One of the nation’s top journals for the information technology industry has honored DePaul University as a national leader for incorporating technology with student services.

CIO Magazine named DePaul to its 2007 “CIO 100,” a list of the nation’s 100 most innovative organizations in information technology. DePaul was lauded for its creation and implementation of a series of online tools that help students better navigate their academic careers. The honor was the result of a collaborative effort between DePaul's Information Services and Enrollment Management & Marketing divisions.

Among the tools were a number of solutions for students and their academic advisors, including:

• An interactive degree progress report that allows students and their advisors to display a student’s progress toward degree requirements instantly, a system that has been used to generate more than 12,000 reports since it debuted last fall.

• A streamlined, advising process tool that allows students to make appointments online, update learning plans and then link to the official degree progress report.

• The Course Applicability System (CAS), which enables students and prospective transfer students to run various projection scenarios by applying their earned credits toward different degree requirements. DePaul is the first private university in Illinois to join CAS.

Additionally, DePaul also offers an online “smart application” that asks students a series of questions and tailors its responses to the potential areas of academic interest shown by the student. The system enables online payment of the application fee, and reduces application processing time by several days, too.

DePaul was one of only six universities nationwide honored in the CIO 100, along with Duke University, Furman University, Loyola Marymount University, the University of Pennsylvania and Valparaiso University. Profiles of the winning organizations will be included in the magazine’s Aug. 15 issue.

DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the nation and is the largest private, not-for-profit university in the Midwest. A diverse population of 23,149 students attends classes on two Chicago and four suburban campuses.