A program that eases the process of scheduling courses for ISU students will discontinue at the end of the semester.

Registration Manager, which allows students to create potential schedules when registering for courses and alerts them when courses are full, will no longer provide updated course catalogues as of May 12. That loss would render the program ineffective, as the courses offered each semester changes and the number of students registered fluctuates daily.

Mark Lanning, co-developer of the program, said maintaining Registration Manager after graduation would take too much time.

“The [course] schedules keep changing, so it’s a lot of work to maintain it,” said Lanning, senior in computer science.

The program was created six years ago when Lanning’s older brother, Jeff, developed the program when he was a student in the College of Engineering. Lanning then aided his older brother’s creation by providing a server and catalog information.

It was the university’s difficult scheduling system that led to the creation of Registration Manager, Lanning said. At the time of Registration Manager’s creation, students still used a touch-tone phone to register for classes.

Lanning said scheduling by phone was difficult because it did not allow for students to check their schedules as they registered. When the university adopted a Web-based program for registration, scheduling classes became easier, but there was still difficulty in moving around schedules, he said.

The program computes all the data and lists the possible schedules that will work within the user’s criteria.

The problem facing Registration Manager now is failing to update the course catalogues. However, a message Lanning and his brother posted on their Web site, www.starlightsoftware.net/reg man/, said they are seeking a way to remedy this problem, potentially with help from the university.

“Because of [concerns we’ve heard from students], we’ve decided to reconsider our decision,” the message states. “Currently, the only way we are able get catalog data from the university is a fragile process that breaks often and the 7 a.m. ‘fire drills’ to keep it running didn’t seem worth it anymore. We very much want to see RegMan continue, but we need to find a better way to get the data.”

The brothers also said they will begin try to gain official university support for the program and a method of keeping the catalogues updated.

Currently, Lanning updates the catalog information for Registration Manager every morning. He does not have access to Iowa State’s database, so to update the catalog information daily, he gathers information from the ISU schedule of classes Web site.

Lanning said the program is used not only by students, but also the athletic department and academic advisers.

One GSB senator said he is in the process of requesting university funding to keep Registration Manager operable.

“I feel very strongly about RegMan and the good it does and could possibly do for the students of Iowa State University,” said Brandon Judas, GSB senator for the College of Engineering.

Howard Shapiro, vice provost for undergraduate programs, said he has been flooded with e-mails about saving Registration Manager, but that the matter is not something his office would deal with.

He said while he and other administrators have evaluated the program, they decided not to pursue a business deal, and that he was never given a proposal to buy the program.

Decisions regarding the program’s future are not the university’s, but Lanning’s, Shapiro said.