November 22 marked a momentous occasion in Penn State’s online information community, as the Board of Trustees formally approved the transition to a new student software: LionPATH.

LionPATH will be replacing ISIS, otherwise known as the Integrated Student Information System. Never heard of it? Well, as it turns out, we’ve all used ISIS even if we aren’t aware of what it is. According to the Project LionPATH website:

“Many Penn Staters depend on ISIS and don’t even know it. For example, anyone who uses eLion, Penn State’s web-based service for students, advisers, and faculty, uses ISIS. That’s because eLion is nothing more than a web-based portal into ISIS. Without ISIS, there would be no eLion.”

ISIS was created in the early 1980s in-house by Penn State programmers. However, nearly 30 years later, a new program is being written to improve current features of ISIS as well as add “additional capabilities, process improvements, and internal efficiencies.”

The LionPATH program is being written by Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, an outside programming company, while the implementation itself will be spearheaded by both an outside company, CedarCrestone, and Penn State.

LionPATH is expected to roll out in several phases, the first of which will take place in the fall of 2015 for newly applying students. The program should be available to all enrolled students by the fall of 2016. LionPATH would, like ISIS, be used in all Penn State branch campuses as well as Penn State World Campus.

To learn more about the “new backbone of eLion” visit the LionPATH website.