Launching CRISP
When the students of CCS673 finished their semester, they had developed plans for the primary functions of CRISP, but significant work remained to be done. First, university administrators needed to agree that CRISP was the best solution to the registration problem. Bids from outside vendors were solicited, and the newly-formed Computer Registration Committee analyzed a variety of possible solutions, including from the Systems and Computer Technology Corporation, now Sungard.(10) In 1973 the Committee formally recommended that CRISP be adopted as the new computerized registration system.(11) Three years after Professor Galler’s class took on the challenge of developing a computerized solution to the problem of course registration, students first used CRISP to register for classes in April, 1975. In the few months before, the CRISP committees began the process of initiating the University community to the new system. The CRISP Bulletin, started in December 1974 by the Registrar’s Office, provided lists of answers to CRISP questions, aimed at helping departments integrate the system into their advising and scheduling processes.(15)
CRISP Training
In addition to training students and faculty on how to use CRISP, the Registrar’s Office and Data Systems Center trained the terminal operators who would enter student information and course selections during the registration process. For many operators, CRISP was a first experience of communicating with a database through a terminal interface. The operator’s guides reflect this. An early draft from 1973 advises operators:
“Remember you are carrying on a conversation. Whenever a question mark or an asterisk appears at the leftmost margin on the paper, the computer is waiting for a command from you...Ask your supervisor what to do if you think the computer has stopped talking with you.”(19)
Where to CRISP?
A key consideration in planning for CRISP’s roll-out in April 1975 was the location for registration sessions. As Waterman Gym had been the trademark background for arena registration in the decades before, administrators recognized that the setting for CRISP would be an important feature of student’s experiences of it. The Registrar’s Office, along with the Vice-President settled on the Old Architecture and Design Building, left empty by the 1974 move of the School of Art and Architecture to North Campus. Lorch Hall, as it is now known, Room 215 was the precise location where terminal operators would register students through CRISP. Lorch Hall was the venue for CRISP until it moved to Chrysler Arena.
Success?
Functionally, the April ‘75 roll-out was a success. CRISP processed approximately 15,000 students into courses for the spring and summer half-terms, as well as for the Fall term of that year.(20) However, assessments of student reactions were mixed. In a letter to Vice President Pierpont, Associate Dean of LSA, Charles Morris, described the scene:
“Monday was terrible, Tuesday was good, and on Wednesday and Thursday it “worked like a charm.” According to Morris, students showed enthusiasm for the new system: “One student on Wednesday studied his printed schedule, then looked back at the terminal area and, grinning, said to me: “Man this is far out, really far out,” whooped, and bounded off to who knows where. Now that’s progress (I think).”(21)
The next major CRISP implementation occurred in September 1975, when remaining students were to register for fall courses. Registrar officials had planned for approximately 4,000 students who had yet to register. However, these estimates proved to be too low, as over 6,000 students showed up during the two allotted CRISP days on September 3rd and 4th. CRISP was unequipped to handle the volume of students, and the unexpectedly high number of drop/add requests put a further burden on the system.(24) During this period, lines got very long and frustration ran very high. The inefficiency experienced during September sparked many community members to express their concerns over computerized registration, including the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA), which wrote a public letter in which they called for a review of the merits of CRISP.
“If marked improvements are not achieved in the program,” SACUA members wrote, “it is our intention to recommend that it be abandoned.”(25)
Long lines seem to have been the most prevalent problem, prompting students to wonder whether the old arena registration had been a better way to get the job done. Bernard Galler warned of the danger of lines to the community’s assessment of CRISP in his prescient letter to Associate Registrar Douglas Wooley in 1974. He writes:
“I am moved to write one more plea for facing up to a real problem....Given the uncertain session time for terminal processing, I urge as strongly as I can that an efficient way be found to bring students to the registration area at approximately the time when they will be serviced...I don’t care if students are scheduled by class year, by college, by the length of the left thumb, or by any other algorithm, but they must be scheduled...”(26)
Beyond CRISP
The documentation from these early years proves Galler’s point: the length of the wait time became the primary method for assessing the utility of the system. At the same time, however, the assumption that computerized registration should eliminate the waiting and confusion of Waterman Gym registration indicates the high expectations community members held for the potentials for technology to change the university. An immediate effect of CRISP was to incite thinking about how further university administrative functions could be automated. CRISP marked the beginning of a series of initiatives to electronically manage the university’s massive stores of data. CRISP was a first initiative in an ongoing project to bring university functions up to date with the latest technological capabilities which continued with projects such as M-Pathways, and Wolverine Access, and continues today.