MyMercer and CampusVue replace outmoded systems

The new administration system called CampusVue, which replaced SIS (Mercer’s former Student Information System), went live the week of March 7. MyMercer is the new student self-service website that has replaced BearPort.

The new system supports the functions of the offices of the administration, financial planning, registrar and bursar while allowing students and faculty to have better access to these offices.

Caren Kimenker, Project Manager of Mercer University Bear 2.0 Project, said, “All of the data is stored in a centralized database that produces a better workflow among these offices.”

The difference between MyMercer and BearPort is that MyMercer allows students the opportunity to personalize their home pages and also to select and personalize links by choosing sources such as CNN.com, Weather.com or Google. Students will have all-around better access to student services than BearPort originally offered.

“The MyMercer home page is much more flexible than the former portal. Once they log in, students will have the ability to customize their home page. They will have access to ‘portlets’ that contain feeds from different sources. Some of these feeds will be university news, services and notifications,” Kimenker said.

Similar to BearPort, students using MyMercer are still able to access their course schedules, register for classes, find their GPAs, make payments, view their attendance and academic holds, and receive messages from their instructors, advisers and campus offices.

The new system will simply be easier to use for students and faculty, along with adding perks of individualism.

“Both CampusVue and MyMercer are built on Microsoft technologies that can integrate more easily with other Mercer and external systems. Many of the services that were available through BearPort will be available through MyMercer.  In the future, we plan to utilize the portal to introduce other new features as well,” Kimenker said.

For faculty, MyMercer will be accessed for viewing course schedules and posting grades, attendance and assignments as well as accessing basic student information, much like Blackboard.

“CampusVue will be integrated with Blackboard so course registration, grades and other information will be passed [to and from] Blackboard. Within the MyMercer portal, there are also links to services like MercerLive e-mail, course evaluations and Blackboard so that students will have a single place to connect to other Mercer services,” Kimenker said.

For more information on the new system, CampusVue or MyMercer, visit www.mercer.edu/vue.