Students have a new tool to help guide them through the maze that is student records, transcripts and registration.

MyDegreePath, which went live on the insideBC portal two weeks ago, is up and running and ready to audit your transcripts and help you find out what a student has left to complete to earn their degree or certificate.

This new device is to be inclusive of the old “What-If” option under the BannerWeb portal, while also providing new tools for students.

Admissions and Records director Sue Vaughn elaborated on the new product that was designed to help aid student success.

“The old system was pretty clunky and just not as sleek,” said Vaughn on the implementation of the system.

More than just a facelift for the old What-If evaluation system, MyDegreePath comes packed with features to help students gain ground on the steep slope of collegiate paperwork.

Vaughn described what a prospective student might encounter with their first time working with the news system.

“If you have in [BanWeb] what your major is and you do an audit, it is going to give you a list of the courses you still need to take,” she said. “If you click on those, when we are in a registration period, it takes you to the listing of the courses, what time they are and so forth, so that’s a big improvement.”

Vaughn expounded further stating that although this program will not enroll you, as in a student must physically enter the Course Reference Number and so forth, it would provide a personal overview collected in one place.

One major improvement with this new system is the ability for students to audit their transcripts. Vaughn assured that none of the old catalog would be lost with this new system.

Admissions and records has taken care to include audits from as far back as  the 2005-06 school year, with certificates and job skills courses falling under that as well.

“We can’t lose all the work we did developing the old program,” said Vaughn.

“I insisted that we were going to go back and scribe [the process of entering courses into the  MyDegreePath system] back to 2007-2008 for this new program.

“If we had just started it in ’11 -’12 all these students that started earlier wouldn’t be able to use it,” she said regarding the viability of the system. “Sure enough, the other colleges [Cerro Cosso and Porterville] said it didn’t cover very many people, so we scribed back to the 2005-2006 school year.”

While the system is primed for students to evaluate their degree completion and review credits, Vaughn stressed the importance of keeping current with your program of study.

Students must keep in contact with the admissions and records department.

She gives a hypothetical situation to illustrate.

“You do a couple What-Ifs, and find out that business sounds interesting, and [a student may] have a couple classes that will count for that, so then you need to come over and get your program changed, so that when you do the audit you are looking at the right program.” Vaughn was adamant about keeping current with the school. “The sooner they have it marked correctly in [BanWeb], then the sooner the audit will work.”

Vaughn said that although the tool is backloaded to also help administrators, it is “ultimately to the students benefit.”

Finally she explained that the system would soon automate to give notice to students who are close to a certificate or degree and those near completion respectively would be sent an email reminder that they are nearly complete with their study.

“We want to issue those to students, if something happens and they don’t finish but they have put in that much work we want them to have something to show for it.”