Download - Bechtel International Center - Stanford University

Technology at the I-Center
Web page
• For the second year, a web registration and
password distribution form was developed on the I-
Center’s site to allow access to NRAware!, a new online
tax software service. NRAware! reported 798 Stanford
affiliates registered to take advantage of this service.
NRAware! is a web-based tax return preparation system
designed primarily for nonresident aliens who are F or J
visaholders to aid in preparing their U.S. federal income
tax return - Form 1040NR or 1040NR-EZ.
• *Web activity has again increased markedly for
academic year 2002/2003. As illustrated below, averages
for hits to our home page have doubled over the last two
years.
2000/01 average 7900 hits per month
2001/02 average 12800 hits per month
2002/03 average 15800 hits per month
This activity peaked in July 2003 with 19029 hits to our
home page (an all-time record). Even in August, normally
a moribund month for web activity, the home page was
hit 14053 times.
*Please note that these are hits to our home
page only, and not to files accessed within the site.
Statistical averages for hits on these files is much higher.
Hardware and software
• The I-Center is slowly migrating to OSX. We now
have 4 full-time users of the system and expect to add at
least 2 more in the next academic year. We have proceeded
cautiously as the OS has become more stable,
user-friendly and integrated with Stanford proprietary
applications. Also, as OSX is rather ‘ram-hungry’, some of
our older machines (G3 systems) need ram upgrades to
run this system efficiently. As we replace the older iMacs
(most probably with the eMac, which has a G4 processor),
OSX will become more ubiquitous for I-Center staff.
SEVIS issues
• PeopleSoft has integrated a patch (PASS - )
which is capable of batching large numbers of data
records to the SEVIS server. This patch was not ready for
Stanford to meet the August 1, 2003 deadline at which
time the data for all F-1 and J-1 Stanford students and
scholars (and their J-2 dependents) had to be entered
into the SEVIS database. Therefore, the staff of the
Foreign Scholar Office and Foreign Student Office were
obliged to enter all of this data manually. To facilitate
this effort, a web form was developed to gather data
from F-1 and J-1 students at Stanford. This data was then
transferred to a FileMaker database which was then used
to copy and paste the data (primarily address information)
into the SEVIS database.
• At the time of the printing of this Annual Report,
a batch system using the PASS patch has been successfully
used to register the majority of F-1 students at
Stanford University witih SEVIS for Fall and Winter
Quarters 2003/04.
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