note takers from within a course.

E-mail Recruitment for Note-takers: The Disability Service Coordinators (Notetaking) can send through SCARAB, an e-mail notice to all students enrolled in a
course to inform them that DSP is recruiting for a note-taker.

Identify Shared Service: The Disability Service Coordinators (Note-taking) can
identify a course where there is more than one student and the service can be
shared (no duplication of service).

Tracking: The Disability Service Coordinators (Note-taking) can track and
document the implementation of note-taking services.

Adjust Service: The Disability Service Coordinators (Note-taking) can identify
courses where service is no longer needed (student drop).

Review Accommodation Letters: The Disability Service Coordinators (Campus
Proctoring) can review Accommodation Letters.
Service Providers: The Service Providers can log in at any time to establish a service
account, and to submit monthly time sheets.
Administrative:

Accounting: Assignment of chart-string and flex-fields (according to service
types).

Allocation of Services: Approve, or modify allocation of funding.

Payment for Services: Authorized payment is uploaded to Berkeley Financial
System (BFS). Payments are made directly by Disbursements Office through
electronic fund transfer, or by check.

Disability Specialist Assignment: Students can be assigned to different Disability
Specialists and vice versa.
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Technology Utilized in SCARAB
The technologies utilized in SCARAB cover six main areas: development, testing,
building, runtime, persistence, and rendering.
Development
MagicDraw
iReport
Testing
Watir
Cruise
Control
Build
Maven
AndroMDA
Runtime
J2EE
JBoss
4.0.3
Persistence Rendering
Oracle 11g
JSF
MyFaces
Java 5
Spring
JasperReports
Velocity
Eclipse
DB Visualizer
Tomahawk
Facelets
JSP
Development
Eclipse IDE is used to write and debug Java code, using remote web application
debugging. We also develop the code using the Spring framework for dependency
injection, mostly. The application's UML model is maintained and updated using
MagicDraw. Our templating infrastructure uses iReport to create templates,
JasperReports to populate them at runtime, and some use of Velocity templating also
exists. For database schema development, DB Visualizer allows for everything needed
for the database to be maintained, updated, or amended.
Testing
Watir is used to run and report on automated QA test suites against the application. We
also employ a continuous integration server using Cruise Control to enforce code base
check-ins to result in successful application builds.
Building
Our build system relies on Maven and AndroMDA. Maven facilitates SCARAB's
resource and dependency management, while AndroMDA is a code generation engine
that creates bootstrap code from our UML model of the application.
Runtime
Our runtime environment consists of a JBoss application server to handle requests in a
J2EE container, which handles object life cycles and resource management, such as
maintaining a database connection pool.
Persistence
SCARAB's persistence relies on an Oracle 11gR2 database.
Rendering
SCARAB uses several UI rendering technologies to construct the final web pages users
are presented. These technologies include Java Server Pages (JSP), JavaServer Faces
(JSF), MyFaces, Tomahawk, and Facelets.
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Implementation Time Frame
Phase I (2005 - 2006)
Requirements Gathering
Service Module 1: Navigation Framework,
Security & Roles
Service Module 2: Student-Service Application
Service Module 3: Applicant Intake
Service Module 4: Accommodations
Service Module 5: Auxiliary Services
Phase II (2006 – 2007)
Production – Go Live for Campus
2007 Summer Session (June, 2007)
Service Module 6:
Service Module 7:
Service Provider
Reporting
We continue to make improvements in processes and functionality based on feedback
from our core user groups.
Assessable Success Criteria
Accommodation Letters
Academic Term
Summer 2007
Fall 2007
Spring 2008
# of Letter Requests
153
1,361
1,642
# of Accommodations
612
5,444
6,568
Summer 2008
Fall 2008
Spring 2009
181
1,805
1,676
724
7,220
6,704
Summer 2009
Fall 2009
Spring 2010
257
1,923
1,721
1,028
7,682
6,884
Campus Proctoring Services
Academic Term
Exams Arranged
Summer 2007
Fall 2007
Spring 2008
58
397
438
Students
Served
22
166
178
Faculty Served
15
84
97
Departments
Served
10
37
52
Summer 2008
Fall 2008
Spring 2009
50
642
506
23
237
198
16
140
116
12
41
45
Summer 2009
Fall 2009
Spring 2010
90
762
695
39
281
243
16
140
94
12
49
56
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Auxiliary Services – Note taking
Academic Term
Requests
Summer 2007
Fall 2007
Spring 2008
67
584
663
Students
Served
53
191
231
Requests
Shared
9
214
203
Note-takers
Summer 2008
Fall 2008
Spring 2009
69
641
611
41
220
230
7
148
178
13
213
245
Summer 2009
Fall 2009
Spring 2010
98
1,021
1,022
64
328
329
20
503
424
60
370
337
15
132
128
“Upon my arrival as the new DSP director last July, I was amazed with the functionality of this office's electronic data
management system (SCARAB). As a director of disabled student services at a nearby CSU, I was painfully familiar with the
tedious and tenuous nature of manually handling the delivery of accommodations for students with disabilities. At UC
Berkeley, SCARAB offers us a high technology solution to the coordination of these services.
SCARAB is a very effective labor saving system that allows us to truly "do more with less". During these times of reduced
budgets, we could never survive without SCARAB. It saves DSP the thousands of hours of staff time that it would take to
manually coordinate over fifteen thousand accommodations each year. In addition, SCARAB gets the job done, with near
perfection, saving the University the cost associated with handling expensive student legal complaints (lawyers' fees, plaintiffs'
awards or settlements, etc.).
SCARAB is a unique product, not otherwise available in the market place, because of the unique aspects of DSP operations.
As a result, SCARAB has a high potential for use with other DSP programs at other colleges and universities across the
nation.”
Paul Hippolitus, Director
Disabled Students’ Program
“There are few University campus units that are as heavily monitored through internal oversight and external advocacy
attorneys ~ this is due to liability flowing from the University’s obligation to accommodate about 800 students with disabilities.
As the campus top administrator responding to allegations of noncompliance, I have found that SCARAB has made a
remarkable difference in the ability of the campus to both quickly deliver a high volume of accommodations to multiple
individuals at a wide variety of locations, and also track and document the University’s success in doing so. In the past,
demonstrating compliance might be extremely labor-intensive as staff were interviewed and asked to recall past meetings and
review hard copy paper files. By contrast SCARAB pulls up a student’s DSP history at the stroke of a few keys, and allows
dense information to be organized in the format most useful to the inquirer. Hard to believe that we survived so long without it!”
Sarah Hawthorne, Assistant Provost
Academic Compliance & Disability Standards
As a senior faculty member I would like to say how much the SCARAB system has helped me as an instructor in teaching
relatively large classes from 200/300 undergraduates. Each class usually has 10+ DSP students and SCARAB has made
class administration so much easier by identifying individuals and by detailing their needs in accessing accommodation
requirements.
Anthony Adamthwaite, Professor
History
“Love SCARAB; makes my life and communications with DSP MUCH easier. Increases effective communications; saves
paper; enhances DSP services to students with special needs.”
J. Diane Pearson, Lecturer
Ethnic Studies
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SCARAB is an efficient, easy-to-use system that connects faculty and GSI’s like me to important information about the DSP
students in our classes. Although I have taught for four semesters at Berkeley, this semester was the first time I had DSP
students in my class. I was very pleased with all of my interactions with the DSP office and especially with the convenient
SCARAB system and the proctoring services. Having SCARAB and the DSP made my life easier as a GSI.
Suzanne Scoggins, GSI
Political Science
“SCARAB is a precious asset to the effective and accurate delivery of campus proctoring services. Through SCARAB, staff is
able to quickly access student accommodation requirements and immediately begin to locate resources needed to proctor
exams. SCARAB has streamlined the proctoring process and allows staff to keep up with steadily growing demands while
sustaining no student complaints requiring legal action.”
Frankie Lopez, Coordinator
Campus Proctoring Services
"SCARAB has allowed staff to respond to a high volume of student requests quickly and efficiently, effectively recruit and
retain qualified service providers, and identify opportunities for savings through the sharing of services. SCARAB has helped
staff minimize the amount of time students wait to receive service as well as assisting staff in quickly identifying experienced
providers to deliver the best quality service."
Hayley Bower, Coordinator
Note-taking Services
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